By Brenda Zulu, 15 March 2006

While trade offer opportunities for women’s socio-economic empowerment and growth in Africa, it can perpetuate women’s marginalisation and gender inequalities, which in turn hamper growth and development, the ultimate goal of trade.

Speaking at the on going forum on Information Communication Technologies (ICT), Trade and Economic at the United Nations Conference Center, Ngone Diop from the African Center for Gender and Development (ACGD) said that Trade was not gender neutral. She observed that Trade agreements, policies and mechanisms have different impacts on women and men.

“Gender refers to socially constructed differences in attributes and opportunities associated with being female or male and to the social interactions and relationships between women and men. It determines what is expected, allowed and valued in woman and man in a given context,” said Diop.

She added that Trade and ICTs can be a critical pathway to socio-economic growth and development in Africa but without a gender perspective, the potential benefits of ICTs and Trade will not benefit women and girls.

Rather, they will perpetuate gender inequalities and the socio-economic exclusion of women and other vulnerable groups, ultimately hampering Africa’s development prospects.

ICTs can play a critical role in mitigating women’s marginalisation in Trade, which is a male dominated sector in Africa.

She pointed out that many various empirical studies have documented gender and women’s concerns in trade, in Africa such as Mohau Pheko 2005 and that as stated by D. Elson “the seemingly neutral macro-economic policies including trade become male biased when implemented in a social context that discriminates against women”.

She explained that the structure of the social power relationships between men and women shape their access to and command over resources including: education, land, financial resources, market, information and technology, all of which being essential for women and men’s effective participation in and benefit from national, regional and international trade.

Diop said that gender and trade could be analysed in three categories such as the micro level where the gender imbalances at the household level in terms of bargaining power, division of labor (burden of unpaid care work), access to and control over resources, etc affect women’s effective participation in trade.

The second category was Meso level where promotion of export-oriented production in Africa (export processing zone(EPZs) as a response to globalisation was associated with a gender segmentation of the labour force.

Diop observed that Women are over represented in low-paid, low skills export-oriented sectors such as horticultural and floricultural sectors and in fisheries. They work in unhealthy conditions. They face employment insecurity, lack of protection, gender stereotypes and sexual harassment.

She said that a study in Kenya suggests that women workers in the horticultural and floricultural sectors experience harsh working conditions while living in secluded compounds far from their own villages.

While women’s share in low paid work increases, their reproductive tasks/unpaid care work does not decrease, as there is no change in the division of labor in the household.

Diop explained that in the third category Macro level, Trade negotiations are men’s monopoly; women’s voices remain absent in the various trade negotiations and agreements. Trade reforms advantage large and medium producers who have access to and command of information, markets, capital, and resources. Those producers are mainly men.

She said reduction in tariffs and other forms of trade taxes associated with World Trade Organisation (WTO) regulations lead to: reduction of government’s spending on social services; commodification of social services (health, education) and shift of the costs the public to the private sphere (the home), leads to increase women’s invisible and unpaid burden of care work.

The critical role of ICTs Diop explained ICTs are a tool for a socio-economic transformation. They can positively change the ways the socio-economic actors produce, consume, and exchange the ways they think and act. She explained that development was about positive structural changes so; ICTs are strongly related to development.

As such, ICTs constitute a powerful device to mitigate the gender imbalances that constraint woman from effectively participating in and benefiting from Trade.

It is a powerful tool for women’s socio-economic empowerment.