Context matters: unpacking gender equality in development

The World Bank reports that nearly 2.4 billion women globally do not have the same economic rights as men. Women are more likely to be impoverished than men, and these disparities are more pronounced in countries in the Global South. Even though international policies have been developed to promote gender equality, their impact is uneven. In today’s piece, Hilda Aboagyewaa Agyekum, PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, examines the influence of culture and context on the interpretation and implementation of gender policies, drawing on examples from Africa.

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Introduction

Gender equality has gained the spotlight in recent years in the international development field. International organisations, including United Nations (UN) agencies, have championed and funded policies and programs to improve women's education and employment (Palermo, Giuffra, Arzenton, & Bucchi, 2008), particularly in developing countries. In this article I will look at the rollout of these initiatives in African countries. While common cultural elements exist within this continent, Africa comprises distinct nations and I therefore reference specific cases in Africa rather than making generalizations. The article concludes that international organisations need to better consider culture and context when they design and implement policies for women’s economic empowerment, because what might appear as a universal understanding or acceptance around a concept in the Western context might be interpreted differently in different contexts.

Scholars assert a strong link between economic development and gender equality (Kabeer, 2016), emphasising that when all human resources are maximized and put to efficient use, there are positive outcomes for national economies. This has informed the formulation of key policies at both the international and local level. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are examples of major policy frameworks that aim to foster development with the latter in particular addressing gender implications (Razavi, 2016). However, despite some positive impacts, these policies lack explicit guidance on local implementation.

What aspect of gender inequality are we eliminating?

Gender equality is one of the main themes throughout the SGDs. But closer examination shows that different contextual factors were not accounted for. Although the elimination of gender inequality is a key aim, there is little practical guidance for how this can be achieved. Policies without direct benchmarks and strategies become problematic, especially when countries have the autonomy to adapt policies to their cultural context. Power struggles further complicate local implementation. Inequality deepens when the economic and political structures of a country limit access to the benefits of economic development to only specific groups. This can be exacerbated by patriarchal gender norms that allow for discrimination or violence towards particular groups. Inequality itself is explained differently in different countries.

Benchmarks for development often fail to address the possibility of different interpretations in different contexts. For example, SDG 5.2.1 aims to ‘eliminate violence against women and girls’ but does not adequately define what constitutes violence. In 2016, a report by the World Bank indicated that about one third of African women reported to have been victims of domestic abuse and went further to explain that these women sometimes justify the actions of their spouse (the perpetrator of violence) as having the right to use physical violence as an acceptable means of correction. To state this benchmark for development without also categorising what constitutes violence does not necessarily help eliminate it. Further, highlighting violence against women without a comparable focus on men overlooks other instances of family and community violence perpetrated against men, such as the Sharo belief among the Fulani in Northern Nigeria, where young men undergo beatings by their future wife’s family as a rite of passage to test their level of endurance.

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All women are not the same

Acknowledging the diversity among women is crucial. SDG 5 asks countries to ‘empower all women and girls,’ but overlooks intersectionality – different women may require different forms of empowerment. For instance, women with disability experience much higher rates of unemployment than women without disability. Even though efforts are being made to increase employment rates of women, separate measures and advocacy must be adopted to raise employment rates amongst women with disability (Naami, 2015). This risks being missed when policy frameworks fail to account for other aspects of identity that disadvantage women aside from gender.

Identity aspects beyond gender, such as immigrant status, also need policy attention, particularly in settler countries. Migration rates have increased recently, especially migration from African countries to other African countries. In South Africa, migrant women face additional challenges, evident in xenophobic incidents reported as recently as 2020. There are significant disparities in employment outcomes between Black and White women, with Black South African women often occupying lower-paying roles. Categorising all women together overlooks the intricacies of intersectionality, which renders one woman different from the other, even though they may be in the same space with the same qualifications. To genuinely address the complexities of economic development, policies and policymakers must consider and target diverse identities and experiences in particular jurisdictions, as well as on a global scale.

Conclusion

While efforts have been made to include marginalised groups in economic growth and adopt a gender lens in development efforts, international policies can inadvertently create more inequalities. Policymakers must critically evaluate and account for the cultural and contextual factors that shape how countries interpret and implement these policy frameworks to ensure international standards are effective in each unique national setting.

References

Kabeer, N. (2016). Gender equality, economic growth, and women’s agency: the “endless variety” and “monotonous similarity” of patriarchal constraints. Feminist Economics, 22(1), 295-321.

Khan, P. (2021). South Africa: from apartheid to xenophobia. Race & Class, 63(1), 3-22.

Kaziboni, A. (2022). Apartheid racism and post-apartheid xenophobia: Bridging the gap. In Migration in Southern Africa: IMISCOE Regional Reader (pp. 201-213). Cham: Springer International Publishing.Palermo, S., Giuffra, E., Arzenton, V., & Bucchi, M. (2008). Gender and science. EMBO reports, 9(6), 494-495.

Naami, A. (2015). Disability, gender, and employment relationships in Africa: The case of Ghana. African Journal of Disability, 4(1), 1-11.

Razavi, S. (2016). The 2030 Agenda: challenges of implementation to attain gender equality and women's rights. Gender & Development, 24(1), 25-41.

Van Staveren, I. (2008). The gender bias of the poverty reduction strategy framework. Review of International Political Economy, 15(2), 289-313.

Moderator: Laura Davy