INTRODUCTION
Incidences of gender inequality between men and women have been a serious source of public and private concern in Zambia and other parts of the world in regard to the prospects of good governance, national and global development at large. Therefore, there has been great emphasis from the world governments and non governmental organisations to close the gap between the two sexes by promoting women empowerment as women have been marginalised in many spheres of life. It was considered important for women to be given equal opportunities so that they could compete with their men folk in developmental issues and other areas of living. This is because women have been rated as inferior as compared to men in almost all sectors of life.
Campaigns and sensitisation programmes have been going on to promote women empowerment so that there are no gender imbalances between women and men. In the view of these cross-cutting gender imbalances in the country, the Zambian government formulated and adopted a holistic National Gender Policy in relation to the Beijing 1995 United Nations Fourth Conference on Gender Equality. The Policy stressed the need to fully integrate women in economic growth and ensure that both men and women participate fully and equitably benefit from the development process of the country.
Based on the above concerns, the core thesis of this essay is to discuss how gender mainstreaming has been implemented in Zambia. The fact that gender mainstreaming involves putting in place measures that promote gender equality and empowerment of women and men in various sectors will be taken into account in the handling of the discussion. Additionally, possible weaknesses and strengthens of the measures that have been put in place will be identified. The essay comprises four parts. The first part is the introduction, the second consists defines of key concepts, while the third is the main body. The last part is a personal conclusion as way of wrapping up the task.
DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS
According to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (1997: 35), “gender mainstreaming is a strategy for making women and men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the policies and programmes on all political, economic and social spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.” This entails that gender mainstreaming does not only involve restricting efforts to promote equality to the implementation of specific measures that are meant to empower women, but mobilising general policies and measures specifically for the purpose of achieving equality. It is argued that equality can be achieved by actively and openly taking into account possible effects of the policies on the equality of men and women, their experiences and background from the planning stage. This means examining the measures and policies of empowerment and gender equality systematically, taking into account possible hindrances or challenges that affect a particular gender when defining and implementing them.
Additionally, Chiluba (2000: vi) defines gender equality as a situation where men and women have equal conditions for realising their full human rights and potential to contribute to and benefit from socio-economic, cultural and political development of a nation taking into consideration their similarities, differences and varying roles that they play. In a similar but parallel vein, empowerment refers to the process of gaining access to resources and developing one’s capacities with the view to participating actively in shaping one’s own life and that of one’s community in economic, socio-cultural, political and religious terms, (ibid: v).
MAIN BODY
Zambia experienced a positive economic performance in the immediate post-independence period. Economic growth rates were relatively high, and social and economic infrastructure were rapidly expanding mainly in health, education, transport and manufacturing sectors. Employment opportunities equally increased significantly. Consequently, Zambians made substantial gains in income levels, life expectancy and school enrollment, as well as reduction in morbidity and mortality levels.
Despite the gains that were made by the country, participation and benefits from these socio-economic developments were not equitably shared among Zambians because no policies were put in place to ensure equity, especially taking into consideration the disadvantaged position of women and girls. In a culture that favoured men and treated women as minors, both in pre and post independence period, women were marginalised in terms of access to education, employment and other social services. For instance, education and training were culturally considered men’s domain resulting in less women receiving the service. The net effect of this has been high levels of illiteracy among women as compared to men. Similarly, in employment, women were treated as minors who could not do certain jobs or own certain assets without the consent of fathers, husbands or uncles. Employment opportunities were limited for women given their lack of education background and the lack of supportive legislation and gender sensitive policies.
According to the Economic Commission for Africa (2005: 11), “all over the world, education for girls and women is currently recognised as a strategy of achieving gender equality and empowering women.” It is widely accepted that an educated woman is more likely to marry later, to space her pregnancies, to have fewer children, to seek medical care for herself and her children and to adopt good hygiene in her household. In line with this view, the Zambian government adopted a vision and mission that capture gender in its 1996 National Policy on Education. The mission is dubbed, “Education Our Future,” and it states that: “…to guide the provision of education for all Zambians so that they are able to pursue knowledge and skills, manifest excellence in performance and moral uprightness, defend democratic ideals, and accept and value other persons on the basis of their personal worthy and dignity irrespective of gender, religion, ethnic origin or any other discriminatory characteristic,” (GIDD 2002: 12).
The recognition of the importance of education in a person’s life prompted Zambia to make education a right to every person. Therefore, since independence, Zambia incorporated education in the country’s socio-economic development plans. Thus, the post independence era was characterised by rapid expansion of primary and secondary education facilities in all the administrative provinces available at the time. Both basic and high school enrollments showed dramatic increase especially with the introduction of basic schools. This increase however did not record serious performance and participation of girls in education as it mainly put the boy child on the upper hand. According to Central Statistical Office (1996: 34), “at high school level, the proportion of girls in school has been below 40% for a long time regardless of the measures that have been put in place to bring about gender equality.”
Additionally, lack of qualified female role models have attributed to the detrimental motivation and advancement of the girl child education. Some scholars argue that there is need for female role models that the girl child would look up to as she conceptualise her ambitions in education. Civil societies took a leading role in advocating for the empowerment of women and the girl child in Zambia. For example, gender issues in education have been addressed through the Programme for the Advancement of Girls’ Education (PAGE), which starting in 2003, which was mainstreamed into the school system. The Forum for African Women Educationist in Zambia (FAWEZA) is also influential in this area among other organisations. These organisations advocated for ‘back to school’ programmes for girls who fell pregnant while in school, scholarships to vulnerable girls, among other incentives that are meant to encourage the girl child go to school.
Health was another area which due to the decline in the provision of quality health care, impacted negatively on women and children as they are the major users of the health services. A number of strategies have been adopted to lead to equitable access of health care by all Zambians, to enable them to lead socially and economically productive lives. Gender mainstreaming has been identified as one of the strategies, which became a new concept in the health programming. These imbalances in terms of accessing health services between men and women have been perpetuated by the failure to recognise the vital role gender plays in planning and health development. This has been one of the deterrent factors in achieving success in the area of equality in accessing health care despite having health reforms in place.
In the Health Reforms, the mission statement for gender and health is on the creation of necessary conditions for every person, male or female, young and old, to be able to live a healthy life. However, some of the factors that affect the utilisation of health services in Zambia by men and women are enshrined in socialisation and beliefs. For example, Family Planning Services still target females only leaving out men who are actually the decision makers with regard to participation in sexual and reproductive health service activities. Long distances, poor road networks, and women’s poor attitudes towards their health have been some of the other barriers to effective access to health facilities especially by women. Besides the barriers above, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV\AIDS infections have proven to be another health challenge, which mainly affect women more than men due to both biological and social factors. Biologically, women are prone to abrasion and lacerations during sexual intercourse and are more likely to engage into risky sexual activities due to their socio-economic status since the economy is more of a patriarchy nature.
Therefore, the National Gender Policy has contributed towards achieving gender equality in accessing healthy services in that it has decentralised the health system to district level. This was meant to help government medical centres to provide services adequately and to bring the centres closer to the people. In rural areas, Community Based Health Service providers have been introduced who are trained on basic healthy issues and provided with some drugs to administer to community members sick of manageable diseases at that level. In addition, because of the policy, family planning matters which were in the past seen to be a concern of women alone are being discussed with men in various clinics in the country. Men are educated on the ways of family planning. Furthermore; there are now a lot of counseling centres where young people can go for counsel and guidance on sexuality and other HIV\AIDS issues to both males and females that they might not understand well. As a way of reducing infant mortality and maternal deaths, Healthy Reforms have led to free medical services for children under the age of five and expectant mothers. Mothers therefore go for regular post natal check-ups at the clinic or hospital free of charge.
Water and sanitation is the other area of concern that the National Gender Policy had to address. The water infrastructure was largely dilapidated in the 1990s leading to a situation where the quality of water supplied to the public in rural and peri-urban areas was inadequate and of poor quality. This subjected women to walk long distances as they are traditionally considered haulers and providers of water for domestic consumption. This had cut-off women from other productive areas in the economy. In an effort to reverse this situation, the government embarked on a major Sector Reform Programme by adopting and implementing the National Water Policy, whose overall objective is to achieve universal access to clean, safe adequate and reliable water supply and sanitation services. This policy promotes sustainable water resources development and facilitates the equitable provision of quality water for all users at acceptable costs while ensuring security of supply. The policy seeks to support measures aimed at increasing accessibility to safe and clean water and sanitation facilities and the sharing of costs.
Women have also been disadvantaged in the areas of labour, employment and social security, which the National Gender Policy tried to address when it came into effect. According to Mbula (2001: 43-44), “women were seriously discriminated in all avenues of employment during the implementation of structural adjustment policies, which entailed considerable retrenchment from the formal sector, and women were the first ones to be retrenched as they were concentrated in less skilled occupations.” Furthermore, the demand for women’s labour has been weakened by their additional function of reproduction as a result they tend to be less favoured when it comes to recruitment and usually the first to be let out when retrenching. To this effect, the National Gender Policy has a variety of labour laws that seek to regulate and fight gender inequality in workplaces. The Policy acknowledges the fact that men are more conversant with their rights and freedom in the world of work than women; as such women are usually discriminated against. Thus, the Policy made any form of discrimination illegal under the labour laws.
Lack of equitable distribution of resources between males and females was also rife in the acquisition and ownership of land in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Siachiyako (2006: 32), “in the 1980s most of the land in Zambia was dominantly under mutative communal system, whose tenure systems were either patriarchal or matrilineal in nature, which denied women access to land unless through their brothers, husbands, fathers or sons.” This has however continued to be a major hindrance to women’s effective participation in national development. To liberalise Land Acquisition and its usage, the government passed the Land Act, Cap.184 of the Laws of Zambia in 1996 to provide women the possibility of being land owners with security of tenure for 99 years.
In addition to land acquisition challenges, the ownership of houses by the Local Authorities discriminated women against owning houses through housing policies since independence. For example, these policies only allowed married women to own a house after they obtained a written prior consent from their spouses. In trying to address these problems, government adopted a National Housing Policy in 1995, which saw the sell of government houses to sitting tenants at cheaper prices regardless of their sex or economic status.
Furthermore, agriculture was another area that gender mainstreaming aspects have been implemented in Zambia. The majority Zambians earn their livelihood from small scale farming with women contributing 70% agricultural labour. Women participate in both cash and food crop production. According to Nyanga (2006: 07), “women bear the primary responsibilities of household food security, health and nutrition of their families despite being disadvantaged in accessing agricultural inputs, credit, land, and technology and making decisions on agrarian efficacy.” Therefore, the agriculture policy and planning systems have taken into account the central role of women in agricultural production and natural resource management. The Policy argues that sustainable household food security and poverty alleviation would only be achieved through integration and mainstreaming of gender at all levels. Successful integration and mainstreaming of the gender approach into institutional setting require the operationalisation of gender into specific goals, objective and action plans (ibid).
The National Gender Policy also made great strives in eliminating the stereotype portrayal of women in images and presentation in the media. The media was dominated by men who in turn dominated positions of decision making in the fraternity. The government redressed this by adopting the Information and Media Policy with a vision of promoting an efficient and self-motivated media industry, capable of delivering objective and timely information buffer-zone to all by the year 2000. The Policy also intended to promote and safeguard freedom of the press and expression, people’s right to information and encourages private sector participation in the print and electronic media. This was aimed at providing women with information which they have been deprived of especially those in rural areas.
The National Gender Policy also promoted equitable gender representation at all levels of decision making positions through affirmative action, the empowerment and improvement of women’s social, economic and political status. Women have been under-represented at all levels of decision making especially in government, parliament and the private sector over time, which the Policy meant to address. This has been perpetuated by low education attainment, traditional gender attitudes and prejudices among men and women and women’s weak economic status.
STRENGTHS OF THE GENDER EQUALITY MEASURES
The National Gender Policy has formulated a holistic approach to gender inequality challenges that discriminate women against full participation in many activities in the nation and equitably benefit from the development process attained in the country. The Policy puts forward gender mainstreaming issues and concerns that needed to be addressed for gender equality in the social, economic, political and other spheres of society to be attained in Zambia. The Policy entails the mobilisation of all general policies and resources for the purpose of achieving equality by actively and openly taking into account women and men’s concerns at the planning stage.
It provides terms of reference on strategies that can be used in all areas to address women and men’s concerns and experiences. The terms of reference are a ‘conscious’ which aims at integrating both men and women in all political, economical and social avenues. The Policy has impacted positively on gender mainstreaming in that it ensures there are actions that promote equality in the country with an ambitious approach which presupposes identifying men and women’s capacities to contribute to national development or in the areas of decision making. The Policy promotes the enhancement of long term changes in parental roles, family structures, institutional practices and other avenues that have perpetuated gender inequality. For example, in education, the Policy brought forward the implementation of programmes that have provided women opportunities to access education even after getting pregnant. Additionally, community schools have been opened in many parts of the country to supplement on government and private schools’ carrying capacities.
The Policy has also promoted the formulation of legislation that addresses gender violence issues. This has led to the setting up of departments like the Victim Support Unit (VSU) where all forms of harassment and violence especially on women and children are reported and redressed. Furthermore, drop centres and shelter for victims of these abuses have been introduced in some parts on the country. These victims are also counseled and perpetrators of the violence have been punished.
Additionally, the National Gender Policy brought into focus different perspectives and aspects that have perpetuated gender inequality between men and women and proposed ways in which they would be addressed. From that bigger picture, policy designers and implementers came up with strategies that could be used to empower the lower ranked sex. According SADC to (1998: 15), “the gender policy in Zambia was designed in a way that it blended several gender equality matters in response to socio-economic, legal, cultural and psychological obstacles to women and men’s opportunities and self-development due to differences in life experiences.” It resulted into proposals from various sectors of society on how inequality between men and women could be eliminated. Global and regional policies that were meant to empower women and promote gender equality were adopted. Such clauses became part of the national objectives and goals within specified periods. For example, the United Nations’ theme for 30 percent women presentation in decision making positions, which became part of the national targets of development. This resulted into improvements in terms of holding decision making positions by women like in Parliament, Cabinet, ministerial levels, media houses and other sectors of the Zambian society.
WEAKNESSES OF THE GENDER EQUALITY MEASURES
However, despite the positive contributions that the National Gender Policy has made towards the realisation of gender equality, there is a lot that has to be done to address the existing gender disparities in different avenues of life, be it economic, social, and political or decision making positions. For example, measures on water and sanitation that the National Water Policy is trying to address have not gone far due to insufficient funding and cultural practices which place the burden of water collection on women without their involvement in decision making. Although the trend is changing due to education, it is still rife in rural areas and homes of least educated couples. These cultural and customary factors have also perpetuated stereotype when it comes to jobs to be given to women. Some employers therefore, expect that women will have lower responsibilities and tend to confine them to particular job ladders. For instance, in the Zambia Army, women cannot rise to certain ranks like a General, as such ranks are considered to be for men.
According to Byrne (1994: 12), “gender imbalances in Zambia have been perpetuated by the factor that women’s legal status is determined by two separate laws: customary and statutory laws, which conflict each other in many ways.” Whereas government is striving to put laws in place that empower women in terms of property ownership or land acquisition, the customary law treats women as dependants, who cannot own personal property. This law states that whatever a woman produces belongs to the husband. Inheritance laws also leave uneducated women destitute to relatives of their husbands (when they die) who may descend on the family property and leave the widow without possessions. Such things have been very common in the country due to high levels of illiteracy among many Zambian women. Worse still, cultural factors are more dominant in the minds of many Zambians than modern approaches to life that try to empower women in various ways. Additionally, the Zambian legislation prohibits women from working underground in the mines, where their menfolk earn a lot of money.
Furthermore, very little has been to address the imbalances that exist in terms access to media coverage as well as holding positions by women in decision making positions in the media. According www.fullstop.com, “the media covered men more than women in 2005 on different programmes like profiling them in newspapers, featuring them on debates like assessing the country’s fighting against corruption, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and Vision 2030 among others, with percentage differentials of 88 percent against 12 percent respectively.” Women are often covered in the media mainly when something negative happened to them like rape or battery. Women also hold few influential decision making positions in the media. For example, no woman had ever held the position of the director of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC). This trend is common even among private media houses.
CONCLUSION
In the final analysis, it is clear that even though issues of gender mainstreaming have been blend in the country’s National Gender Policy, which has facilitated in addressing gender inequality in national programmes, a lot still has to be done. Taking gender disparities that have characterised the implementation of the national gender policy as a yardstick of the policy’s effectiveness in cushioning the disparities, it is true that most of the policies in it are only good on paper and not in implementation. There are numerous imbalances in many areas of life like education, the media, decision making and employment among others. The media have continued to marginalise women in both coverage and positions. The inequalities have also continued manifesting in land acquisition as well as science and technology issues where women are still the minority. Certain positions have remained “suitable” for men only not women. As a result, poverty has been higher among females than males to the extent that it is taken as feminine phenomenon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Byrne B (1994), Gender Profile of Zambia Report No. 29. Briton: University of Sussex.
Chiluba F (2000), National Gender Policy. Lusaka: Cabinet Office.
ECA (2005), Promoting Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment in Africa: Questioning the Achievements and Confrontation the Challenges Ten Years after Beijing. Addis Ababa: Economic Commission for Africa.
GIDD (2002), Strategic Plan of Action for the National Gender Policy (2004-2008). Lusaka: Gender in Development Division.
Mbula L (2001), Guidelines and Check lists for Mainstreaming Gender in the Public Sector. Lusaka: Cabinet Office.
Nyanga P (2006), Impact of Agricultural Policy Changes on Household Food Security among Small Scale Farmers in Southern Zambia. Oslo: Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
SADC (2003), Report for the Needs Assessment Study for Capacity Building of the National Machineries for Gender Equality in SADC member States: the Case of Zambia. Lusaka: SADC.
Siachiyako G (2006), Women Poverty in Zambia, Incidences and Causes: A Case Study of Small Scale Rural Agricultural Women of Kalomo District in Zambia. Oslo: University of Oslo.
www.fullstop.com: United Nations Economic and Social Council (1997)
Incidences of gender inequality between men and women have been a serious source of public and private concern in Zambia and other parts of the world in regard to the prospects of good governance, national and global development at large. Therefore, there has been great emphasis from the world governments and non governmental organisations to close the gap between the two sexes by promoting women empowerment as women have been marginalised in many spheres of life. It was considered important for women to be given equal opportunities so that they could compete with their men folk in developmental issues and other areas of living. This is because women have been rated as inferior as compared to men in almost all sectors of life.
Campaigns and sensitisation programmes have been going on to promote women empowerment so that there are no gender imbalances between women and men. In the view of these cross-cutting gender imbalances in the country, the Zambian government formulated and adopted a holistic National Gender Policy in relation to the Beijing 1995 United Nations Fourth Conference on Gender Equality. The Policy stressed the need to fully integrate women in economic growth and ensure that both men and women participate fully and equitably benefit from the development process of the country.
Based on the above concerns, the core thesis of this essay is to discuss how gender mainstreaming has been implemented in Zambia. The fact that gender mainstreaming involves putting in place measures that promote gender equality and empowerment of women and men in various sectors will be taken into account in the handling of the discussion. Additionally, possible weaknesses and strengthens of the measures that have been put in place will be identified. The essay comprises four parts. The first part is the introduction, the second consists defines of key concepts, while the third is the main body. The last part is a personal conclusion as way of wrapping up the task.
DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS
According to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (1997: 35), “gender mainstreaming is a strategy for making women and men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the policies and programmes on all political, economic and social spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.” This entails that gender mainstreaming does not only involve restricting efforts to promote equality to the implementation of specific measures that are meant to empower women, but mobilising general policies and measures specifically for the purpose of achieving equality. It is argued that equality can be achieved by actively and openly taking into account possible effects of the policies on the equality of men and women, their experiences and background from the planning stage. This means examining the measures and policies of empowerment and gender equality systematically, taking into account possible hindrances or challenges that affect a particular gender when defining and implementing them.
Additionally, Chiluba (2000: vi) defines gender equality as a situation where men and women have equal conditions for realising their full human rights and potential to contribute to and benefit from socio-economic, cultural and political development of a nation taking into consideration their similarities, differences and varying roles that they play. In a similar but parallel vein, empowerment refers to the process of gaining access to resources and developing one’s capacities with the view to participating actively in shaping one’s own life and that of one’s community in economic, socio-cultural, political and religious terms, (ibid: v).
MAIN BODY
Zambia experienced a positive economic performance in the immediate post-independence period. Economic growth rates were relatively high, and social and economic infrastructure were rapidly expanding mainly in health, education, transport and manufacturing sectors. Employment opportunities equally increased significantly. Consequently, Zambians made substantial gains in income levels, life expectancy and school enrollment, as well as reduction in morbidity and mortality levels.
Despite the gains that were made by the country, participation and benefits from these socio-economic developments were not equitably shared among Zambians because no policies were put in place to ensure equity, especially taking into consideration the disadvantaged position of women and girls. In a culture that favoured men and treated women as minors, both in pre and post independence period, women were marginalised in terms of access to education, employment and other social services. For instance, education and training were culturally considered men’s domain resulting in less women receiving the service. The net effect of this has been high levels of illiteracy among women as compared to men. Similarly, in employment, women were treated as minors who could not do certain jobs or own certain assets without the consent of fathers, husbands or uncles. Employment opportunities were limited for women given their lack of education background and the lack of supportive legislation and gender sensitive policies.
According to the Economic Commission for Africa (2005: 11), “all over the world, education for girls and women is currently recognised as a strategy of achieving gender equality and empowering women.” It is widely accepted that an educated woman is more likely to marry later, to space her pregnancies, to have fewer children, to seek medical care for herself and her children and to adopt good hygiene in her household. In line with this view, the Zambian government adopted a vision and mission that capture gender in its 1996 National Policy on Education. The mission is dubbed, “Education Our Future,” and it states that: “…to guide the provision of education for all Zambians so that they are able to pursue knowledge and skills, manifest excellence in performance and moral uprightness, defend democratic ideals, and accept and value other persons on the basis of their personal worthy and dignity irrespective of gender, religion, ethnic origin or any other discriminatory characteristic,” (GIDD 2002: 12).
The recognition of the importance of education in a person’s life prompted Zambia to make education a right to every person. Therefore, since independence, Zambia incorporated education in the country’s socio-economic development plans. Thus, the post independence era was characterised by rapid expansion of primary and secondary education facilities in all the administrative provinces available at the time. Both basic and high school enrollments showed dramatic increase especially with the introduction of basic schools. This increase however did not record serious performance and participation of girls in education as it mainly put the boy child on the upper hand. According to Central Statistical Office (1996: 34), “at high school level, the proportion of girls in school has been below 40% for a long time regardless of the measures that have been put in place to bring about gender equality.”
Additionally, lack of qualified female role models have attributed to the detrimental motivation and advancement of the girl child education. Some scholars argue that there is need for female role models that the girl child would look up to as she conceptualise her ambitions in education. Civil societies took a leading role in advocating for the empowerment of women and the girl child in Zambia. For example, gender issues in education have been addressed through the Programme for the Advancement of Girls’ Education (PAGE), which starting in 2003, which was mainstreamed into the school system. The Forum for African Women Educationist in Zambia (FAWEZA) is also influential in this area among other organisations. These organisations advocated for ‘back to school’ programmes for girls who fell pregnant while in school, scholarships to vulnerable girls, among other incentives that are meant to encourage the girl child go to school.
Health was another area which due to the decline in the provision of quality health care, impacted negatively on women and children as they are the major users of the health services. A number of strategies have been adopted to lead to equitable access of health care by all Zambians, to enable them to lead socially and economically productive lives. Gender mainstreaming has been identified as one of the strategies, which became a new concept in the health programming. These imbalances in terms of accessing health services between men and women have been perpetuated by the failure to recognise the vital role gender plays in planning and health development. This has been one of the deterrent factors in achieving success in the area of equality in accessing health care despite having health reforms in place.
In the Health Reforms, the mission statement for gender and health is on the creation of necessary conditions for every person, male or female, young and old, to be able to live a healthy life. However, some of the factors that affect the utilisation of health services in Zambia by men and women are enshrined in socialisation and beliefs. For example, Family Planning Services still target females only leaving out men who are actually the decision makers with regard to participation in sexual and reproductive health service activities. Long distances, poor road networks, and women’s poor attitudes towards their health have been some of the other barriers to effective access to health facilities especially by women. Besides the barriers above, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV\AIDS infections have proven to be another health challenge, which mainly affect women more than men due to both biological and social factors. Biologically, women are prone to abrasion and lacerations during sexual intercourse and are more likely to engage into risky sexual activities due to their socio-economic status since the economy is more of a patriarchy nature.
Therefore, the National Gender Policy has contributed towards achieving gender equality in accessing healthy services in that it has decentralised the health system to district level. This was meant to help government medical centres to provide services adequately and to bring the centres closer to the people. In rural areas, Community Based Health Service providers have been introduced who are trained on basic healthy issues and provided with some drugs to administer to community members sick of manageable diseases at that level. In addition, because of the policy, family planning matters which were in the past seen to be a concern of women alone are being discussed with men in various clinics in the country. Men are educated on the ways of family planning. Furthermore; there are now a lot of counseling centres where young people can go for counsel and guidance on sexuality and other HIV\AIDS issues to both males and females that they might not understand well. As a way of reducing infant mortality and maternal deaths, Healthy Reforms have led to free medical services for children under the age of five and expectant mothers. Mothers therefore go for regular post natal check-ups at the clinic or hospital free of charge.
Water and sanitation is the other area of concern that the National Gender Policy had to address. The water infrastructure was largely dilapidated in the 1990s leading to a situation where the quality of water supplied to the public in rural and peri-urban areas was inadequate and of poor quality. This subjected women to walk long distances as they are traditionally considered haulers and providers of water for domestic consumption. This had cut-off women from other productive areas in the economy. In an effort to reverse this situation, the government embarked on a major Sector Reform Programme by adopting and implementing the National Water Policy, whose overall objective is to achieve universal access to clean, safe adequate and reliable water supply and sanitation services. This policy promotes sustainable water resources development and facilitates the equitable provision of quality water for all users at acceptable costs while ensuring security of supply. The policy seeks to support measures aimed at increasing accessibility to safe and clean water and sanitation facilities and the sharing of costs.
Women have also been disadvantaged in the areas of labour, employment and social security, which the National Gender Policy tried to address when it came into effect. According to Mbula (2001: 43-44), “women were seriously discriminated in all avenues of employment during the implementation of structural adjustment policies, which entailed considerable retrenchment from the formal sector, and women were the first ones to be retrenched as they were concentrated in less skilled occupations.” Furthermore, the demand for women’s labour has been weakened by their additional function of reproduction as a result they tend to be less favoured when it comes to recruitment and usually the first to be let out when retrenching. To this effect, the National Gender Policy has a variety of labour laws that seek to regulate and fight gender inequality in workplaces. The Policy acknowledges the fact that men are more conversant with their rights and freedom in the world of work than women; as such women are usually discriminated against. Thus, the Policy made any form of discrimination illegal under the labour laws.
Lack of equitable distribution of resources between males and females was also rife in the acquisition and ownership of land in the 1980s and 1990s. According to Siachiyako (2006: 32), “in the 1980s most of the land in Zambia was dominantly under mutative communal system, whose tenure systems were either patriarchal or matrilineal in nature, which denied women access to land unless through their brothers, husbands, fathers or sons.” This has however continued to be a major hindrance to women’s effective participation in national development. To liberalise Land Acquisition and its usage, the government passed the Land Act, Cap.184 of the Laws of Zambia in 1996 to provide women the possibility of being land owners with security of tenure for 99 years.
In addition to land acquisition challenges, the ownership of houses by the Local Authorities discriminated women against owning houses through housing policies since independence. For example, these policies only allowed married women to own a house after they obtained a written prior consent from their spouses. In trying to address these problems, government adopted a National Housing Policy in 1995, which saw the sell of government houses to sitting tenants at cheaper prices regardless of their sex or economic status.
Furthermore, agriculture was another area that gender mainstreaming aspects have been implemented in Zambia. The majority Zambians earn their livelihood from small scale farming with women contributing 70% agricultural labour. Women participate in both cash and food crop production. According to Nyanga (2006: 07), “women bear the primary responsibilities of household food security, health and nutrition of their families despite being disadvantaged in accessing agricultural inputs, credit, land, and technology and making decisions on agrarian efficacy.” Therefore, the agriculture policy and planning systems have taken into account the central role of women in agricultural production and natural resource management. The Policy argues that sustainable household food security and poverty alleviation would only be achieved through integration and mainstreaming of gender at all levels. Successful integration and mainstreaming of the gender approach into institutional setting require the operationalisation of gender into specific goals, objective and action plans (ibid).
The National Gender Policy also made great strives in eliminating the stereotype portrayal of women in images and presentation in the media. The media was dominated by men who in turn dominated positions of decision making in the fraternity. The government redressed this by adopting the Information and Media Policy with a vision of promoting an efficient and self-motivated media industry, capable of delivering objective and timely information buffer-zone to all by the year 2000. The Policy also intended to promote and safeguard freedom of the press and expression, people’s right to information and encourages private sector participation in the print and electronic media. This was aimed at providing women with information which they have been deprived of especially those in rural areas.
The National Gender Policy also promoted equitable gender representation at all levels of decision making positions through affirmative action, the empowerment and improvement of women’s social, economic and political status. Women have been under-represented at all levels of decision making especially in government, parliament and the private sector over time, which the Policy meant to address. This has been perpetuated by low education attainment, traditional gender attitudes and prejudices among men and women and women’s weak economic status.
STRENGTHS OF THE GENDER EQUALITY MEASURES
The National Gender Policy has formulated a holistic approach to gender inequality challenges that discriminate women against full participation in many activities in the nation and equitably benefit from the development process attained in the country. The Policy puts forward gender mainstreaming issues and concerns that needed to be addressed for gender equality in the social, economic, political and other spheres of society to be attained in Zambia. The Policy entails the mobilisation of all general policies and resources for the purpose of achieving equality by actively and openly taking into account women and men’s concerns at the planning stage.
It provides terms of reference on strategies that can be used in all areas to address women and men’s concerns and experiences. The terms of reference are a ‘conscious’ which aims at integrating both men and women in all political, economical and social avenues. The Policy has impacted positively on gender mainstreaming in that it ensures there are actions that promote equality in the country with an ambitious approach which presupposes identifying men and women’s capacities to contribute to national development or in the areas of decision making. The Policy promotes the enhancement of long term changes in parental roles, family structures, institutional practices and other avenues that have perpetuated gender inequality. For example, in education, the Policy brought forward the implementation of programmes that have provided women opportunities to access education even after getting pregnant. Additionally, community schools have been opened in many parts of the country to supplement on government and private schools’ carrying capacities.
The Policy has also promoted the formulation of legislation that addresses gender violence issues. This has led to the setting up of departments like the Victim Support Unit (VSU) where all forms of harassment and violence especially on women and children are reported and redressed. Furthermore, drop centres and shelter for victims of these abuses have been introduced in some parts on the country. These victims are also counseled and perpetrators of the violence have been punished.
Additionally, the National Gender Policy brought into focus different perspectives and aspects that have perpetuated gender inequality between men and women and proposed ways in which they would be addressed. From that bigger picture, policy designers and implementers came up with strategies that could be used to empower the lower ranked sex. According SADC to (1998: 15), “the gender policy in Zambia was designed in a way that it blended several gender equality matters in response to socio-economic, legal, cultural and psychological obstacles to women and men’s opportunities and self-development due to differences in life experiences.” It resulted into proposals from various sectors of society on how inequality between men and women could be eliminated. Global and regional policies that were meant to empower women and promote gender equality were adopted. Such clauses became part of the national objectives and goals within specified periods. For example, the United Nations’ theme for 30 percent women presentation in decision making positions, which became part of the national targets of development. This resulted into improvements in terms of holding decision making positions by women like in Parliament, Cabinet, ministerial levels, media houses and other sectors of the Zambian society.
WEAKNESSES OF THE GENDER EQUALITY MEASURES
However, despite the positive contributions that the National Gender Policy has made towards the realisation of gender equality, there is a lot that has to be done to address the existing gender disparities in different avenues of life, be it economic, social, and political or decision making positions. For example, measures on water and sanitation that the National Water Policy is trying to address have not gone far due to insufficient funding and cultural practices which place the burden of water collection on women without their involvement in decision making. Although the trend is changing due to education, it is still rife in rural areas and homes of least educated couples. These cultural and customary factors have also perpetuated stereotype when it comes to jobs to be given to women. Some employers therefore, expect that women will have lower responsibilities and tend to confine them to particular job ladders. For instance, in the Zambia Army, women cannot rise to certain ranks like a General, as such ranks are considered to be for men.
According to Byrne (1994: 12), “gender imbalances in Zambia have been perpetuated by the factor that women’s legal status is determined by two separate laws: customary and statutory laws, which conflict each other in many ways.” Whereas government is striving to put laws in place that empower women in terms of property ownership or land acquisition, the customary law treats women as dependants, who cannot own personal property. This law states that whatever a woman produces belongs to the husband. Inheritance laws also leave uneducated women destitute to relatives of their husbands (when they die) who may descend on the family property and leave the widow without possessions. Such things have been very common in the country due to high levels of illiteracy among many Zambian women. Worse still, cultural factors are more dominant in the minds of many Zambians than modern approaches to life that try to empower women in various ways. Additionally, the Zambian legislation prohibits women from working underground in the mines, where their menfolk earn a lot of money.
Furthermore, very little has been to address the imbalances that exist in terms access to media coverage as well as holding positions by women in decision making positions in the media. According www.fullstop.com, “the media covered men more than women in 2005 on different programmes like profiling them in newspapers, featuring them on debates like assessing the country’s fighting against corruption, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and Vision 2030 among others, with percentage differentials of 88 percent against 12 percent respectively.” Women are often covered in the media mainly when something negative happened to them like rape or battery. Women also hold few influential decision making positions in the media. For example, no woman had ever held the position of the director of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC). This trend is common even among private media houses.
CONCLUSION
In the final analysis, it is clear that even though issues of gender mainstreaming have been blend in the country’s National Gender Policy, which has facilitated in addressing gender inequality in national programmes, a lot still has to be done. Taking gender disparities that have characterised the implementation of the national gender policy as a yardstick of the policy’s effectiveness in cushioning the disparities, it is true that most of the policies in it are only good on paper and not in implementation. There are numerous imbalances in many areas of life like education, the media, decision making and employment among others. The media have continued to marginalise women in both coverage and positions. The inequalities have also continued manifesting in land acquisition as well as science and technology issues where women are still the minority. Certain positions have remained “suitable” for men only not women. As a result, poverty has been higher among females than males to the extent that it is taken as feminine phenomenon.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Byrne B (1994), Gender Profile of Zambia Report No. 29. Briton: University of Sussex.
Chiluba F (2000), National Gender Policy. Lusaka: Cabinet Office.
ECA (2005), Promoting Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment in Africa: Questioning the Achievements and Confrontation the Challenges Ten Years after Beijing. Addis Ababa: Economic Commission for Africa.
GIDD (2002), Strategic Plan of Action for the National Gender Policy (2004-2008). Lusaka: Gender in Development Division.
Mbula L (2001), Guidelines and Check lists for Mainstreaming Gender in the Public Sector. Lusaka: Cabinet Office.
Nyanga P (2006), Impact of Agricultural Policy Changes on Household Food Security among Small Scale Farmers in Southern Zambia. Oslo: Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
SADC (2003), Report for the Needs Assessment Study for Capacity Building of the National Machineries for Gender Equality in SADC member States: the Case of Zambia. Lusaka: SADC.
Siachiyako G (2006), Women Poverty in Zambia, Incidences and Causes: A Case Study of Small Scale Rural Agricultural Women of Kalomo District in Zambia. Oslo: University of Oslo.
www.fullstop.com: United Nations Economic and Social Council (1997)
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