Struggles Over Macroeconomic Policy and Gender Equality
By Prof Marjorie Mbilinyi
The 2016 Africa Human Development Report: Accelerating Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Africa provides a welcome analysis of the impact of macroeconomic policy and structures on gender relations and structures of inequality and power.
According to the report, “.. fiscal policy and public expenditures may be the first and most important litmus test of a government’s commitment to gender equality.” Indeed, civil society organisations in Tanzania and elsewhere such as TGNP Mtandao have taken the lead in carrying out gender analysis of the budget process at district and national level, and advocating for gender responsive budgeting by central and local governments.
A growing number of regional, national and local organisations carry out budget and performance tracking – thereby furthering the democratisation and accountability of government. However, the outcomes have been mixed; this article challenges the report’s assumption of a conflict-free harmonious process for gender equality in participatory budgeting and corporate programmes.
Contradictory outcomes: Participatory engagement with the budget process has led to increased knowledge about how things work among citizens, and increased information about the mobilisation and allocation of resources and budget implementation, beginning at grassroots level. There have been impressive results in specific locations where local government authorities have become more responsive, attentive, and knowledgeable, and even cooperate to demand more local control over resources. A lot depends on local leadership however.
In other cases, grassroots activists have faced a back lash from local authorities who are not accustomed to having their power challenged, especially by women or young people.
What is missing is a powerful pressure group or movement representing marginalised women and men from grassroots to national level, which can demand and get real change in structures of power at national and regional level. In contrast, the private commercial sector does organise itself successfully to advance its own interests vis-à-vis policy, plans and budgets. Part of the difference may also be the government’s growing dependence on private corporations for tax and non-tax revenue, given the steady decline of external donor support, giving them increased leverage to make demands. These demands often run opposite to those of the majority of poor Tanzanian women and men.
The public-private-partnership myth: Mainstream discourse projects a picture of harmonious conflict-free understanding of PPP which is far from the truth. In the case of land policy, for example, private corporations including banks are lobbying for further liberalisation and privatisation of land tenure and ownership, which local communities and their organisations resist in defending their rights to land and livelihoods. The private sector consistently lobbies for lower corporate taxes and non-tax payments, which would deprive the government and the majority of people of necessary resources to support public social and economic services.
Corporations aim to reduce production costs associated with labour, by reducing or abolishing minimum wages, removing workers entitlements such as maternity/paternity leave and the right to organise in independent labour unions.
Private employers in both the informal and formal sector also benefit from sex discrimination in occupations and wages by systematically paying women lower wages, often for the same work, with similar levels of education and experience. According to the 2016 Africa Human Development Report a gender wage gap persists outside of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, such that on average, men earn 30 per cent more than women in manufacturing, services and trade. Ultimately the employer benefits by hiring women and paying them lower wages; the same goes for buyers of goods and services produced by women in the market place. This is especially relevant now when agriculture and non-agriculture enterprises are shifting from full-time permanent labour to casual labour systems.
Capital’s search for flexible labour is happening at higher levels of employment status and wages as well, especially in the form of contract and consultancy work. Employers’ production costs are reduced by not paying for administrative overhead costs, and fringe and other benefits normally provided to regular employees, and the longer hours which contract workers and consultants often work.
The fact that women often prefer ‘at home’ work because it allows them to combine care work at home with ‘paid work’ does not discount the reality of self-exploitation involved. This leads me to be sceptical about strategies for gender equality which rely on self-monitoring by the corporate sector, same as ‘responsible investments’ in large-scale agriculture and land.
Source: All Africa
