tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/women-empowerment-19162/articlesWomen empowerment – The Conversation2024-02-06T14:23:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2180962024-02-06T14:23:24Z2024-02-06T14:23:24ZWomen fishers in Makoko, Lagos’s ‘floating slum’, are struggling as breadwinners: education and funding would make a difference<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569612/original/file-20240116-29-azy84l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3907&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Makoko women fish traders waiting to buy fish from fishermen. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/picture-taken-on-march-2-2019-shows-women-waiting-to-buy-news-photo/1193942119">Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP / Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Makoko, a coastal fishing community in Lagos, Nigeria, was <a href="http://participedia.prod.s3.amazonaws.com/25e8cc0d-6da8-4364-a9aa-f1e994725030_SlumSettlementsRegenerationinLagosMega-city-anOverviewofaWaterfront.pdf">established</a> by fishermen in the 19th century. It is considered the world’s largest “floating slum”. There are conflicting figures about its population but it is home to about <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/africa/nigeria-makoko-mapping-intl/index.html">a million</a> inhabitants living in poor and informal housing built on the Lagos Lagoon. </p>
<p>The main economic activities are fishing, sand dredging and salt making. Men in Makoko are mostly fishers. Some women also fish; others trade fresh or smoked fish or process other people’s catches. </p>
<p>The incentives distributed in Makoko by the government (such as fishing nets and powered engines) go <a href="https://sipanews.org/makoko-fisherwomen-seek-gender-equality/">mostly to the men</a>. </p>
<p>I was interested in how the women managed to keep their businesses going without much education, information or financial support. Understanding this could be useful in designing ways to help them, and others like them, to improve their lives.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08920753.2022.2022969">study</a> of the livelihood strategies, lived experiences and prospects of women in the Makoko fishing community found that their contributions to artisanal fisheries were rarely appreciated. Though most of them were breadwinners, they got little or no institutional or cultural support. Those who were married often had to hide their income from their partners. Access to capital to fund their businesses was limited. They depended on the local thrift collection system, called Ajo in the Yoruba language, to bank and save money. </p>
<p>I suggest that social capital and social networks are therefore the entry points for any interventions to help the women, such as literacy programmes and access to credit. Men also need to be part of the solutions.</p>
<h2>Surviving challenges that keep Makoko women down</h2>
<p>One hundred women in the Otodo Gbame and Oko Agbon fishing communities within Makoko and the nearby Asejere fish market participated in the study. </p>
<p>The education levels of the women interviewed ranged from no formal education to 12 academic years (secondary education). None had tertiary education. Among the women with no formal education, 51% were fisherwomen, 30% were fish processors, and 19% were fish traders.</p>
<p>Our study also revealed that most of the women were poor. Their working capital was as little as 50,000 naira (US$139). </p>
<p>The majority lived separately from their husbands. This was due to their partners being at sea or in a different fishing settlement, or because they were in polygamous relationships. </p>
<p>The women reported often being bullied by their husbands to hand over their money, or having to hide it from them. Mama Ola, a trader in Asejere fish market, shared her mother’s experience: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My father often came to Asejere fish market to fiercely demand money for feeding from my mother and if he was not given, he would become hysterical, shouting at her in the local market, and on rare occasions he flogged her when she got home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most of the women were financially constrained by inadequate working capital to pursue their fish business and insufficient state support. They lacked market information about cost, demand and supply of fish products. Contributing factors were low literacy levels and a lack of confidence in managing their finances.</p>
<p>Some relied on credit support from “fish mammies”: wealthier women who own equipment, or are wholesalers, creditors or intermediaries.</p>
<p>Women fisherfolk who could not access bank loans to expand their businesses also relied on local thrift collectors, called Alajo. The Alajo manage informal savings and loan groups. About 85% of the respondents belonged to and obtained their working capital from these groups. </p>
<p>Ajo group initiatives are mostly found in south-western Nigeria. They provide flexible opportunities to deposit money and to obtain credit at any time of the year. In one of the focus group discussions, a woman fish trader recounted how she safeguarded her earnings through ajo: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My husband becomes more caring and very romantic every Saturday evening because he thinks I will bring a huge amount of money home after my weekly fish sales. I disappoint him by keeping my money with the local saver.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The study also revealed other difficulties the women faced: the depletion of fish stocks due to sand dredging; and fluctuating income based on fishing seasons. </p>
<h2>Pathways that can work for Makoko women fisherfolk</h2>
<p>The study identified pathways which could enhance resilience and reduce poverty. </p>
<p>Social capital and social networks can be entry points for policy advocacy and intervention. Formal and informal cooperatives or associations could be registered, making it easier to get recognition and support from the state. For this to work effectively, members would have to follow their cooperative’s particular social values, objectives and rules about loan repayment.</p>
<p>This requires the active participation of members in running the group and knowledge of financial management and book-keeping. </p>
<p>To empower the women economically, their literacy level must increase. Women can be targeted through adult literacy classes supported by the state or NGOs. </p>
<p>It is also important for women to benefit from assistance and empowerment programmes for micro and small-scale enterprises provided by the state or private sector. For example, I have observed a <a href="https://www.undp.org/nigeria">UN Development Programme</a> which succeeded in boosting agricultural productivity by providing skills training to women. An indirect option would be to use the Alajo as vehicles to create better access to financial services for the fisherfolk. This has been done for <a href="https://edepot.wur.nl/168049">women fish traders in Ibaka</a>, Delta State. </p>
<p>Improving access to financial capital and the social well-being of women fisherfolk should also focus on the limiting or harmful gender norms and relations deeply rooted in culture. Gradual changes must go beyond focusing on women alone. </p>
<p>Engaging both women and men is necessary to understand and adopt new perspectives. This will have better, long-lasting outcomes for fisheries and for the people who depend on them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218096/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ayodele Oloko receives funding from Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) -German Academic Exchange Service. </span></em></p>Women in Makoko, a floating slum in Nigeria, face challenges funding their fish trade. Literacy and financial inclusion programmes can make a difference.Ayodele Oloko, Researcher, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2027732023-04-18T14:19:58Z2023-04-18T14:19:58ZFeeding Africa: how small-scale irrigation can help farmers to change the game<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521023/original/file-20230414-18-8gm5qb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A farmer watering his crops in Namong, Tone district, Togo.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by: Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Unlike large-acreage government irrigation schemes, small-scale irrigation is typically farmer led. Farmers decide what technologies to use to extract water, be it manual lifting or solar water pumps. They also choose the mode of irrigation, whether by buckets or drip kits. Farmers purchase, run and maintain the operation themselves on their own farms or as part of small groups of farmers. </p>
<p>Small-scale irrigation <a href="https://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/751751616427201865/FLID-Guide-March-2021-Final.pdf">can help</a> smallholder farmers to increase agricultural productivity and incomes. It can be scaled quickly and without large public investments. For these reasons, it can contribute more rapidly to the achievement of national agricultural and development goals, compared to large irrigation schemes. </p>
<p>Currently, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919216303773">less than 5%</a> of cultivated land in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated. The reliance on rainfed agriculture prevents farmers from cultivating high-value <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912415300067?via%3Dihub">nutritious crops</a> that often need large amounts of water that are applied more frequently. Some vegetable crops consist <a href="https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/79185">mostly of water</a>, for example, tomatoes or cucumbers, and their yield and quality deteriorate rapidly under water stress. </p>
<p>Rainfed agriculture limits smallholder production and profitability, particularly under climate change. It is therefore associated with higher food insecurity, poor diet quality, and high seasonal variability in diets. </p>
<p>Small-scale irrigation <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211912415300067">can</a> improve nutritional outcomes in several important ways. It increases food production in the dry season and also incomes. Extra income enables the purchase of healthy and diverse diets year round. </p>
<p>Evidence for the nutrition benefits of irrigation in Africa remains limited, however. One reason is that irrigated agriculture covers only small areas. In addition, nutritionists have largely focused on micronutrient supplementation or infant and young child feeding practices. And irrigation systems are mostly developed and analysed by engineers who do not consider linkages to nutrition in their work. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mcn.13395">recent research</a>, drawing on data from Tanzania and Ethiopia, has developed richer evidence of these important linkages. Our work, part of a broader <a href="https://ilssi.tamu.edu/files/2023/03/ILSSI-Brief-Nutrition_INTERACTIVE_031723.pdf">project</a>, provides the first strong evidence of the relationship between small-scale irrigation, food security, diet quality and nutrition. Small-scale irrigation contributes to the resilience of smallholder producers by preserving their food security and nutrition during times of drought. </p>
<p>These findings provide reasons for policymakers to support small-scale irrigation expansion. </p>
<h2>What we found</h2>
<p>We started by <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mcn.13297">exploring</a> the relationship between small-scale irrigation and women’s dietary diversity in northern Ethiopia. Women’s dietary diversity is a measure of quality of food access, defined as the consumption of different food groups over the previous 24 hours. Food groups include (1) grains, white roots and tubers and plantains; (2) pulses; (3) nuts and seeds; (4) dairy; (5) meat, poultry and fish; (6) eggs; (7) dark green leafy vegetables; (8) other vitamin A-rich fruits and vegetables; (9) other vegetables; and (10) other fruits. Increased dietary diversity is an intermediate indicator of nutrition. </p>
<p>We found that women’s diets in that region were generally poor and identified high seasonal fluctuations in diet quality. We also found that compared to non-irrigators, women in households with small-scale irrigation had better dietary diversity and irrigation can help offset the seasonality in dietary quality of women. </p>
<p>In a further study we focused on larger areas in Ethiopia and Tanzania. We found that the effects of irrigation on women’s diet adequacy were even stronger among households that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mcn.13395">had faced at least one drought</a> in the previous five years. In Tanzania, drought-affected households that used irrigation also had higher household dietary diversity. This suggests that small-scale irrigation is also a successful climate change adaptation strategy. </p>
<p>In the same study, we also explored the impacts of irrigation on <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mcn.13395">child nutrition</a>. We used standard measures like weight-for-height deviations, also known as wasting, which is a measure of acute malnutrition. </p>
<p>In Ethiopia, irrigation improved weight‐for‐height measures of children under five. In Tanzania, it did so in households that reported having faced drought. These effects of irrigation on the weight-for-height scores of young children in both countries were substantial. But there no significant impact on children’s linear growth. This is not surprising as chronic malnutrition, or stunting, occurs over the long run. It is challenging to address through a single intervention such as irrigation. </p>
<h2>Boosting the impact</h2>
<p>The benefits of irrigation clearly extend far beyond increasing agricultural productivity and incomes. Irrigation should, therefore, be promoted as a nutrition intervention, in addition to its potential for higher yields, incomes and employment. This is especially important for areas prone to recurring and severe drought.</p>
<p>Our findings suggest that irrigation’s benefits can be increased in three ways: </p>
<p><strong>Women’s empowerment:</strong> Women play a key role in agricultural production and also in preparing healthy foods for their families. For better results, women should be able to participate in and benefit from irrigation interventions. They should have greater input into decisions about technology and crop choice, and control over irrigated output. </p>
<p>Irrigation interventions and investments should be designed and implemented in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016722003345?via%3Dihub">ways that address local gender inequalities</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Addressing nutritional deficiencies:</strong> Policy makers should promote irrigated foods that not only generate income but also address local nutrient deficiencies. An example is orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, which are rich in vitamin A. Another is fruits and vegetables. Small-scale irrigation technology can also be used to grow livestock feed and boost dairy production. It can support livestock watering, such as for poultry and egg production. </p>
<p><strong>Delivering the message:</strong> Agriculture extension workers and community health workers currently work in isolation. There’s a strong case for working jointly to deliver messages about irrigated production, safe and effective storage practices and healthy diets. </p>
<p>Finally, agencies guiding small-scale irrigation investors need to define specific outcome indicators. These should relate to food security, nutrition, health and gender equality. Regular monitoring and evaluation of these is essential to track progress and to determine which approaches are most effective under which conditions. This would allow policymakers and implementing partners to deepen the impacts of irrigation on nutrition in smallholder communities that are most affected by the climate emergency.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The International Food Policy Research Institute, where Elizabeth Bryan works, receives funding from a large number of donors. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The International Food Policy Research Institute, where Claudia Ringler works, receives funding from a large number of donors.</span></em></p>The relationship between small-scale irrigation and food security, diet quality, and nutrition is growing.Elizabeth Bryan, Senior Scientist, Natural Resources and Resilience Unit, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Claudia Ringler, Deputy Director, Environment and Production Technology Division, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1943852023-04-12T13:39:30Z2023-04-12T13:39:30ZCommunity health workers in Ethiopia set out to promote health - in the process they’ve empowered girls in other ways too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518999/original/file-20230403-20-caez98.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gpforeducation/11173162025/in/album-72157637696837414/"> GPE/Midastouch</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ethiopia has made significant progress in supporting gender equality and girls’ empowerment. Rates of child marriage and teenage pregnancy have <a href="https://data.unicef.org/resources/child-marriage-in-ethiopia/">decreased</a> substantially. Access to sexual and reproductive health services has <a href="https://reproductive-health-journal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12978-022-01434-6">increased</a>. There has also been progress in the education sector. School attendance rates at all levels have risen, and the gender gap in enrolment is <a href="https://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/media/2811/file/Gender%20Equality,%20Women%27s%20empowerment%20and%20child%20wellbeing%20in%20Ethiopia.pdf#page=15#">narrowing</a>. </p>
<p>Despite these positive trends, inequalities and entrenched patriarchal norms remain. Adolescent girls and young women in Ethiopia continue to face challenges, especially in rural areas. For example, the national rates of child marriage remain among the highest in Africa. Data from 2016 estimated that 58% of girls and 9% of boys were <a href="https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR328/FR328.pdf#page=101">married before the age of 18</a>. Improvements in education attainment for adolescent girls also remain sluggish. Only 15% of women have completed <a href="https://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/media/2811/file/Gender%20Equality,%20Women%27s%20empowerment%20and%20child%20wellbeing%20in%20Ethiopia.pdf#page=41">secondary or higher education</a>. For men, the figure is 23%. </p>
<p>Ethiopia is one of the <a href="https://reproductive-health-journal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12978-022-01445-3#:%7E:text=Ethiopia%20has%20the%20second%2Dlargest,people%20aged%2010%E2%80%9324%20years.">youngest</a> and <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/wpp2022_summary_of_results.pdf#page=9">fastest</a> growing populations in the world. Gender equality is critical for enabling young people to reach their full potential. Achieving this will require addressing gender attitudes and norms that are linked to early marriage and childbearing, and are a barrier to girls education.</p>
<p>The country has a national community health programme which aims to increase the availability of basic health services and promote healthy lifestyles. To do this, it uses community outreach activities, including household visits. Policymakers have been keen to understand more about its impacts on adolescent health and well-being as this could guide further efforts to improve the programme. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X22004189?via%3Dihub">study</a> looked at the association between this health extension programme and 12 indicators of adolescent health and well-being. The programme focuses primarily on disease prevention and health promotion. However, our findings suggest that household visits from health extension workers have had a measurable impact on multiple interconnected adolescent challenges beyond just health. </p>
<p>Household visits from health extension workers appear to reduce rates of child marriage, early pregnancy and school dropout. Impacts in these areas are important as they are likely to have long-term consequences. For example, delaying marriage and pregnancy promotes adolescent girls’ health and aspirations. Higher educational achievement also increases girls’ earning potential, and empowers their autonomy and decision-making.</p>
<h2>Health extension workers</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-019-0470-1">health extension programme</a> was introduced in 2003. It is delivered by local health extension workers, who are mostly young women. They are recruited from the community based on their ability to speak the local language and completion of general secondary education. </p>
<p>The health extension workers promote routine medical check-ups at the local health post. They also use door-to-door household visits to educate families around health issues including family planning, youth reproductive health and child marriage. The programme has become a flagship intervention.</p>
<p>Many families in Ethiopia still place a high value on marriage and motherhood, especially in rural communities. The legal age of marriage is 18. However, child marriage and early pregnancy remain prevalent nationwide. The government <a href="https://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/reports/national-costed-roadmap-ending-child-marriage-and-fgmc">aims</a> to eliminate child marriage by 2025. Our study indicates that the health extension programme is likely to <a href="https://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/reports/national-costed-roadmap-ending-child-marriage-and-fgmc">play an important part</a> in achieving this. </p>
<p>Our research suggests that household visits from health extension workers are linked to significantly lower risks of child marriage, early pregnancy and school dropout. According to our study, receiving household visits from health extension workers is associated with a 70% reduction in the probability of child marriage, 75% reduction in the probability of early pregnancy, and 63% increase in the probability of being enrolled in education. There were also measured improvements in adolescent girls’ literacy and numeracy scores.</p>
<p>Our findings, along with <a href="https://www.unicef.org/ethiopia/reports/what-works-tackle-child-marriage-ethiopia">other research</a> by UNICEF and the Overseas Development Institute, suggest these effects are likely to be produced by health extension workers talking to families about the risks of child marriage and early pregnancy and the benefits of girls education. Health extension workers can modify families’ expectations for girls to marry early, and their reluctance to invest in girls’ secondary education.</p>
<p>Health extension workers are also able to monitor family preparations for marriage. They can intervene in cases where the bride is younger than the legal age of 18.</p>
<p>The workers are not just improving adolescent health. They are transforming adolescent girls’ opportunities to pursue their own aspirations for education, employment and family. </p>
<h2>The next steps</h2>
<p>Our research highlights areas for further work, particularly around adolescent girls’ sexual and reproductive health rights. This remains a taboo issue among some communities where it’s believed that access to modern contraception will promote promiscuity. Our study found no evidence that household visits from health extension workers had addressed common misconceptions among adolescent girls around fertility and preventing sexually transmitted infections.</p>
<p>There are still social barriers that prevent girls from getting information, services and support, and that foster misinformation around modern contraception.</p>
<p>One promising initiative is Adolescents 360’s Smart Start <a href="https://a360learninghub.org/open-source/adaptive-implementation/the-case-of-smart-start-in-ethiopia/">intervention</a> in Ethiopia. It works with young girls and the health extension program to deliver contraceptive programming. </p>
<p>For the last two years, Ethiopia has faced the COVID-19 <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35995265/">pandemic</a>, <a href="https://www.unfpa.org/press/women-tigray-need-immediate-support-race-against-time-save-lives#:%7E:text=New%20York%2C%2028%20May%202021%20-%20In%20the,civilians%2C%20including%20sexual%20violence%2C%20continue%20to%20be%20reported.">conflict</a> in the northern part of the country, and widespread <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/apr/30/ethiopian-drought-leading-to-dramatic-increase-in-child-marriage-unicef-warns">drought</a>. All these events have disrupted the delivery of healthcare services, closed schools and heightened the needs of adolescents. </p>
<p>In the process, these crises may have reinforced discriminatory gender roles. So work remains for health extension workers to address cultural and attitudinal barriers that hold back adolescent girls’ education. </p>
<p><em>Dessalew Emaway, a public health practitioner, and Silinganisiwe Dzumbunu, a doctoral student with the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Social Science Research, contributed to this article and the original research it’s based on.</em>
<em>Click <a href="https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(22)00418-9/fulltext">here</a> to access the original research this article is based on.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Health extension workers in Ethiopia have had a measurable impact on interconnected challenges such as child marriage, teenage pregnancy, and school dropout.William Rudgard, Senior Postdoc, University of OxfordSilinganisiwe Dzumbunu, PhD Candidate , University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1999942023-02-27T13:31:10Z2023-02-27T13:31:10ZWomen’s rights exist only on paper in Nigeria: Five core issues a new president needs to address urgently<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/511746/original/file-20230222-26-5mm4xc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C24%2C8256%2C5462&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Maternal health is an issue a new government must urgently address in Nigeria. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/midwife-topchin-job-goro-checks-maryam-mohammed-who-is-38-news-photo/1159831601?phrase=maternal%20health%20in%20Nigeria&adppopup=true">Lynsey Addario/Getty Images Reportage</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Violence against African women and the widespread violation of their basic human rights is shaped by societal and cultural barriers. In Nigeria, women’s rights appear to be protected. The country is a signatory to many international conventions and norms such as the <a href="https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/">Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women</a> and the <a href="https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/38956-doc-assembly_au_decl_12_iii_e.pdf">Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa</a>. Yet this protection is mostly on paper.</p>
<p>In a recent <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-73875-4_10">book chapter</a> about African women in politics, I’ve noted that an African woman is too commonly labelled by her marital position as a wife of an African man. She is seen as an appendage of that man, a mere shadow. </p>
<p>But this has not always been the case. History tells us that there have been many great African women who rose to leadership and pioneered innovation. In Nigeria, activists like <a href="https://en.unesco.org/womeninafrica/funmilayo-ransome-kuti/biography">Funmilayo Ransome Kuti</a> and <a href="https://www.mynigeria.com/person/Margaret-Ekpo-2369">Margaret Ekpo</a> come to mind. History professor <a href="https://ui.edu.ng/uiicons/prof-awe">Bolanle Awe</a> is another.</p>
<p>Yet the subjugation of women’s rights, interests, benefits and endowments is a key issue facing Nigeria. When women have opportunities, a country’s economic productivity and development is enhanced across the board. Therefore Nigeria’s leaders would do well to pay urgent attention to five areas of concern: education for girls, gender-based violence, representation of women in politics, maternal health, and women’s economic empowerment.</p>
<h2>1. Education for girls</h2>
<p>Education enhances the decision-making power of women and imparts the knowledge and skills required to contribute to society. And the right to education is enshrined in section 18 (1) of Nigeria’s Constitution 1999. The provision enjoins the government to direct its policy towards ensuring there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels. Education should be free and compulsory for all children of school age.</p>
<p>But in Nigeria there is a large disparity between the education of boys and that of girls. In 2010, the female adult literacy rate (ages 15 and above) for Nigeria was <a href="https://www.schoolsoftware.com.ng/history-of-girl-child-education-in-nigeria/#:%7E:text=In%20Nigeria%2C%20there%20are%20large,adult%20literacy%20rate%20of%2074.4%25">59.4% while the literacy rate for males was 74.4%</a>. Of more than 10 million children who are out of school or do not have access to adequate education past a certain age, 60% are girls. </p>
<p>Some families, especially in the North East and North West don’t want to expose their girl children to abduction and abuse. Some girls are “given” in marriage at a very young age. About <a href="https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/learning-resources/child-marriage-atlas/atlas/nigeria/#:%7E:text=Nigeria%20has%20the%2011th%20highest,before%20the%20age%20of%2018">43% of girls in Nigeria are married before their 18th birthday</a> and 16% are married before the age of 15. </p>
<p>Nigeria has experienced <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/nigeria/school-abductions-nigeria">growing abduction and kidnapping of school children</a>, with many girls forced into marriage or impregnated by their kidnappers. At least 1409 students have been kidnapped from their schools in Nigeria since the first incident in the country’s latest school abduction epidemic which started in March 2020.</p>
<h2>2. Gender-based violence</h2>
<p>Women in Nigeria, regardless of demographic factors like age, social status, education, ethnicity, religion, and mental and physical ability, have been subjected to varying <a href="https://standtoendrape.org/a-study-on-violence-against-women-in-the-political-space-part-1/">degrees of violence</a>. </p>
<p>There is a need for the government to enforce the laws that punish offenders. <a href="https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/ng/ng014en.pdf">Nigeria’s constitution</a> provides that every individual’s dignity should be respected and nobody should be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment. The <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/104156/126946/F-1224509384/NGA104156.pdf">Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act</a> also prohibits all forms of violence in private and public life, while providing maximum protection and effective remedies for victims and punishment for offenders. </p>
<p>States that have not passed this into <a href="https://www.mondaq.com/nigeria/human-rights/1221230/laws-on-domestic-violence-in-nigeria#:%7E:text=The%20law%20limits%20its%20operation,punishable%20by%20imprisonment%20and%20fine'">law</a> should do so. As at June 2021, only <a href="https://nji.gov.ng/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/AN-OVERVIEW-OF-THE-VIOLENCE-AGAINST-PERSONS-PROHIBITION-ACT-2015-By-Prof.-M.-T.-Ladan-Ph.d.pptx">18 out of 36 states</a> of the Federation had passed similar laws. </p>
<h2>3. Women in politics</h2>
<p>In Nigeria, <a href="https://www.iknowpolitics.org/en/news/world-news/only-6-women-active-nigerian-politics-%E2%80%94-report">only 6% of women are active in politics</a>. Of the 109 senators in the parliament, only eight (7.34%) of them are women.</p>
<p>Nigeria is yet to reach the benchmark by the <a href="https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/pdf/BDPfA%20E.pdf">Beijing Declaration Platform for Action</a> endorsed by the Economic and Social Council of having 30% women in positions at decision-making levels by 1995. Quotas would increase the number of <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786615213/Promoting-Gender-Equality-in-Political-Participation-New-Perspectives-on-Nigeria">women occupying positions of leadership</a> in governance. This would help to have more women representing their own interests and the interests of the larger society. </p>
<p>Intimidation adds to the low representation of women in governance. In a democracy, all citizens should have an equal say in the governance of the country, and benefit equally from their outcomes. Women have been the targets of violence during elections, to discourage them from vying for positions. They have faced <a href="https://www.ndi.org/files/EXAMPLE_NDI%20Focus%20Group%20Discussion%20Report_Kogi%20State%20Nigeria.docx">physical, sexual, psychological and socio-economic violence</a>. The government must ensure that political parties provide a level playing ground for all and punish any act of violence against women.</p>
<h2>4. Maternal health</h2>
<p>Nigeria accounts for <a href="https://guardian.ng/opinion/addressing-maternal-mortality-in-nigeria/">over 34%</a> of global maternal deaths. The lifetime risk of dying during pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, or after an abortion for a <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/25-06-2019-maternal-health-in-nigeria-generating-information-for-action">Nigerian woman is one in 22, compared to one in 4,900 in developed countries</a>.</p>
<p>Government must provide free and adequate healthcare for expectant mothers and their babies. </p>
<h2>5. Economic empowerment</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/elibrary/read/1123">18% of households</a> in Nigeria are headed by women. But they often lack access to, and control over, productive resources, and are not recognised as fully participating economic actors. With limited income, it’s <a href="https://www.pasgr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/IDS_Working_Paper_548.pdf">difficult to provide for their households</a>. </p>
<p>Training, networking and mentoring, orientation and enlightenment, legislative and value changes, financial support and empowerment can contribute to changing this.</p>
<h2>Equality and trust</h2>
<p>Nigeria’s leaders should not relegate women to the background and treat them like second class citizens. Giving everyone equal opportunities enhances trust in government and brings about good governance in the long run.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199994/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damilola Agbalajobi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When women have opportunities, a country’s economic productivity and development is enhanced.Damilola Agbalajobi, Lecturer, Political Science, Obafemi Awolowo UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1993212023-02-19T07:38:53Z2023-02-19T07:38:53ZGender equality in Nigeria: Three reasons why women aren’t represented in politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509461/original/file-20230210-20-bht1vz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3594%2C2392&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women protesting the failure of the gender equality bills on International Women's Day in 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-from-different-non-governmental-organisations-hold-a-news-photo/1239027200?phrase=gender%20bills%20in%20nigeria&adppopup=true">Adekunle Ajayi/NurPhoto via Getty </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March 2022, Nigerian women suffered backlash in their pursuit of gender equity. Five gender bills presented to the National Assembly <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/514778-nigerian-women-protest-after-lawmakers-reject-bills-seeking-gender-equality.html?tztc=1">were thrown out</a>. </p>
<p>The bills sought to advance women’s rights on a number of fronts. These included: providing special seats for women at the National Assembly; allocating 35% of political position appointments to women; creating 111 additional seats in the National Assembly and the state constituent assemblies; and a commitment to women having at least 10% of ministerial appointments.</p>
<p>The rejection of the bills showed that the assembly wasn’t interested in gender parity in politics. <a href="https://nass.gov.ng/mps/members">It has 469 members. Only 21 are women.</a></p>
<p>This is a tragedy for Nigerian women, whose representation in politics falls short of the goal set by the <a href="https://nigerianwomentrustfund.org/wp-content/uploads/National-Gender-PolicySituation-Analysis.pdf">National Gender Policy</a> in 2006. This policy demands that 35% of women be involved in all governance processes. </p>
<p>Women make up about <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL.FE.ZS?locations=NG">49%</a> of Nigeria’s population. Their representation in government is a far cry from what’s been achieved in other countries on the continent. For example, in Rwanda women make up <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/267028/women-in-selected-national-parliaments/#:%7E:text=As%20of%20December%202022%2C%20women,53.6%20percent%2C%20followed%20by%20Nicaragua.">61.3% of members of parliament</a>. In South Africa, they make up <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/267028/women-in-selected-national-parliaments/#:%7E:text=As%20of%20December%202022%2C%20women,53.6%20percent%2C%20followed%20by%20Nicaragua.">46.5%</a> of the country’s parliament. </p>
<p>Women played important roles in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-igbo-women-used-petitions-to-influence-british-authorities-during-colonial-rule-143309">struggle</a> for independence. They wrote petitions, staged protests, mobilised and challenged all forms of oppression and suppression which permeated their economic, socio-cultural and political spaces. Also, during the years of military rule a significant number of Nigerian women stood their ground across governance strata, and spoke truth to power.</p>
<p>Since protracted military rule was ended in 1999, previously marginalised populations and segments of the country have gained the confidence to participate in governance. But the going has been slow for women.</p>
<p>As my <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/epdf/10.20940/JAE/2022/v21i2a7">research</a> shows, there is only lip service commitment to gender mainstreaming across electoral processes in Nigeria. My <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/epdf/10.20940/JAE/2022/v21i2a7">study</a> with David Enweremadu highlighted the lack of women’s representation in parliament, as well as among security personnel, party agents, media, observers and voters during electoral processes.</p>
<p>Warped <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-media-is-misrepresenting-women-in-africa-what-feminists-can-do-121128">media portrayal of women</a> also contributes to the exclusion of women. The rejected gender and equal opportunity bill would have resolved this.</p>
<p>There are three main reasons for the exclusion of women.</p>
<p>Firstly, there’s a <a href="https://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=issue&journal_code=EP&issue=1&vol=27">lack of voter education</a>. Secondly, women are disproportionately excluded from policy making domains because more live in poverty than men. Thirdly, there is more moral scrutiny of women than men.</p>
<h2>Lack of voter education</h2>
<p>Women play various roles in elections. They act as cheerleaders at political rallies, run grassroots (often door-to-door) campaigns, organise protests against election misconduct, vie for political office and serve as political appointees, among others. </p>
<p>Yet most lack voter education. Voter education must take on gendered contexts. It must be conducted by bodies such as the Independent National Electoral Commission as well as civil society. </p>
<h2>The role of poverty</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1287827/number-of-people-living-in-extreme-poverty-in-nigeria-by-gender/#:%7E:text=In%202022%2C%20an%20estimated%20population,at%2043.7%20million%20for%20women.">Women constitute a larger proportion of poor people</a> in the country.</p>
<p>This hampers gender equality in political representation because poverty denies women the financial and human resources required for leadership positions.
The Independent National Electoral Commission’s <a href="https://www.inecnigeria.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Independent-National-Electoral-Commission-Gender-Policy.pdf">Gender Policy</a>, which provides specific measures to deal with women’s marginalisation in politics, should be revisited to ensure it’s implemented to the letter. </p>
<h2>Corruption</h2>
<p>Another tactic used to keep women out of politics is what I have termed “feminised corruption”. In a recent <a href="https://epub.uni-bayreuth.de/6826/1/WP%2034%20Academy%20reflects%208_Omotoso.pdf">paper</a> I showed how the level of corruption was perceived differently when women were involved compared to men. </p>
<p>The study observed that ethnicity, age, class and educational background are not necessarily contributory to how corruption is feminised in Nigeria. But being a woman in the political space is. This seems like a deliberate effort to weaponise corruption against women in politics and leadership.</p>
<p>A number of high ranking Nigerian women have been caught in this web. Among them are <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7005402.stm">Patricia Etteh</a>, first female speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, who was accused of unauthorised spending of 628 million naira (about US$5 million); <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/496813-alleged-n5-billion-money-laundering-stella-oduah-cceccs-arraignment-stalled-again.html?">Stella Oduah</a>, former Minister of Aviation, indicted for alleged fraud of about five billion naira; <a href="https://punchng.com/n570m-fraud-trial-judge-faults-freezing-oyo-ita-others-accounts/">Winifred Oyo-Ita</a>, former Head of Service of the Federation, who was accused of 570 million naira fraud charges; <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/507545-again-court-orders-arrest-of-ex-petroleum-minister-diezani-over-corruption-charges.html">Diezani Allison Madueke</a>, former Minister of Petroleum Resources, who was accused of money laundering; <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2018/09/investigation-of-adeosuns-certificate-scandal-ongoing-presidency/">Kemi Adeosun</a>, former Minister of Finance, who was accused of certificate forgery; and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/nigeria-corruption-ministers-idUKL2551982920080325">Adenike Grange</a>, former Minister of Health, indicted for allegedly stealing public funds.</p>
<p>Each of the indictments against these women has its peculiarities. But I argue they are connected by the fact that none of the cases has been brought to a legal conclusion. This is unusual and suspicious. Some corruption cases against men have been brought to legal conclusion.</p>
<p>On top of this, several corruption cases involving men have not been given as much attention as the cases involving women. And, in many cases, men indicted for corruption have escaped opprobrium and returned triumphantly to politics. </p>
<p>The reverse is true for female politicians who, once indicted for corruption, withdraw in shame and mostly never return to politics.</p>
<p>Besides, women in politics have to endure close scrutiny of their private lives. This includes shaming family members and objectifying women’s bodies by politicising personal items <a href="https://punchng.com/fg-lists-diezanis-buildings-jewellery-bras-for-sale-values-badehs-mansions/">such as jewellery, shoes and bras</a>.</p>
<h2>What needs to be done</h2>
<p>The three challenges to women’s political representation in Nigeria are not insurmountable. </p>
<p>Voter education must capture the global quest for gender parity and place it in local contexts. </p>
<p>Gender policies must be implemented and monitored. </p>
<p>Feminised poverty calls for interventions to reduce wealth disparities.</p>
<p>The abuse of women indicted for corruption must be nipped in the bud.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199321/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon Adetutu Omotoso received funding for the initial research on Feminised Corruption from DFG through the Africa Multiple Cluster, University of Bayreuth, Germany. </span></em></p>After 24 years of democracy, women still struggle for political relevance in Nigeria - limited by poverty, corruption and other factors.Sharon Adetutu Omotoso, Senior research fellow, University of IbadanLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1859062022-07-11T14:31:18Z2022-07-11T14:31:18ZWhy factory jobs for Ethiopian women haven’t translated into greater participation in politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471871/original/file-20220630-20-jzjz6e.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ethiopian women at a garment factory at the Hawassa Industrial Park in the country's southern region. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eyerusalem Jiregna/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54964378">war in Tigray</a> started in November 2020, Ethiopia was a favoured investment destination. It had experienced strong <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ethiopia/overview">economic growth</a> for the previous decade.</p>
<p>The country gave foreign investors preferential access to American and European markets, favourable customs and tax policies, and relative political stability. Labour costs were also low – around half of what they were in China. </p>
<p>The Ethiopian government had <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2018.1443211">invested US$1 billion annually</a> in industrial parks since 2010 – almost one-third of its total net <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180112102846/http://www.oecd.org:80/statistics/datalab/oda-recipient-sector.htm">foreign aid</a>. </p>
<p>Investors from across the world, including China, India, the US and South Korea, started industrial production in these parks, creating job opportunities for thousands of citizens.</p>
<p>And most of them were women who entered the labour force as never before. Before the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, firms in the new industrial parks in Ethiopia employed about 86,000 workers – around <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X20303065#fn1">80%</a> of them women. They were hired for light manufacturing, making products like shoes, textiles and garments. Employers saw women as diligent and disciplined. </p>
<p>The entry of women into Ethiopia’s work force provided a rare opportunity to study the impact of jobs on women’s empowerment, especially participation in politics. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sp/article-abstract/26/2/299/5480423">study</a> I conducted with colleagues yielded unexpected results that have implications for the understanding of political agency in a non-democratic and developing context. </p>
<h2>Work and political activity</h2>
<p>Research in democratic and developed countries shows a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X16300667">strong correlation</a> between increased female labour force participation and women’s political participation.</p>
<p>Wage labour tends to <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1141499">boost the status of women</a>. This influences their effectiveness in getting power in other realms of society, including politics. It also increases the number of women with professional experience and resources to mount credible campaigns and challenge negative voter attitudes towards women.</p>
<p>We wanted to know whether this trend would be the same in a developing country but also one as authoritarian as Ethiopia. </p>
<p>The 2020 <a href="https://www.undp.org/ethiopia/gender-equality">Human Development Report</a> shows that gender inequalities persist in Ethiopia, denying women the opportunity to participate in development projects. A lot more needs to be done to increase women’s empowerment in the country. </p>
<p>Starting in 2017, we collected data from 27 large factories that make shoes and garments across five industrial parks in Ethiopia. The firms agreed to randomly assign 1,498 applicant women to two groups. One group of women was offered jobs and a control group was not offered jobs. </p>
<p>This unique research design made it possible to compare groups and identify the impact of employment. We asked both groups of women the same questions to measure a variety of indicators of women’s empowerment. These questions were around economic decision making (bargaining power), their influence on number of children they would have, and their levels of political interest and participation. </p>
<p>The study followed up with participants at intervals of six, 12, 18 and 36 months after they had applied for the job. We combined this with extensive qualitative data and phone surveys conducted with women’s partners.</p>
<p>Our study investigated if women’s status as workers made them more interested in politics – and more likely to participate in politics – than women who did not work. </p>
<p>Contrary to expectations, our research found no evidence to suggest that the job offers had any positive effect on political participation. We saw no effect of employment on women’s bargaining power or gender equality norms. We even found a reduction in women’s participation in community meetings.</p>
<p>We see this as an outcome of female factory workers’ long working hours, poor working conditions and lack of labour rights. A gendered division of labour in factories, and the belittling and derogatory attitudes of factory owners and supervisors towards women, further limits their political agency.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pasha-19-how-seeing-women-in-power-can-inspire-ethiopias-girls-117126">Pasha 19: How seeing women in power can inspire Ethiopia's girls</a>
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<p>In our interviews, women said they had no time to attend political meetings. They often had to work long hours to reach production targets. There was no minimum wage and attendance bonuses were lost on the first day of an absence. </p>
<p>Almost all women had experienced abusive behaviour from their supervisors. This included being shouted at, insulted or subjected to physical force to get them to work faster or as a punishment for mistakes. </p>
<p>The opportunity to unionise was nearly non-existent. Out of the 27 companies in our study, only two had labour unions. The investors and factory owners we interviewed expressed their resistance to such unions. </p>
<p>Government officials and representatives of the national labour union told us that labour laws were not enforced for fear of investors leaving the country. Most factories were in practice exempted from basic labour regulations. Even if inspectors uncovered health and security violations, for instance, they would be unlikely to take these cases to court. </p>
<h2>Authoritarian settings</h2>
<p>Our findings correspond with studies of women’s political participation in other African autocracies, such as <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/107/428/361/12456">Rwanda</a> and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Manipulating-Political-Decentralisation-Africas-Inclusive-Autocrats/Aalen-Muriaas/p/book/9781138203037">Uganda</a>. </p>
<p>Income and job status have less of an impact on women in authoritarian contexts than in advanced democracies. Having an income and a job, especially if the job does not come with labour rights, doesn’t give an individual the kind of power it would in an advanced democracy. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/many-african-countries-had-a-surprise-manufacturing-surge-in-2010s-it-bodes-well-for-the-years-ahead-155405">Many African countries had a surprise manufacturing surge in 2010s – it bodes well for the years ahead</a>
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<p>The Ethiopian government and the investors creating employment have a long way to go to offer Ethiopian women what the International Labour Organisation terms <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/decent-work/lang--en/index.htm">decent work</a>.</p>
<p>Our research shows that the main actors determining labour conditions in Ethiopian factories have little concern for the potential damage that poor working conditions can have on their reputations. </p>
<p>But recent developments may support a change. In <a href="https://agoa.info/news/article/15941-us-president-terminates-agoa-preferences-for-ethiopia-mali-and-guinea.html">2021</a>, Ethiopia’s preferential access to American markets through the <a href="https://agoa.info/about-agoa.html">African Growth and Opportunity Act</a> was terminated. This has been a big blow for investors and the government. Investors have left the country. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ethnic-conflict-could-unravel-ethiopias-valuable-garment-industry-152844">Ethnic conflict could unravel Ethiopia's valuable garment industry</a>
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<p>Being more open to unionisation could have benefits for industries. Better working conditions might improve manufacturers’ image among western consumers. The Confederation of Ethiopian Labour Unions told us in research interviews that unionising would facilitate more peaceful industrial relations. It is already <a href="https://addisfortune.news/industrial-parks-finally-see-labour-unions-emerge/">seeing progress</a> in industrial parks. </p>
<p>If this leads to better working conditions for female factory workers, the country may see positive changes in women’s political interest and participation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lovise Aalen receives funding from Research Council of Norway: the Young Research Talent scheme (2015-2018) and the Norglobal programme for development research (2019-2022). </span></em></p>In democratic contexts, getting women into work empowers them. In autocracies like Ethiopia’s, this doesn’t hold. We found out why.Lovise Aalen, Senior Researcher, Political Science, Chr. Michelsen InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843582022-06-07T15:22:29Z2022-06-07T15:22:29ZFor more equitable and sustainable fisheries, women must be empowered to lead<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467253/original/file-20220606-14-abgvdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=108%2C333%2C5898%2C3674&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In some global fishing communities, women influence decisions, resulting in stronger claims to area-based fishing rights, improved economic returns and greater women's empowerment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>An estimated <a href="https://spccfpstore1.blob.core.windows.net/digitallibrary-docs/files/5a/5a3e3262ecb72d8bbe94b5e153c99f05.pdf?sv=2015-12-11&sr=b&sig=n3P%2B3juuP0WZYZUVyRhLk%2FLqwSKzSmZ1f9hxkDw2%2FU0%3D&se=2022-11-30T03%3A12%3A11Z&sp=r&rscc=public%2C%20max-age%3D864000%2C%20max-stale%3D86400&rsct=application%2Fpdf&rscd=inline%3B%20filename%3D%22WIF35_04_Harper.pdf%22">45 million women</a> make up 40 per cent of the workforce in small-scale fisheries worldwide. But they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55074-9_35">left out</a> of decision-making processes when it comes to the access and use of fisheries and coastal resources. </p>
<p>Fisheries policies, laws and programs have historically ignored women’s presence and contributions in fishing communities, resulting in their marginalization. This has also negatively impacted their livelihoods and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2021.104743">widened gender inequalities</a>. However, there are some fishing communities around the world where women do shape decisions. These communities boast of stronger <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0110-z">claims to area-based fishing rights</a>, improved <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106709">economic returns</a> and greater <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09718524.2020.1729538">women’s empowerment</a>.</p>
<p>Learning from these gender-inclusive fishing communities can help engage more women in fisheries management and benefit everyone. Ongoing efforts to address the sustainability of small-scale fisheries, such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s <a href="https://www.fao.org/voluntary-guidelines-small-scale-fisheries/en/">Voluntary Guidelines</a> for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries, urgently call to identify potential entry points for change.</p>
<p>As researchers studying environmental governance, gender and fisheries, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12672">we looked at</a> where and how women participate in decision-making. There are only 54 studies documenting such fishing communities around the world. We found that when women participate in decision-making, they help make small-scale fisheries more equitable and sustainable.</p>
<h2>Gender equality gaps plague small-scale fisheries</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-2979.2010.00368.x">Women’s roles and responsibilities</a> in fisheries are often different from men’s. For example, women harvest and sell seafood and seaweed in shallow waters, sometimes on foot and using simple gear. They also engage in fish trading and fish processing in large numbers. </p>
<p>These activities support the survival and well-being of the women themselves, their families and local communities. In contrast, men often engage in harvesting activities farther away from the coast and use boats and more sophisticated fishing gear.</p>
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<img alt="A fishmonger sits behind a platter of fish in a market" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467194/original/file-20220606-18-98x7j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467194/original/file-20220606-18-98x7j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467194/original/file-20220606-18-98x7j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467194/original/file-20220606-18-98x7j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467194/original/file-20220606-18-98x7j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467194/original/file-20220606-18-98x7j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467194/original/file-20220606-18-98x7j9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Although men and women have their own sets of roles and responsibilities when it comes to fisheries, more often than not, the women’s work is given less importance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>Nonetheless, women’s roles and contributions are often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12075">not counted</a> in fisheries statistics and their work is considered part of their household duties. Fisheries managers and policymakers tend to assume that all people participating in fisheries are men.</p>
<p>In some regions, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-019-00147-0">social and cultural norms also dictate</a> what women can and cannot do within fisheries. For example, they sometimes face restrictions in accessing fish auctions and markets. Their household duties as spouses, mothers and caregivers also leave them with less time to attend to their work in fisheries. </p>
<h2>Women’s active participation makes a difference</h2>
<p>In our study, we identified the different roles women perform in decision-making, including leadership positions, networking, resource monitoring and even local activism. </p>
<p>Women exert influence within a range of decision-making spaces, including formal laws and regulations. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0101-0">Indigenous Heiltsuk women</a> in the central coast of British Columbia secured their traditional rights to access the local Pacific herring fishery through collective action.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Women involved in the fisheries in Galicia, Spain, influenced the government to take action that avoided shellfish exploitation.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Women also participate in different resource management arrangements where communities collaborate with local governments and other stakeholders like non-profit organizations. In the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2007.09.007">Galician shellfish fishery</a>, women organized into associations and influenced the administration to take decisive action and avoid the over-exploitation of shellfish.</p>
<p>Informal networks, social gatherings and ceremonies also provide women with opportunities to influence decisions. In <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-5395(00)00087-X">Newfoundland and Labrador</a>, volunteer groups provided a voice for women impacted by the cod moratorium in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Some of these roles allow women to actively participate in leadership positions, but not all. For example, in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0107-7">Danajon Bank, Philippines</a>, women often attend meetings out of obligation as community members and have less influence over outcomes.</p>
<h2>Institutionalized gender barriers still exist</h2>
<p>When given a chance to actively participate in fisheries management, women have achieved many positive outcomes for themselves, their families and communities. In the Brazilian Amazon, women’s active participation in collaboratively managing the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106709">Arapaima fishery</a> led to a 77 per cent rise in their income. This is compared to virtually no income earned by women in communities without such an arrangement.</p>
<p>Women also challenge social norms and customary practices that limit their activities in fisheries. Such norms often specify where to fish, how to fish and whether they would need to seek permission the from men in the community. But women like the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0110-z">artisanal fisherwomen in Chile</a> successfully fought for their rights to freely access nearshore resources.</p>
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<p>Despite these success stories, women in some fishing communities across the world still face substantial <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-021-00232-3">barriers like gendered power relations</a>. In these cases, men hold more power while women are considered subordinates or helpers. This is seen in the small-scale fisheries in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-018-0102-z">United Kingdom</a>.</p>
<p>Most <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09718524.2020.1736353">fisheries legislation</a> does not support women’s activities. Indeed, some legislation — like the rules that ban fishing on foot and the use of certain nets that restrict fisherwomen from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2016.1257078">harvesting octopus in Madagascar</a> — is gender discriminatory. </p>
<p>Some other legislation like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40152-019-00153-2">the Mexican</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wrr.2016.04.001">Ghanaian fisheries</a> policies have pledged to address gender issues although they often lack concrete measures.</p>
<h2>Let women take the lead</h2>
<p>Women can actively participate in fisheries only when gender issues and inclusivity are given due importance in planning and management processes. </p>
<p>Such processes promote agency and empower women. Women’s representation can be further legitimized through the respect they earn by their ongoing contributions to decision-making.</p>
<p>As we mark this year’s <a href="https://www.un.org/en/observances/oceans-day">World Oceans Day</a> and the <a href="https://www.fao.org/artisanal-fisheries-aquaculture-2022/home/en/">International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture</a>, we must find ways to give the 45 million women in small-scale fisheries a chance to be heard.</p>
<p>We must recognize the informal spaces where women already socialize and network so that we can involve them in decision-making without increasing their existing workloads.</p>
<p>At the same time, we also must pay more attention to the role of men in recognizing and supporting women’s work in fisheries.</p>
<p>Only then can we make progress towards creating equitable and sustainable fisheries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madu Galappaththi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrea M. Collins receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Armitage receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Creating opportunities to meaningfully engage women in governance and decision-making is necessary to achieve gender equality in small-scale fisheries.Madu Galappaththi, PhD Candidate in Social and Ecological Sustainability, University of WaterlooAndrea M. Collins, Associate Professor, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of WaterlooDerek Armitage, Professor, School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1700402021-10-27T13:14:49Z2021-10-27T13:14:49ZWhat has changed for rural South African women in the last 25 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/426903/original/file-20211018-28-1eu5fo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rural women in Agincourt, South Africa, with water collection containers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Lauren Porter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa has experienced tremendous change over the last quarter century: the first democratically elected government, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, changing health, social and economic policies and now the COVID-19 pandemic. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.agincourt.co.za/">South African Medical Research Council/Wits University Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit</a> has, for nearly three decades, conducted health and socio-demographic surveillance in a rural sub-district known as Agincourt, in Mpumalanga province. This surveillance work is enabled by long-standing partnerships with the communities and the public health sector. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/quarter-century-study-on-ageing-in-south-africa-offers-new-perspectives-125320">Quarter century study on ageing in South Africa offers new perspectives</a>
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<p>Using data collected and published over the last <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/41/4/988/690287">25 years</a>, we have been able to look for longitudinal trends and do cross-sectional analyses that highlight changes in the lives of women in this typical South African rural setting. </p>
<p>Women are continually forced to grapple with inequalities, such as poor access to basic amenities, employment opportunities and quality education, in their rapidly changing environments. It is important to examine the impact that events over the last 25 years have had on them, especially as women play a central role in their communities. </p>
<p>Reflecting on these trends, we can see that the provision of better health services and social grants has aided rural women’s progress in South Africa. But there are still tremendous needs to be met to achieve truly sustainable, equitable development. We believe that enhancing support for rural women creates the potential for major health and socioeconomic improvements for them and their households.</p>
<h2>A socio-demographic snapshot</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.agincourt.co.za/?page_id=1805">Agincourt</a> is adjacent to Mozambique, and one-third of the population are former Mozambican migrants. The study site consists of 31 villages with a population of 116,549 people, living in 22,721 households. Data is regularly collected from households. Women make up 52% of the rural Agincourt population, a proportion that has not significantly changed since 1993. That said, temporary labour migration among women has increased from 10.9% in 1994 to 22.3% in 2018. The percentage of women residing full-time in the rural community has fallen, a trend now typical of South Africa’s rural areas.</p>
<p>The roles of women in their communities are changing too. The percentage of women-headed households had increased from 31% in 1994 to 44% by 2018. In addition, 42% of women receive social grants and 25% are employed – both figures that have increased over time. These transitions have positive implications for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14034950701355445">food security for rural households and school attendance of children</a>. Of the women who are employed, 18% are employed by the government and less than 5% are involved in mining, manufacturing or construction.</p>
<h2>Providing for the next generation</h2>
<p>Childbearing (fertility) rates across all ages of women <a href="https://aps.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/517">have declined</a>, with the most pronounced decline occurring in women aged 25-34 years. The total fertility rate dropped from 3.3 in 1994 to 1.7 in 2018. On average, women are now having 1.5 fewer children. One likely reason for the decreased fertility rates is the increased availability and use of contraception and family planning services, a key aspect of the South African government’s <a href="https://www.knowledgehub.org.za/elibrary/strategic-plan-campaign-accelerated-reduction-maternal-and-child-mortality-africa-2013">Campaign on Accelerated Reduction of Maternal and Child Mortality in Africa</a> and primary healthcare services package.</p>
<p>Women who do become pregnant are now more likely to access <a href="https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/10/e006915.abstract">antenatal care</a>, deliver in a healthcare facility (not at home) and be attended by a skilled birthing attendant. But migrant mothers <a href="https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/10/e006915.abstract">report fewer antenatal visits</a>.</p>
<h2>Changing healthcare needs</h2>
<p>At the height of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, 2004-07, Agincourt rural women’s life expectancy was <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(17)30297-8/fulltext">58.4</a>. Since the large-scale rollout of antiretroviral therapy in the study area, deaths due to HIV have declined from 50% of deaths to 15%. Among older rural women (40 years and older), we found that <a href="https://sti.bmj.com/content/96/4/271">roughly 45% with HIV</a> were on treatment and virally suppressed.</p>
<p>But noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke, have increased rapidly in South Africa and remain high. Deaths due to cardiovascular disease contributed one-third of all deaths in these rural women in 2017-18. These deaths are likely to continue to rise given the observed high levels of known <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16549716.2018.1549436">risk factors for noncommunicable diseases</a>.</p>
<h2>The continuing impact of COVID-19</h2>
<p>The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is still being felt and quantified. It’s been suggested that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7270489/">people who were already most vulnerable may feel the impact most</a>. We have started to monitor the impact on multiple aspects, including healthcare utilisation and employment in rural Agincourt, by conducting telephonic interviews with 2,200 households. In March 2020, the start of the nationwide lockdown, 45% of the Agincourt population did not have access to family planning and 40% did not have access to condoms. This was likely due to a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7668759/">combination of factors</a> including stay-at-home orders and the perceived risk of being exposed to COVID-19 in public transport and at health facilities. This may affect fertility rates and HIV rates but only time will tell.</p>
<p>At the same time, nearly 50% of the employed population experienced loss or reduction in income. Some households were able to <a href="https://publichealth.jmir.org/2021/5/e26073">recover earnings</a> as lockdown restrictions partially lifted. However, the economic stress that job losses place on households may cause a setback. It may affect school attendance of children and food security of households. </p>
<p>Again, the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will only be known in time. However, based on what others are finding in <a href="https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/The%20impact%20of%20COVID-19%20on%20rural%20women%20and%20enterprises%20-%20A%20rapid%20socio-economic%20assessment%20in%20Viet%20Nam%20by%20the%20empower%20project.pdf">similar settings</a>, the longer-term impact of this pandemic on rural women is likely to be significant and multi-faceted.</p>
<h2>Looking ahead</h2>
<p>The trends seen over the last quarter century present a transitioning South African rural woman. She is living longer, is more educated and more mobile, and is opting for fewer children. When she does decide to have children, she is likely to deliver at a health facility and be attended by a healthcare professional.</p>
<p>Progress and improvements can be seen across several trends. But the changes also highlight areas where more effective health and social programmes for rural women are needed. </p>
<p>Increased levels of labour migration affect access to health services, as evidenced by decreased antenatal care attendance among migrant women. Levels of noncommunicable diseases are likely to continue to rise, placing greater strain on the health system. We will continue to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on rural communities.</p>
<p><em>Kurium Govender, Project Administrator at the MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), contributed to this article. The Agincourt Research Unit is a node of the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network (SAPRIN), and is supported by the Department of Science and Innovation, with previous support from the Wellcome Trust, UK.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170040/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ryan G Wagner gratefully acknowledges support from the South African National Research Foundation (119234).
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chodziwadziwa Whiteson Kabudula and Daniel Ohene-Kwofie do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The provision of better health services and social grants has aided rural women’s progress in South Africa, but there are still tremendous needs to be met.Ryan G Wagner, Research Fellow, Wits School of Public Health, University of the WitwatersrandChodziwadziwa Whiteson Kabudula, Senior Researcher Rural Health in Transition and Agincourt Research Unit, University of the WitwatersrandDaniel Ohene-Kwofie, Data Scientist: MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1659722021-08-19T14:32:25Z2021-08-19T14:32:25ZHow to put women at the centre of Africa’s food systems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416768/original/file-20210818-15-1vw3qk1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Providing child care facilities at markets, like this one in Abijan, Ivory Coast, could ease the burden on women traders.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/ Legnan Koula</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The number of hungry people in the world grew by a staggering 161 million people in <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/events/state-food-security-and-nutrition-world-2021-sofi-33052#:%7E:text=Background-,The%20State%20of%20Food%20Security%20and%20Nutrition%20in%20the%20World,and%20spread%20across%20the%20globe.">2020</a> to 811 million. More than one third of these people live in Africa. One of the main reasons for this increase is the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the cost of healthy diets and high levels of income inequality. </p>
<p>More concerted efforts are needed to address the problem of food security. Empowering women is often said to be the <a href="https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/34251.html#:%7E:text=Empowering%20women%20and%20female%20farmers,improves%20food%20security%20and%20nutrition">key</a>. In the past, researchers have looked to their specific disciplines to suggest how women could be empowered to improve food security.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2017-71.pdf">Some</a> have focused on increasing women’s income because women spend more of their income on household nutrition. <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12571-020-01021-2">Others</a> have focused on providing women with nutrition education because women carry the primary responsibility for preparing food.</p>
<p>While these studies are valuable for improving food security and nutrition, we also need to consider what shapes women’s participation in different aspects of the food system.</p>
<p>Globally, <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i7846e/i7846e.pdf">experts</a> are beginning to recognise that focusing on one aspect of food overlooks the trade-offs or sacrifices people make. For example, women’s economic empowerment may mean that they spend more time on economic activities, and less time preparing food. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i7846e/i7846e.pdf">Studies</a> have shown that as a result, many women rely on convenient fast foods to feed their families. This food is typically low in nutritional value. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X18303115?via%3Dihub">need</a> to look at food in its entirety has put more attention on the concept of food systems. That includes the inputs used to produce food, its production, how it is transported and consumed, and the type of food that people choose to eat.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-19-recovery-is-a-chance-to-improve-the-african-food-system-139134">COVID-19 recovery is a chance to improve the African food system</a>
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<p>While some frameworks exist to describe food systems, we could not find one that considered these issues from a gender perspective. We aimed to develop a framework that could help show how to improve women’s participation in and benefit from all areas of the food system.</p>
<h2>Our study</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8564/htm">study</a> enhanced an existing food systems framework by integrating a gender perspective. A food systems framework is a set of things you need to think about when looking for ways to make better food available to more people. </p>
<p>It helps us understand how things interact – making it easier to see how one intervention might negatively or positively influence another aspect or activity in the system. We chose to work on the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition (<a href="http://www.glopan.org/sites/default/files/Global%20Panel%20Technical%20Brief%20Final.pdf">Glopan</a>) framework because it was user-friendly. Glopan is a global panel of experts on food security and nutrition. </p>
<p>This framework looks at agricultural production, market and trade systems, people’s ability to buy food, how to transform food, the types of food people are likely to consume and healthy diets. The framework does not integrate gender issues. </p>
<p>We studied 18 global and pan-African commitments – such as the <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/21252030%20Agenda%20for%20Sustainable%20Development%20web.pdf">Sustainable Development Goals</a> and <a href="https://au.int/en/agenda2063/overview">Africa Agenda 2063</a> – to identify gender policy actions that could be taken in each of the areas of the Glopan food systems. </p>
<p>We found that generally, there is a consensus in the documents on specific actions that can be taken to advance gender equality in the food system. Our study brings together these policy actions to provide a way of understanding how they fit together and interact.</p>
<p>We also found that governance and social systems constraints – that are not necessarily part of the food system, but affect men’s and women’s capacity to participate in the food system – need to be addressed. </p>
<p>For example, maternity leave policies are important to ensure that women can work without experiencing discrimination or pay cuts. Paternity leave is also important to challenge the idea that only women are responsible for child care.</p>
<p>We developed an <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/15/8564/htm">enhanced framework</a> that helps policy makers identify how gender can be integrated into parts of the food system. </p>
<h2>An enhanced framework</h2>
<p>The framework we developed is an initial step to understanding the interactions between existing policies and the potential trade-offs. For example, improving women’s access to markets might have implications for the amount of time they can spend at home. Limited time spent at home may reduce breastfeeding – which is critically important for children’s health. Policy makers might consider building daycare facilities close to markets to support women to breastfeed.</p>
<p>Many of the policy options proposed in our study are consistent with study findings across African agriculture and nutrition research. These show that women face constraints in access to land, services and markets. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/food-security-in-african-cities-needs-a-fresh-approach-our-book-sets-out-the-issues-161373">Food security in African cities needs a fresh approach - our book sets out the issues</a>
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<p>Our framework proposes several priority actions for policymakers:</p>
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<li><p>Improving women’s access to markets and trade systems. An example would be daycare facilities near markets.</p></li>
<li><p>Improving women’s social protection. Social grants or food parcels are examples. </p></li>
<li><p>Improving women’s access to nutritious food. This makes an important difference to maternal and child health, particularly during pregnancy. </p></li>
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<h2>Unlocking food security</h2>
<p>One challenge our study identified was that globally, policies still overemphasise the role of women in agricultural production and diets. Their role in markets, consumer demand and consumer purchasing power is not as highly prioritised. </p>
<p>Women’s access to resources and services is also overemphasised, overlooking issues of control. For example, policies may promote women’s access to agricultural technologies. But cultural restrictions prevent women from using these technologies. </p>
<p>Eliminating hunger will require that research and policies empower women to participate effectively in the food system. Research or policies that focus on one discipline will not suffice to achieve this goal. It’s also essential to understand what gender policy actions can be taken.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Mkandawire receives funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund through the African Research Universities Alliance – United Kingdom Research and Innovation partnership.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melody Mentz-Coetzee receives funding for the FSNet-Africa project through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) under the auspices of the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) and African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) partnership. </span></em></p>Globally, experts are beginning to recognise that focusing on one aspect of food overlooks the trade-offs or sacrifices people make.Elizabeth Mkandawire, Network and Research Manager: ARUA – UKRI GCRF FSNet Africa, University of PretoriaMelody Mentz-Coetzee, Senior Researcher FSNet-Africa, University of Pretoria, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655562021-08-05T15:01:42Z2021-08-05T15:01:42ZHow communists have shaped South Africa’s history over 100 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414331/original/file-20210803-27-8sey0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African Communist Party members have held key positions in the ANC-led governments. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until recently, just living to a 100 was an achievement worth celebrating for itself. In England new centenarians receive a special card from their queen. Perhaps the same convention is maintained in South Africa and its <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">Communist Party’s</a> 300 000 or so members can expect a birthday message from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on their <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/analysis/centenary-of-the-sacp-50a1b8bf-9d07-4733-adad-8803ec7c0e2e">centenary</a>. Or maybe not. </p>
<p>In any case, they have more to celebrate than their party’s extreme old age, though under often tough conditions survival itself is an achievement. Next to the 109-year old governing <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/brief-history-anc">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, the South African Communist Party is the second oldest political organisation in Africa. But, South African communists did more than outlive their rivals and opponents. They can make reasonable claims to have shaped South African history, as I’ve outlined in my <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/red-road-to-freedom/">book</a>, <em>Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party 1921-2021</em>.</p>
<p>In which ways did they do this?</p>
<p>And is it just history, though, that the party will be celebrating? What about today?</p>
<h2>Shaping history</h2>
<p>First, they initiated political solidarities that cut across South Africa’s racial and social cleavages. They began doing this from the party’s formation in 1921 when it began recruiting black South Africans. Ten years later there were black people leading the party and joining it in thousands. This was in an era when most forms of social life were racially segregated, by custom if not by law. From 1948 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> would restrict any interracial contact still further. But, such confinements were fairly extensive well before then.</p>
<p>The party’s commitment to cross-racial politics wavered now and then but, even so, it supplied real world evidence that black and white South Africans could share political goals and work towards them together. In the early 1930s, the first white communists were convicted and served prison sentences for sedition, that is for attempting to mobilise black followers. </p>
<p>Today in South Africa communists can take a considerable portion of the credit for the extent to which the country’s politics is nonracial.</p>
<p>Secondly, modern South Africa has one of the strongest labour movements in the developing world, a movement that still shapes government policy. Its historical gestation is a complicated story. Communists were not the only labour pioneers.</p>
<p>But in the 1930s and 1940s people like recently disembarked Lithuanian immigrant, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ray-alexander-simons">Ray Alexander</a>, assembled industrial unions that would constitute enduring foundations for what was to follow. Some of today’s most powerful trade unions can trace their genealogy back to her efforts.</p>
<p>Communists in the 1940s such as the Port Elizabeth dry cleaning worker <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/raymond-mhlaba">Raymond Mhlaba</a> worked out a strategy of alliances beginning with community protests to support strike movements. This coalition between labour leaders and community activists would persist through the next five decades, helping to enable national liberation <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1994">in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>In fact, at a local level trade unionists often were community leaders in the 1940s, as well as belonging to the Communist party. In the places in which they were busiest, in New Brighton outside Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, for example, or in the <a href="https://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Bond%20Townships.pdf">townships</a> – exclusively black residential areas – dispersed along the East Rand, or in Cape Town’s Langa, these leaders and their activist communist following in the 1950s after the party’s <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1071/communist-control-act-of-1954">prohibition</a> continued to organise and mobilise.</p>
<p>It was no coincidence that the ANC had the most entrenched and systematic presence in the 1950s in the localities in which communists were best organised in the 1940s. In short, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">“Decade of Defiance”</a>, the ten years or so of mass action against apartheid in the 1950s, was incubated in party networks.</p>
<p>There are many other ways in which the party stamped its historic imprint. If the ANC’s armed struggle against apartheid minority rule was decisive, and it was certainly important in inspiring other kinds of political action during the 1980s, then communists supplied most of the key members of its general staff and as well many field unit commanders.</p>
<p>Then from the 1920s onwards through its night-schools and other training facilities, the party educated successive echelons of South Africa’s political leadership. That the ANC today in its internal discourses still uses the jargon and phraseology employed by the party’s commissars in the Angolan training camps 40 years ago is testimony to their enduring effectiveness as educators. Indeed, the concept of “national democracy” that the ANC uses to describe the kind of social order it is trying to build, itself derives from a Communist notion of a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism developed in Eastern Europe after the Second World War.</p>
<p>A final example of the party’s pioneering role in shifting political norms: earlier than any other South African political movement, the Communist Party brought women into leadership. The pioneers whom the Party should be recalling on its birthday include key women: <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/rebecca-bunting">Rebecca Bunting </a>, <a href="https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za/josie-palmer-mpama/">Josie Mpama</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/molly-wolton">Molly Wolton</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mama-dora-tamana-posthumous">Dora Tamana</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/elizabeth-sophia-honman-posthumous">Betty du Toit</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first">Ruth First</a>.</p>
<h2>Communist Party today</h2>
<p>The Communist Party is in a <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">tripartite governing alliance</a> with the ANC and <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">the Congress of South African Trade Unions</a>, the labour federation.</p>
<p>Communists have held important positions in ANC governments for nearly 30 years. For example, in Cyril Ramaphosa’s first cabinet communists were appointed to a number of ministerial portfolios, including <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/communist-trade-minister-wins-praise-from-imf-1.312267">Trade and Industry</a> and <a href="https://www.dhet.gov.za/SiteAssets/Minister's%20Profile/Minister's%20Profile.pdf">Higher Education</a>. Former communists have held other key positions, including the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kgalema-petrus-motlanthe">presidency</a> itself as well as the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jabulani-moleketi-mr-0">Finance Ministry</a>.</p>
<p>Party leaders can count their membership in hundreds of thousands. But are they still shaping history?</p>
<p>South African communists argue that their participation in government makes a real difference, reinforcing its commitment to public employment programmes, to re-industrialisation, to better foreign trade policies, and increased financial aid for students.</p>
<p>But they also concede that much of their effort is undone by political corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, and that they have failed to shift the government’s “neo-liberal” macroeconomic policies significantly. They would prefer more market regulation and more support and protection for local industry. They dislike the extent to which public services are “contracted out” to private firms. </p>
<p>They do suggest that they play a role in limiting public venality. This may be true though initially they helped to defend President Jacob Zuma against his critics as well as contributing to his victory <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=y5NYMWQ5tiwC&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=Zuma,+Polokwane+2007&source=bl&ots=PIdtyCYPjc&sig=imwB-O1Rc_2MbpxeNedOSOcCLkk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBDhGahUKEwiw6IGBqI3JAhVLVRQKHYn7Dlc#v=onepage&q=Zuma%2C%20Polokwane%202007&f=false">to become ANC president at its 2007</a> conference, and subsequently the head of state.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>With such a large signed-up following you’d think Communists would constitute a powerful grouping within the ANC and in the wider political domain. But does their membership really matter? </p>
<p>The party’s following doesn’t constitute a disciplined electoral bloc, either within the ANC’s own internal voting procedures nor in national or municipal polls. Nor is it a membership that draws solidarity from its participation in manufacturing in the classic Marxian sense. The largest social group from whom the party recruits is young unemployed people, a group that keeps growing.</p>
<p>The party’s <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/socialism-is-the-future-build-it-now--blade-nziman">present strategic purpose</a> is about “building capacity for socialism”. This includes promoting local industry and strengthening the provision of public services. </p>
<p>In following this course, it is fair to say that its present challenges are as formidable as anything it has confronted in the past. Global markets make it very difficult to rebuild declining industries anywhere, but particularly in a country in which workers have rights and as a consequence are comparatively well paid. </p>
<p>South Africa’s earlier industrialisation happened under a forced labour regime. Then, arguably, South Africa’s developmental trajectory – its history – was on the party’s side, building an increasingly skilled industrial workforce. But industrial employment has stagnated or declined. Under such conditions constructing a unified political base is so much more difficult. Under modern conditions hopes and faith have to replace old certainties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165556/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lodge has received funding from the Irish Research Council, Irish Aid, and the Swedish International Development Association but not for any research connected with this article.
I am a member of the Board of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa. </span></em></p>The Communist Party draws most of the members from South Africa’s mainly young, unemployed people, a group that keeps growing.Tom Lodge, Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of LimerickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1612882021-05-25T14:56:06Z2021-05-25T14:56:06ZCOVID-19: Global South responses have shown up social policy challenges – and strengths<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/401844/original/file-20210520-21-1cbkgte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A volunteer delivers food parcels in Masiphumelele informal settlement in Cape Town, South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic is more than a health crisis. It has also revealed other fault lines such as weak and inadequate social service delivery systems and institutional challenges. The poverty and inequality fault lines are unlikely to be redrawn or removed if new and innovative evidence-based solutions are not found to respond to these interlocking problems.</p>
<p>One of the questions I attempt to answer in this article is what we might learn from social policy and social development responses in the <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/en/country-rankings/global-south-countries">global South</a> to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and to help COVID-19 recovery.</p>
<p>My lens is a southern one largely because the social development approach – and related social protection policies that have come to be the bedrock of government responses to the pandemic – originated in development contexts in the <a href="https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol45/iss4/6/">mid and late 1990s</a>. </p>
<p>During the 1990s the exponential growth of social protection policies to reduce poverty, vulnerability and inequality served to reset development thinking and action internationally. Examples of pioneering programmes are child support grants in South Africa and <a href="https://theconversation.com/landmark-study-shows-how-child-grants-empower-women-in-brazil-and-south-africa-157537">Brazil’s Bolsa Familia</a>.</p>
<p>By 2018, over <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/29115/9781464812545.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y">140 countries</a> had implemented a diversity of social protection measures. Across Africa close to <a href="https://www.africa.undp.org/content/rba/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2019/African-governments-committing-more-resources.html">50 new programmes</a> have been initiated in the last 20 years.</p>
<p>Different strategies have been used such as food assistance, school feeding schemes and public employment programmes. But cash transfers that are paid regularly to selected beneficiaries or categories of people based on an assessment of need have led the way. </p>
<p>Some authors <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198754336.001.0001/oso-9780198754336">label this</a> a “revolution from below”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/landmark-study-shows-how-child-grants-empower-women-in-brazil-and-south-africa-157537">Landmark study shows how child grants empower women in Brazil and South Africa</a>
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<p>Social protection policies have been the bedrock of social policy responses to the pandemic. They have played a big role, protecting people from falling deeper into poverty or from the brink of starvation. </p>
<h2>Impact of social protection</h2>
<p>Advocates of social protection in the global South have argued that social policies have had positive social and economic multiplier effects. Evidence from <a href="https://www.proquest.com/openview/b11f17a88671217a6cb5ddaa10d0a012/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=6289">a systematic review</a> of non-contributory social assistance (funded from taxes and or development assistance as opposed to schemes made up of employer and employeee contributions) shows improvements in monetary poverty, education, health and nutrition. There were also improvements in savings, investment and production as well as work seeking and empowerment. The study was done in low- and middle-income countries over 15 years, based on data from 165 studies. </p>
<p>Social protection programmes have come in for criticism, particularly from policy makers and politicians on the right of the political spectrum. They have been accused of <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/we-need-change-how-we-think-and-talk-about-social-grants/">making people work shy</a>, and for <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-policy-and-society/article/abs/relationship-between-the-child-support-grant-and-teenage-fertility-in-postapartheid-south-africa/5F083EC4C6C245AA6DD4AF524FAE2FCC">encouraging teenage pregnancy</a>.</p>
<p>The review found no effects of the payments on adult work effort or increased fertility. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316081860_The_impact_of_cash_transfers_on_women_and_girls_A_summary_of_the_evidence">Another study</a> found positive effects on women’s and girls’ well-being, especially in education and employment, along with increases in women’s decision-making power and choices.</p>
<h2>Pandemic responses</h2>
<p>Early in the pandemic, countries had to address several questions as the virus spread and lockdowns became inevitable. These included: who needed the most help; what types of interventions were needed; what coverage levels should be; and how long they should be in place.</p>
<p>Consideration also had to be given to what the most cost effective interventions would be, how to ensure accountability of public spending and the long-term implications.</p>
<p>The responses that emerged were largely adaptive, built on existing social protection systems. Most countries increased benefit levels. In others, new beneficiaries were added to existing programmes and new programmes were established, such as in South Africa. About half (47%) of cash transfers are new programmes in 78 countries (reaching 512.6 million people), while one-fifth (22%) of measures are <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33635">one-off payments</a>. </p>
<p>In December 2020, Ugo Gentilini, who is the social protection lead at the World Bank, and his colleagues at the bank and UNICEF collated the first <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33635">Real-Time Review of Country Measures</a> to respond to COVID-19 in developing countries. This shows that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Country-level responses increased significantly, with 1,414 social protection policies planned and implemented in 215 countries. </p></li>
<li><p>Social assistance made up close to two-thirds of all the programmes in this data base while the rest complemented these with social insurance schemes and labour market programmes. But cash payments were by far the most popular response in low-income countries (90%) and less than half in high income countries. Social assistance strategies included cash transfers (conditional and unconditional), social pensions, in-kind food as well as food voucher schemes and school feeding schemes.</p></li>
<li><p>There were major regional differences. In sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean there was a much bigger emphasis on social assistance. Europe and Central Asia and North America used more social insurance measures.</p></li>
<li><p>Social insurance programmes such as paid unemployment, sick benefits, health insurance, pensions, contribution waivers or subsidies were identified.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The overview provided a number of valuable insights and lessons.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-president-extends-special-covid-19-grant-why-this-is-not-enough-153942">South African president extends special COVID-19 grant. Why this is not enough</a>
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<h2>Lessons</h2>
<p>The first lesson is that countries with pre-existing systems of social protection and institutional capability were able to scale up more rapidly, and to implement the programmes fairly effectively.</p>
<p>Second, those that had registration systems and databases were able to do so faster. For example, India was able to reach <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/33635">30 million beneficiaries</a> in a month in the early stages of the pandemic because of effective digital registration and inter-system data sharing. Access to identity documents, mobile phones and bank accounts also facilitated the outreach and impact in India. </p>
<p>This points to powerful innovation that is continuing to evolve in the global South. </p>
<p>The analysis also gives insights into the weaknesses of the current systems. One is that low-income countries with limited resources were more reliant on external resources such as development assistance to fund social protection. Middle and upper middle-income countries had a little more fiscal leverage to do so themselves. </p>
<p>For instance, South Africa, an upper middle-income country with high levels of <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29614">inequality</a>, was able to fund its relief programme through its own resources. This brought an additional <a href="https://cramsurvey.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/1.-Spaull-N.-Daniels-R.-C-et-al.-2021-NIDS-CRAM-Wave-4-Synthesis-Report..pdf">5.3 million people</a> into the social protection net.</p>
<h2>Community level support</h2>
<p>There was an additional factor in the global South that came to the fore during the crisis that shouldn’t be ignored. This is the contribution of humanitarian assistance and community level mutual solidarity responses such as food relief that emerged in response to the pandemic.</p>
<p>Bottom-up community social solidarity initiatives have not been adequately documented but played a critical role in some countries to fill the holes in the safety nets. </p>
<p>These are age old indigenous and resilience building systems that should not go unnoticed.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited version of <a href="https://www.iassw-aiets.org/announcements/6603-katherine-kendall-memorial-award-lecture/">the speech</a> Professor Patel delivered to the International Association of Schools of Social Work and the International Council on Social Welfare on Social Work Education and Development Online Conference as the recipient of the 2020 Katherine Kendall Memorial Award.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161288/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leila Patel receives funding from the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation for her Chair in Welfare and Social Development. </span></em></p>Early in the pandemic, countries had to address several questions as the virus spread and lockdowns became inevitable.Leila Patel, Professor of Social Development Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1575372021-03-29T14:44:08Z2021-03-29T14:44:08ZLandmark study shows how child grants empower women in Brazil and South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391480/original/file-20210324-13-9o4x3q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C458%2C2955%2C1535&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grants were found to help improve the health, including mental health, of women</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the mid-1990s, new approaches to poverty reduction have been introduced in countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some have involved income transfer programmes that target poorer citizens based on various means tests. Most have targeted female caregivers, primarily mothers.</p>
<p>The most expansive child and family grants are in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and South Africa, which has put in place the biggest social provision net in <a href="https://www.unicef.org/french/files/Social_Protection_for_Children_and_their_Families_-_A_Global_Overview.pdf">Africa</a>. </p>
<p>The focus of our study was on Brazil and South Africa, two of the countries that have the largest programmes globally. The programmes were all designed to enhance child welfare. But as academics who have studied social policy in these countries, we felt it was important to assess the impact of income transfer programmes that move beyond a focus on child well-being only. In particular, we set out to examine if such transfers also elevated women in their homes, societies and political systems.</p>
<p>We set <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1468018120981421">out to compare</a> South Africa’s <a href="https://www.sassa.gov.za/Pages/Child-Support-Grant.aspx">child support grant</a> and Brazil’s <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---sro-new_delhi/documents/presentation/wcms_175274.pdf">Bolsa Família</a>. </p>
<p>Bolsa Família was launched in 2003 and is the largest cash transfer programme for children and families in the world, reaching more than <a href="https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/bolsa-familia-in-brazil">46 million people a year</a> in Brazil. The country has a population of <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/brazil-population/">212 million people</a>. </p>
<p>South Africa’s child support grant system was launched in 1998. It makes monthly disbursements to 12.8 million children of a total population of <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/south-africa-population/">59.6 million people</a>. </p>
<p>Though they have different population sizes, Brazil and South Africa have a great deal in common. They have similar economic profiles and demographic characteristics. For example, among other similarities, they have the highest <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/">levels of income inequality</a>. </p>
<p>We conducted fieldwork in Doornkop, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto">Soweto</a>, a large, densely populated black urban settlement which comprises one third of Johannesburg’s population. We also looked at three municipalities across two states of Northeast Brazil. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1468018120981421">found</a> that regular income assistance boosted the self-esteem and agency of women recipients in both countries. Our findings also underscored the added benefits of Brazil’s cash transfer programme because it is embedded in a stronger public health and social service network than is the case in South Africa. </p>
<p>The broader lesson we took from our findings was that income transfer programmes must operate in deliberate coordination with ancillary social service institutions to deliver the maximum benefits for women’s empowerment.</p>
<h2>Three dimensions of empowerment</h2>
<p>Our analysis centred on the impact of child and family cash transfers on three dimensions of empowerment. </p>
<p>First, whether adult women beneficiaries experienced heightened independence in financial decision making; second, whether they experienced enhanced control over their bodies; and, finally, whether they experienced psycho-social growth. </p>
<p>This was a departure from the way in which empowerment is usually conceptualised in academic research where the focus tends to be on how and whether gendered norms are changing. Instead, inspired by economist and philosopher <a href="http://heterodoxnews.com/ajes/readings/Sen1999-intro.pdf">Amartya Sen</a>, we viewed empowerment as the expansion of assets and capabilities that give women more control over their lives, enhancing agency to eliminate inequities and to unleash greater freedoms.</p>
<p>We listened closely to the voices of women recipients, in focus groups, individual conversations and surveys. </p>
<p>In the case of Bolsa Família, we also set out to understand the broader context in which the child support grant system connected with other social services. Brazil attaches conditions to its child support grants. These include children having to attend school regularly, children under five receiving standard immunisations and prenatal care for pregnant women. </p>
<p>To cover all these bases we interviewed teachers and principals, social workers and primary health care officials. </p>
<p>In South Africa, grant receipt is largely unconditional, except that a child should attend school. We assessed the impact of the child support grant on a range of social and economic indicators such as school attendance, access to health and other services, food security, income and livelihoods and women’s empowerment. </p>
<h2>Enhancing women’s status</h2>
<p>Our findings suggest the social grants triggered positive dynamics for women’s empowerment in both countries, even though the programmes were not intended for this purpose. </p>
<p>For example, the cash transfers contributed to advancing the standing of women beneficiaries. We found that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>women were more able to meet basic needs, which reduced stress because they were better able to cope with the precariousness of living in poverty;</p></li>
<li><p>most women recipients experienced heightened financial control and decision making vis-à-vis their partners. They withdrew the money themselves and exercised control over spending decisions; </p></li>
<li><p>the grants helped boost self esteem and agency. Beneficiaries in both countries reported an increased sense of status in their communities.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In both countries the grants helped reduce poverty levels, particularly among the lower quintile of earners. Both systems helped reduce the depth of poverty among female versus male-headed households.</p>
<p>But it was also clear that Bolsa Família went further than the child support grant in some key areas. For example, it induced beneficiaries to get basic identity documents, which <a href="https://www.unicef.org/southafrica/media/1226/file/ZAF-removing-barriers-to-accessing-child-grants-2016.pdf">improved access to a wider system of health and social work services</a>. Having documents also meant that women could better navigate bureaucracies and gave them a sense of social recognition and hope. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>The findings suggest that social grants can unleash positive dynamics for women’s empowerment even though the programmes were not intended for this purpose. Cash transfers don’t in and of themselves transform gender roles. Nevertheless, they help improve the standing of women beneficiaries in important ways. These include increasing social recognition, reducing levels of poverty and increasing financial control, decision making and agency. </p>
<p>But there are areas in which both Brazil and South Africa could improve. Cash transfers need to be combined with active labour market policies that boost job creation, livelihoods support and social services to enhance the economic inclusion of women. </p>
<p>There need to be skills and training programmes, as well as the provision of childcare and transportation.</p>
<p>Finally, our findings point to the need for South Africa to emulate Brazil by getting other government ministries and agencies on board to coordinate the delivery of other social services alongside the grants to boost results.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157537/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leila Patel receives funding from the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation for her Chair in Welfare and Social Development.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Borges Sugiyama and Wendy Hunter do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Findings show that income transfer programmes must operate in deliberate coordination with ancillary social service institutions to deliver the maximum benefits for women’s empowerment.Leila Patel, Professor of Social Development Studies, University of JohannesburgNatasha Borges Sugiyama, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeWendy Hunter, Professor of Government, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1554862021-02-21T08:31:57Z2021-02-21T08:31:57ZRadio in Mali can empower women by remembering they are part of a social web<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385066/original/file-20210218-14-v7pvmz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Studio Tamani journalists interviewing Malian women for their daily radio show. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Samuel Turpin/Fondation Hirondelle</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Malian politician, writer and women’s activist <a href="https://en.unesco.org/womeninafrica/aoua-keita-0/biography">Aoua Kéita</a> once argued that, “The evolution of a country depends on the place that women occupy in the public space of that country.” Today, Malian women face multiple and intersecting barriers that prevent them from realising this vision.</p>
<p>In a country with discriminatory <a href="https://www.genderindex.org/country/mali/">laws</a>, extensive polygamy and gender-based violence, and where husbands are often the sole decision-makers, Malian women live in an oppressive culture amid widespread <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mali/overview">poverty</a>. To ease financial burdens, many Malian girls are forced to <a href="https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/mali/">marry as children</a> so their families can benefit from their bride price. </p>
<p>Empowerment can mean different things for different women. It can mean staying in school, negotiating more equitable relationships, or learning how to start a small business, in order to become financially independent and provide for one’s family. Finding out how to do this is key.</p>
<p>Access to <a href="https://www.article19.org/resources/access-to-information-is-critical-to-achieving-sdgs/">information</a> is the route to empowerment and, in Mali, <a href="https://medialandscapes.org/country/mali/media/radio">radio</a> remains the main source of information. The country has 170 private radio stations, 121 of which are volunteer-run community stations. Radio is widely trusted, meeting a range of interests – religious, community and confessional. It shares news from international sources such as <a href="https://www.rfi.fr/en/">RFI</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gbjvb">BBC Africa</a>, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/top-stories/s-9097">Deutsche Welle</a>, <a href="https://minusma.unmissions.org/en/united-nations-radio-mali">UN radio</a> and media development organisations. </p>
<p>Factual and awareness-raising broadcasts can raise women’s critical and collective consciousness and help them gain greater control over their own lives. But this has to be done carefully. Women have to be accurately considered, both as radio presenters and as radio listeners. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2021.1877768">research</a> has shown that, when discussing a particular issue, women listeners in Mali consistently situate themselves in relation to many other people.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman pointing a mic at another woman, while a man films from a distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385067/original/file-20210218-28-pid67g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Studio Tamani normalises debate on women’s issues through women-related programmes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Samuel Turpin/Fondation Hirondelle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We conducted a content analysis of a series of women-related radio programmes produced and broadcast in 2018-2020 by Fondation <a href="https://www.hirondelle.org/en/">Hirondelle’s</a> Studio <a href="https://www.hirondelle.org/en/studio-tamani-mali-en">Tamani</a>. We then ran focus groups among the studio’s listeners, before and after they listened to the series, to determine the programmes’ impact.</p>
<p>The focus group respondents said that women’s activities tend to be conducted for, with, or dependent on others. Information targeted at empowering women should reflect this and consider women within their “web of relations”. This means how women live in relation to other people, and to collective cultures and norms that influence and shape their lives.</p>
<h2>Empowered within a collective</h2>
<p>Among all the people we interviewed, men and women alike, empowerment for women meant “independence”, but never from children. Such independence would empower women to make decisions about their family life and support their wider communities. </p>
<p>For younger women respondents, empowerment could mean being able to make their own decisions and not being restrained by a future husband. But none of them considered a future without a husband. Independence did not necessarily mean being on their own. </p>
<p>It became clear that women’s empowerment in Mali cannot be reduced to a matter of individual choice or agency. It refers to collective agency and decision making. This is in stark contrast with the emphasis often found in development campaigns. </p>
<p>Development programmes tend to regard women’s empowerment as an individual issue. They can artificially isolate women from the socio-cultural traditions that surround them. They do not fully consider the many “webs of relations” that can be affected by potential changes in empowerment. Nor do they consider the webs that can influence women’s lives and their freedom to make decisions.</p>
<h2>Diversity and debate</h2>
<p>Our study showed that radio can effectively represent the complexities of women’s lives. It can help women navigate the many obstacles they face by broadcasting diverse and varied information about women’s rights. If the information uses examples and role models which are free from negative stereotypes or stereotypical representations, it can have a positive impact on raising awareness.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women sitting across each other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385070/original/file-20210218-20-1qiqwuj.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Radio programmes can effectively represent the complexities of women’s lives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Samuel Turpin/Fondation Hirondelle</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The radio programmes portrayed women in relation to others (in-laws, siblings, widows, husbands, men, family and children) and to other groups or roles, cultural and structural values or webs which shape women’s status. The contents rarely portrayed women as individuals; they were always associated with others. However, they were often in secondary positions, for example, in relation to in-laws and husbands, upholding social norms.</p>
<p>Studio Tamani, as a radio studio, is normalising debate on women’s issues by broadcasting women-related programmes. This is a first step to taking advantage of radio as an ideal medium for creating an empowering environment. But for this to be effective for collective empowerment, women must not be extracted from the web of relations that surround them. </p>
<p>Malian women do not speak with one voice, so their diverse perspectives, experience and expertise must also be considered in radio broadcasting. This will go some way to offsetting the individualistic perspectives portrayed in development contexts, particularly with regard to their empowerment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155486/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Heywood receives funding from UKRI GCRF ESRC</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beatrice Ivey is affiliated with the University of Sheffield, where she is employed as a Research Associate for a GCRF funded-project. </span></em></p>Empowerment can mean different things for different women, but access to information is key. In Mali radio is the main source of information.Emma Heywood, Lecturer and Researcher in Journalism, Radio and Communication, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1515402021-01-26T13:26:25Z2021-01-26T13:26:25ZFeeling relatively poor increases support for women in the workplace – but men still don’t want them making household decisions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378675/original/file-20210113-15-p90m2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C71%2C2974%2C2080&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women who work outside the home in Papua New Guinea often continue shouldering the same domestic and child care responsibilities as before.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rachel Gilbert and Gracie Rosenbach, IFPRI</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Feeling poor relative to others can spur families to support women in pursuing work outside the household and to invest more in girls’ schooling, according to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105218">our new study</a>. But that does not mean women become more empowered.</p>
<p>In 2018, we conducted a survey experiment in Papua New Guinea to see how feeling economically left behind affects gender attitudes. We used a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.04.019">special type of survey technique</a> to subtly alter respondents’ perception of their economic well-being in relation to other households. Half of the study participants were randomly primed to feel that they were at the bottom of a wide income distribution. </p>
<p>We then surveyed both women and men in both groups about their attitudes toward women’s roles to assess the effects of our experiment on gender attitudes, specifically. We found that attitudes about women’s proper roles are sensitive to perceptions of their relative poverty. When those surveyed felt relatively poor, they were more likely to support women’s economic participation, including in terms of girls going to school.</p>
<p>At first blush, the increase in male support for women’s working seems to be good news for women’s economic empowerment. But we found two troubling side effects. </p>
<p>First, being primed to feel poor did not lead men in our survey to indicate greater support for women making decisions about how to manage household assets. But it did lead women to want more decision-making authority. We speculate that women feel the stakes are higher to make good economic decisions when they feel poorer and are expected to contribute relatively more to their household’s income. These contrasting effects for women compared with men are important, as they suggest societal income inequality may trigger greater household tension. This is worrisome, particularly in places with an already high rate of domestic violence <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/06/617265314/for-survivors-of-domestic-abuse-in-papua-new-guinea-volunteers-offer-safe-havens">like Papua New Guinea</a>.</p>
<p>Second, we carried out focus group discussions and confirmed that working outside the home does not reduce women’s unpaid domestic burdens. Indeed, some women even indicated these unwavering responsibilities as a reason to shy away from the formal labor market lest they expose themselves to violence at home for failing to perform domestic duties. </p>
<p>In other words, feelings of relative poverty are yet another factor fueling the demand for women to “do it all” – generating income outside the home while also performing a disproportionate share of household chores.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>The COVID-19 pandemic is expected both to <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021">significantly increase</a> the number of people living in extreme poverty and to <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/covid-19-is-increasing-multiple-kinds-of-inequality-here-s-what-we-can-do-about-it/">worsen overall income inequality</a>. </p>
<p>Our findings suggest that, as a result, more women around the world could want to or be compelled by family members to enter the workforce. While women’s economic participation can be a positive development, the benefits are lost if it mainly means women’s workloads increase without greater ability to make decisions affecting their lives. </p>
<p>This underscores the need for more government support for women’s actual empowerment through efforts like offering <a href="https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/811541550793165157/empowering-women-through-family-visioning-a-randomized-experiment-in-uganda">couples workshops that encourage women’s participation</a> in household decision-making, as well as education campaigns aimed at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000136">confronting harmful beliefs</a> about the acceptability of domestic violence. </p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>We are carrying out similar <a href="https://osf.io/6w2pn">work in Nepal</a> – a country that is similar to Papua New Guinea with respect to levels of gender inequality and economic development, but different in that citizens often rely on remittances to make ends meet. It’s unclear how societal differences like this will affect our findings. </p>
<p>Different countries and cultures, with distinct roles for women and relationships between spouses, may yield divergent impacts of perceptions of relative poverty on gender roles.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151540/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katrina Kosec received funding from the Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cecilia Hyunjung Mo received funding from the United States Department of Labor. This material does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Department of Labor, nor does the mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the United States Government.</span></em></p>A new study explores how feelings of relative poverty can negatively affect gender dynamics among households.Katrina Kosec, Lecturer, Johns Hopkins UniversityCecilia Hyunjung Mo, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1417732020-08-14T05:46:01Z2020-08-14T05:46:01ZWater management in Java adds to burden on women and reduces their incomes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348048/original/file-20200716-21-w3oxs8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Seorang perempuan membawa air.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/128334607@N03/34899033731/in/photolist-5pyiFN-6b11Mr-9yKioj-bRyfPa-BRYMF7-CGcg8r-BRPfuh-FWVXgC-bRxYMH-CGco4k-a4R75a-bRyhq4-CfPzqR-GmbjZG-bRyeyn-ECf6uM-bRydTM-229FWtx-bRyd8X-bRybMt-bRyjN2-bCDnTJ-28zK3os-23PogWN-bRyiRz-bCDjkN-bRy4U8-bRy1S2-bRy7Nt-bCDC27-bRy9PR-KA7Kga-bRyctn-229Fw4F-Bho7Gk-7tRWNy-bkQQbq-7tRQNq-VaUES8-bypWZe-wkhoDd-bypWXP-7tMXL2">opendatalabjakarta/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women make up <a href="https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2019/09/13/jumlah-penduduk-indonesia-diproyeksikan-mencapai-270-juta-pada-2020#:%7E:text=Jumlah%20Penduduk%20Indonesia%20Menurut%20Kelompok%20Umur%20(2020E)&text=Berdasarkan%20proyeksi%20penduduk%202015%2D2045,dan%20134%2C27%20jiwa%20perempuan.">half the Indonesian population</a> but their roles and contribution to the economy are still limited. </p>
<p>The 2020 Global Gender Gap Index shows Indonesian women <a href="https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/12/30/more-indonesian-women-in-labor-market-fewer-in-politics-gender-gap-report.html">earn only half of men’s estimated income</a>.</p>
<p>Our latest <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429273353/chapters/10.4324/9780429273353-6">research</a> reveals how gender inequality in water management in rural Java has forced women to reduce their hours of paid work. They have to spend more time to secure water supply for their family, hurting their income-earning capacity. </p>
<h2>The research</h2>
<p>We studied women’s role in water management in Kulon Progo, Yogyakarta, in 2018 by interviewing villagers and government officers. </p>
<p>Our research finds that traditional values drive access to clean drinking water and its distribution in rural Indonesia. These practices fail to recognise women’s role in the household and village economy. </p>
<p>As a result, they don’t have a voice in governing the village and managing the water. </p>
<p>The problems are more evident during the dry season, when limited access to water reduces women’s work hours as they spend more time gathering water.</p>
<p>One of the interviewees could usually produce 3 to 4 kilograms of palm sugar every day in the rainy season. During the dry season, she could produce only 1.5kg per day. </p>
<p>The decreases occurred because the interviewees spent more hours collecting water than working. It is estimated they lost at least 50% of their monthly income at this time.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348049/original/file-20200716-17-1kiao06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348049/original/file-20200716-17-1kiao06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348049/original/file-20200716-17-1kiao06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348049/original/file-20200716-17-1kiao06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348049/original/file-20200716-17-1kiao06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348049/original/file-20200716-17-1kiao06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348049/original/file-20200716-17-1kiao06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman rides a bike in Kulon Progo, Yogyakarta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/johanwieland/7124369399/in/photolist-bRyfPa-BRPfuh-CfPzqR-ECf6uM-229FWtx-5pyiFN-6b11Mr-9yKioj-BRYMF7-CGcg8r-bRxYMH-FWVXgC-CGco4k-a4R75a-bRyhq4-GmbjZG-bRyeyn-bRydTM-bRyd8X-bRybMt-bRyjN2-bCDnTJ-28zK3os-23PogWN-bRyiRz-229Fw4F-Bho7Gk-bCDjkN-bRy4U8-bRy1S2-bRy7Nt-bCDC27-bRy9PR-KA7Kga-bRyctn-7tRWNy-bkQQbq-7tRQNq-VaUES8-bypWZe-wkhoDd-bypWXP-7tMXL2">johanwieland/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why this happens</h2>
<p>Indonesia’s influential patriarchal culture has excluded women from political decision-making processes, including the governance of water management. </p>
<p>This culture contributes to limiting women’s roles to water gatherers, as their roles are associated with domestic duties. </p>
<p>The government has made some attempts at gender mainstreaming and to involve women more in decision-making processes at all levels of government. Despite this, it was still difficult for women to be actively involved in the decision-making processes of water management.</p>
<p>When women raise issues regarding the quality and quantity of water management at the family and community levels, their views and experiences are often ignored.</p>
<p>Men dominate decision-making on water management at almost all levels. These include decisions on access to water and the quantity and quality of water. </p>
<h2>The government needs to be more active</h2>
<p>Based on our <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429273353/chapters/10.4324/9780429273353-6">research</a>, we found that national gender mainstreaming programs have not filtered into rural regions.</p>
<p>Instead, local NGO programs such as <a href="https://www.internationalbudget.org/groups/perkumpulan-idea/#:%7E:text=The%20IDEA%20Association%20is%20an,development%20planning%20and%20budget%20advocacy.">IDEA</a>, an Indonesian-based organisation that promotes public policies to support economic, social and cultural rights, appear to have a more significant effect in closing the gender governance gap. IDEA provides empowerment training and network building for village women. </p>
<p>Furthermore, local government officials generally interpret gender mainstreaming as the availability of various programs for women. They don’t see women as active users of water, even though they are capable of using their experiences to contribute to decision-making on water management.</p>
<p>The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CEDAW.aspx">CEDAW</a>) confirms it is the state’s responsibility to ensure no public authority discriminates against women. Hence the government should be more active in ensuring women are included in water decision-making.</p>
<p>The government can encourage women’s participation by inviting them to meetings that discuss issues of water usage. The issues include the time required to collect water from the source and responsibilities (men, women, children) for water collection. Through such meetings, key decision-makers can consult with women to capture their water use and water management experiences.</p>
<p>Gender mainstreaming requires a more significant effort and more cooperation between government and NGOs to offer training and workshops. </p>
<p>Programs to train women in leadership and empowerment skills will encourage them to be involved in public meetings. These training programs and skills development are fundamental to increase women’s confidence to be actively involved in public decision-making processes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/141773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Para penulis tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi di luar afiliasi akademis yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>When women have to spend hours getting water for their families, it comes at the expense of their incomes and their other contributions to their communities.John Burgess, Professor of Human Resource Management, RMIT UniversityEndah Prihatiningtyastuti, Faculty member, Curtin Business School, Curtin UniversityKantha Dayaram, Associate Professor, School of Management, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1275632019-11-25T13:25:48Z2019-11-25T13:25:48Z2020 campaign shows the more women run, the more they are treated like candidates – not tokens<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303290/original/file-20191123-74572-1bqp65u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There's power in numbers. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mad Dog/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Victoria Woodhull ran for president in 1872, she was depicted as <a href="https://www.harpweek.com/09cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon-Large.asp?Month=February&Date=17/">“Mrs. Satan”</a> in a political cartoon. </p>
<p>When Sen. Margaret Chase Smith sought the Republican nomination in 1964, one columnist labeled her too old – at 66 – while others insisted she was attractive <a href="http://origins.osu.edu/article/madame-president-history-women-who-ran-hillary">“for her age.”</a></p>
<p>When Hillary Clinton sought the Democratic nomination in 2008 and the presidency in 2016, she was unable to escape gender-based tropes characterizing her as <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/2378023117732441">“calculating” and “power hungry.”</a></p>
<p>But in observing the 2020 Democratic presidential primary – which <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/06/234860/women-running-for-president-2020-candidates">has featured as many six women</a> – it seems possible that this time might be different. Not because sexism has left the building, but because the critical mass of women candidates may have changed the dynamic.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303213/original/file-20191122-74562-1tay10j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Margaret Chase Smith ran for president in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A lone woman in a crowd</h2>
<p>As a <a href="https://law.uoregon.edu/explore/elizabeth-tippett">researcher who studies the workplace</a>, I was reminded during the debate of an influential study of female representation in the office. </p>
<p>In the 1970s, business professor Rosabeth Kanter <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1086/226425">studied</a> the group dynamics in a corporate sales division where women represented a tiny part of the sales force. When women found themselves “alone or nearly alone” in a sea of men, they came to be seen as “tokens” – a constantly scrutinized stand-in for all women, viewed by others in terms of their gender and gender stereotypes. </p>
<p>Every action these saleswomen took had “symbolic consequences,” Kanter wrote. “In short, every act tended to be evaluated beyond its meaning for the organization and taken as a sign of ‘how women do in sales.’” </p>
<p>The women were subject to exaggerated scrutiny of their physical appearance and became “larger-than-life caricatures.” Their presence also affected the men, who behaved in a hyper-masculine way to “reclaim group solidarity” and emphasize the women’s outsider status.</p>
<p>This was, essentially, the predicament that Clinton faced as the lone female contender in her unsuccessful 2008 primary bid and as the first woman within striking distance of the White House in 2016. She never had the chance to be one of many female candidates whose qualifications, benefits and flaws could be evaluated in a measured way. </p>
<p>Even before Donald Trump arrived on the scene, she was a lightning rod and a caricature. <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1392469">During the 2008 primaries</a>, a poster depicted her as a witch. Others used various gender-based epithets. A T-shirt said “<a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/06/the-history-of-sexist-anti-hillary-clinton-merchandise-t-shirts-buttons-and-more-from-the-90s-to-2016.html">bros before hoes</a>” – a hyper-masculine expression of in-group solidarity. Fox News <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-nation/fox-news-graphic-rudov-clintons-nagging-voice-reason-she-lost-male-vote">compared</a> Clinton with a “nagging” wife, while a host on CNN apparently thought <a href="http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/26/best-debate-strategy-for-clinton/">“scolding mother”</a> was the better analogy. </p>
<p>In the 2016 election, Trump gleefully piled on, interrupting her in the final debate to call her a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/oct/20/donald-trump-calls-hillary-clinton-a-nasty-woman-during-final-debate-video">“nasty woman.”</a></p>
<p>As the wife of a former president, Clinton was portrayed as the ultimate undeserving “token.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303222/original/file-20191122-74580-s1vahk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303222/original/file-20191122-74580-s1vahk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303222/original/file-20191122-74580-s1vahk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303222/original/file-20191122-74580-s1vahk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303222/original/file-20191122-74580-s1vahk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303222/original/file-20191122-74580-s1vahk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303222/original/file-20191122-74580-s1vahk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump at one point called Clinton a ‘nasty woman’ during a debate in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Patrick Semansky</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Critical mass theory</h2>
<p>Kanter believed that the group dynamics would change if women were better represented in the office.</p>
<p>She hypothesized that once women made up 35% or 40% of the group, they would be liberated from their token status and others would start to see them as “individuals differentiated from each other” as well as differentiated from men.<br>
This idea would later be <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-gender/article/story-of-the-theory-of-critical-mass/592171C05B9B828DBBDCC121B05780D4">popularized</a> as the theory of the “critical mass.” It inspired, among other things, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-gender/article/story-of-the-theory-of-critical-mass/592171C05B9B828DBBDCC121B05780D4">gender quotas</a> in legislatures. Universities <a href="https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/2460/">would also</a> use the idea as a legal <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5183084208914209139">justification for affirmative action</a> policies on the basis of race.</p>
<p>I was reminded of the critical mass theory in watching the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/20/winners-losers-november-democratic-debate">Nov. 20 debate</a> in Atlanta, which was moderated entirely by women. Among the candidates, it featured the same female to male ratio – 40% – that Kanter predicted would make a difference. </p>
<p>And it did. </p>
<p>The four women on stage freed each from being the perfect woman, the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/barack-obama-tells-hillary-clinton-shes-likeable-34428886">“you’re likable enough”</a> trap that left Clinton in a bind. It meant Sen. Elizabeth Warren isn’t a nasty woman – she is a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/what-kind-of-populist-is-elizabeth-warren">populist</a>, as some have described her, <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/photos/the-new-populism">like Bernie Sanders</a>.</p>
<p>It meant Sen. Kamala Harris can attack colleague Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s record without it being portrayed as a “catfight.”</p>
<h2>Freed to be funny</h2>
<p>But what I noticed most from the female candidates were the sly jokes and subtle digs. Humor is difficult when you’re alone in a crowd. Garnering a laugh can be as much about solidarity as wit. </p>
<p>During the Atlanta debate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar was in particularly fine form. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/read-democratic-debate-transcript-november-20-2019-n1088186">She bragged</a> about having “raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends” in her first Senate race. She also doubled down on a past comment that a female version of Mayor Pete Buttigieg would never have made it this far with his meager political experience. “Women are held to a higher standard,” she said, “otherwise, we could play a game called Name Your Favorite Woman President.” </p>
<p>Harris even used humor to good effect when former Vice President Joe Biden claimed he had the endorsement of the “only African American woman … elected to the United States Senate” – apparently <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/471434-crowd-erupts-after-harris-points-out-biden-mistaken-claim-to-have-support">referring to</a> Carol Moseley Braun. </p>
<p>“The other one is here,” Harris quipped. The audience guffawed.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303221/original/file-20191122-74580-4lapwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303221/original/file-20191122-74580-4lapwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303221/original/file-20191122-74580-4lapwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303221/original/file-20191122-74580-4lapwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303221/original/file-20191122-74580-4lapwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303221/original/file-20191122-74580-4lapwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303221/original/file-20191122-74580-4lapwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Telling a joke on stage can be as much about solidarity as wit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/David J. Phillip</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Power in numbers</h2>
<p>Kanter <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/226425">observed</a> that women’s isolation in these settings not only affected how they were perceived by others. It also affected their own behavior. </p>
<p>Aware of their symbolic status, women felt extra pressure to perform and “prove their competence” while simultaneously trying not to make the men “look bad” and “blend noticeably into the predominant male culture.”</p>
<p>I wondered how Hillary Clinton would have looked up there alongside the others in Atlanta. It’s possible she would have come across as wooden or boring. Even so, the stakes would have been lower – an inference that this particular person is boring, not that women can’t cut it. </p>
<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127563/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth C. Tippett made a small donation to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016.</span></em></p>Scholars say a ‘critical mass’ of representation is necessary to overcome ‘token’ status. That’s exactly what we saw at the Democratic debate in Atlanta.Elizabeth C. Tippett, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057112019-03-07T11:38:47Z2019-03-07T11:38:47Z#StopThisShame, #GirlsAtDhaba, #WhyLoiter and more: women’s fight against sexual harassment didn’t start with #MeToo<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262521/original/file-20190306-100799-1oz7bcj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian women hold protests against sexual violence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-Rape/3f935424f09243f38b99beaefcc35d2d/17/0">AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just two months after allegations of sexual abuse against Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein came to light in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html">2017 New York Times article</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUoOu72YPfE">women in at least 85 countries</a> <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/metoo-reaches-85-countries-with-1-7-million-tweets/">began using the</a> the hashtag #MeToo, to speak against sexual harassment. </p>
<p>In China, sexual misconduct accusations led to the firing of a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-harassment/beijing-professor-dismissed-as-sexual-harassment-allegations-spark-campus-activism-idUSKBN1F10J9">professor at a top university</a> and the resignation of a high-profile <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/15/senior-chinese-monk-shi-xuecheng-resigns-sexual-misconduct-claims">Buddhist monk</a>. In Egypt, it was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/opinion/egypt-metoo-email-girl.html">a highly regarded leader of the Arab Spring</a> who was forced to resign. And in India, sexual misconduct accusations caused a major uproar in <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/tanushree-dutta-who-helped-trigger-india-s-metoo-movement-says-she-was-not-going-to-back-down-the-second-time/story-eyYO4rlN2BL405cRGDw1zM.html">Bollywood</a> and forced the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/indian-minister-metoo-storm-announces-resignation-181017114006385.html">resignation</a> of a leading politician and minister. </p>
<p>While the success of #MeToo testifies to the power of social media in putting the spotlight on the culture of misogyny across the world, as a scholar <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317210788/chapters/10.4324/9781315618388-2">who studies feminism</a>, I know it’s not the first movement of its kind. </p>
<p>Women in countries such as India, Pakistan and others have long organized successful campaigns against sexual harassment. </p>
<h2>Campaigns in India</h2>
<p>In 2009 Indian women organized a successful campaign called <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23719318?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">#PinkChaddi</a>, or “pink underwear,” against the culture of moral policing by <a href="https://www.hindujagruti.org/newstags/sriram-sene">Sriram Sene</a>, a right-wing group that attacked young women in bars and young unmarried couples in public spaces on Valentine’s day. </p>
<p>Through a Facebook campaign, Nisha Susan, an employee of India’s leading investigative political magazine <a href="http://tehelka.com/">Tehelka</a> invited women to send this right-wing group pink underwear on Valentine’s Day. The campaign caught women’s attention across the country and resulted in more than 2,000 women sending pink underwear to the group. </p>
<p>In another campaign called <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/pinjra-tod-student-campaign-exhorts-women-to-oppose-sexist-hostel-rules/">#PinjraTod: Break the Locks</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2UQjPzX9Sc">female students</a> in Delhi came together in 2015 to protest sexist curfew rules in university halls. The students said the rules were used to <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/breaking-cage-india-feminism-sexual-violence-public-space">stifle</a> the freedom of women as the only way to deal with the culture of sexual violence. </p>
<p>At the time, the campaign forced university authorities to relax some of the rules. And today, it has grown into a larger movement across India’s major cities for bringing in meaningful policies against sexual harassment. </p>
<p>The biggest campaign came in 2012, in the aftermath of the gang rape and murder of the 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh on the streets of Delhi. The brutal rape triggered an unprecedented nationwide outcry, mostly by <a href="http://www.ingenere.it/en/articles/gender-violence-india-response-delhi-gang-rape">middle-class</a> India. The protests forced the government to change its <a href="https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/criminal-law-amendment/">law against rape</a>. They also led to <a href="http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/india-crime-of-sexual-assault-penalized/">enhanced penalties for offenders</a> and <a href="https://www.prsindia.org/media/articles-by-prs-team/the-criminal-laws-amendment-related-to-sexual-offences-2702">criminalization of</a> stalking, voyeurism and acid attacks on women. </p>
<p>Central to this protest was the role played by social media in urban India where women had long been frustrated by <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781134130528">corruption and rising crimes</a>. Since early 2000s, young tech-savvy millennial women had been agitating online against the culture of sexual violence in the country. The 2012 incident became a flashpoint. </p>
<p>While mainstream media coverage of the rape intensified the movement, it was <a href="http://www.gnovisjournal.org/2017/05/02/the-nirbhaya-movement-an-indian-feminist-revolution/">digital activism</a> that moved people from online protests to street demonstrations. <a href="http://www.gnovisjournal.org/2017/05/02/the-nirbhaya-movement-an-indian-feminist-revolution/">Text messages, WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter</a> hashtags such as #Nirbhaya and #StopThisShame were used to express a collective rage and mobilize people. </p>
<h2>Campaigns in Pakistan</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262524/original/file-20190306-100778-1ks0nmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262524/original/file-20190306-100778-1ks0nmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262524/original/file-20190306-100778-1ks0nmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262524/original/file-20190306-100778-1ks0nmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262524/original/file-20190306-100778-1ks0nmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262524/original/file-20190306-100778-1ks0nmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262524/original/file-20190306-100778-1ks0nmv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women in Pakistan protest against sexual violence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/ASIA-AP-I-PAK-LHR102-PAKISTAN-GANG-RAPE/31328217c6e0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/41/0">AP Photos/K.M.Chaudary</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, in neighboring Pakistan, women have been fighting to stop sexual harassment. The 2009 anti-sexual harassment bill drafted by AASHA, <a href="https://aasha.org.pk/Anti_Sexual_Harassment_Legislation_Background.php">the Alliance Against Sexual Harassment</a> is one of the earliest such <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/nosheen-abbas/pakistan-sexual-harassment-bill_b_991265.html">examples</a>. </p>
<p>Another such campaign <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=XgBpDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=%23GirlsAtDhaba&ots=Gb5JlWjpkM&sig=CLkapW41Oha3Hmg1hsTIeyuxy4w#v=onepage&q&f=false">#GirlsAtDhaba</a>, launched in 2015 by a <a href="https://dailytimes.com.pk/124372/sadia-khatri-karachis-chai-rebel/">group of feminists</a>, called on women to be more visible in public spaces. It invited <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/imaansheikh/girls-at-dhabas">Pakistani women to post their pictures</a> having tea at roadside tea stalls. </p>
<p>The #GirlsAtDhaba campaign was inspired by the <a href="https://www.vagabomb.com/Why-Loiter-A-Movement-to-Reclaim-Public-Places-for-Women-in-South-Asia/">#WhyLoiter</a> campaign in India, that advocates for women’s right to be on the streets of India for pleasure. Both these movements challenged the domination of public spaces by men, which often results in women’s increased <a href="https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/kzvvdx/india-sexual-harassment-photgraphy-series">sexual harassment</a>. </p>
<h2>Other countries</h2>
<p>Similar digital campaigns against sexual harassment took place in many other emerging economies before #MeToo.</p>
<p>In Latin America, women led powerful movements such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-metoo-brazilian-women-rise-up-against-racism-and-sexism-89117">#MeuAmigoSecreto and #MeoQueridoProfessor</a> against everyday sexism at home and in public places, including universities. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262537/original/file-20190306-100772-1jq9xed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262537/original/file-20190306-100772-1jq9xed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262537/original/file-20190306-100772-1jq9xed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262537/original/file-20190306-100772-1jq9xed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262537/original/file-20190306-100772-1jq9xed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262537/original/file-20190306-100772-1jq9xed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262537/original/file-20190306-100772-1jq9xed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chinese women rights activist Li Maizi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/China-Female-Morality-Schools/6f3a7d23ff4b407bb7cdd1df16118819/1/0">AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In China, a 25-year-old woman Li Maizi was arrested in 2015 for distributing pamphlets on sexual harassment in urban public transport, prompting a <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/china-feminist-five">global social media outcry</a>.</p>
<p>In the Middle East, since the 2011 Arab Spring, <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/freedom-without-permission">women have used personal blogs</a> to protest the social and political policing of gender. Examples include Tunisian Amina Shoui’s uploading of <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Amina+Sboui+my+body+belongs+to+me&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwix4fTEx4bfAhVqIDQIHdHVDPYQ_AUIDigB&biw=1440&bih=754#imgrc=zKd7MoQ_zcj_YM:">pictures</a> of her topless body inscribed by “<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=Amina+Sboui+We+Don%27t+Need+Your+Di-mocracy%22&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl6u_Xx4bfAhWtFzQIHSzWDyoQ_AUIDygC&biw=1440&bih=754#imgrc=GEeRMAitnRQdzM:">We Don’t Need Your Di-mocracy.”</a> She deliberately parsed the word democracy to protest against the “mock” democracy and also to indicate that she was prepared to “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=a8ssDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA132&dq=%22Fuck+Your+Morals%22+Di-mocracy&ots=KYZQtbNp3n&sig=VotQcaWzgI1hRUi_SASoo04BPZE#v=onepage&q=%22Fuck%20Your%20Morals%22%20Di-mocracy&f=false">die</a>.” </p>
<h2>The issues that remain</h2>
<p>Despite the success of many of these campaigns, there are many complex issues that need to be addressed.</p>
<p>For example, media reports from India show that women from the lower castes continue to face sexual assault, <a href="https://thewire.in/caste/tamil-nadu-dalit-girl-beheaded">often violent</a>, for daring to refuse sexual advances of upper-caste men. </p>
<p>In Pakistan, women have faced serious backlash over public accusations of sexual harassment. A leading pop star <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/pakistan-long-metoo-moment-180422151525450.html">Meena Shafi</a> and the two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/harassment-tweet-outraged-pakistan-171030093147824.html">Sharmeen Obaid</a> faced abusive online trolling when they tweeted about sexual harassment. </p>
<p>A stigma around rape and a sexist legal system often <a href="https://himalmag.com/pakistan-me-too-mai-bhi-feminism-hafsa-khawaja-2019/">discourages</a> most women in Pakistan from calling out their sexual abusers. </p>
<h2>Recognizing global campaigns</h2>
<p>In projecting #MeToo as a global phenomenon, <a href="http://time.com/5192406/metoo-international-womens-day-care/#">the international media</a> often implies that it was the West that helped mobilize women around sexual violence and gave it a name. </p>
<p>This belief reinforces what Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole has referred to, in a different context, as the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/">“white-savior industrial complex”</a> – a colonial mindset that does not acknowledge to this day the role played by Western dominance in reinforcing women’s subordination in the non-Western world. </p>
<p>Further, it obscures a large number of anti-sexism movements that have long been led by women in different parts of the world. </p>
<p>As Ghanaian writer and women’s rights activist Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah says: Rather than a movement, #MeToo is only a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUoOu72YPfE">moment</a> – albeit an important one – which has a long way to go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alka Kurian is affiliated with:
University of Washington Bothell
Tasveer, a Seattle-based South Asian film, literature and arts non-profit</span></em></p>Women in countries such as India, Pakistan and others have long organized campaigns against sexual violence – many of which have resulted in stronger laws in these countries.Alka Kurian, Senior Lecturer, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, BothellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1113902019-02-13T12:58:50Z2019-02-13T12:58:50ZWomen politicians in Africa face huge odds but can make a real difference<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258195/original/file-20190211-174894-bu2wsw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Moves are afoot to ensure 25% of Egyptian MPs are women. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Khaled Elfiqi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women are gaining ground in politics around the world. Last year, the so-called “pink wave” saw a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christinavuleta/2018/11/07/a-pink-wave-the-record-number-of-women-heading-to-congress-include-fighters-founders-and-first-timers/">record number of women elected to Congress</a> in the US’s mid-term elections. There are signs of progress in Africa, too. </p>
<p>Last October, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was praised for his <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/power-ethiopia-gender-balanced-cabinet-181019110930577.html">“transformative leadership”</a> after appointing a new set of ministers – half of whom were women. Earlier in February, Egyptian lawmakers <a href="http://www.egypttoday.com/Article/2/64337/Proposed-bill-sets-highest-quota-for-women-in-Egypt-s">proposed amending the constitution</a> to guarantee women 25% of the seats in the national parliament. If it’s approved, this change would significantly increase the political representation of Egyptian women. At present they make up just 15% of the legislature.</p>
<p>There’s a huge amount of variation in women’s political representation across Africa, a fact shown by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women’s <a href="http://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2017/4/women-in-politics-2017-map">map of Women in Politics</a>. In some countries, including Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania, they make up a substantial portion of the legislature. However, women remain poorly represented in many others.</p>
<h2>Doubtful intentions</h2>
<p><a href="https://centreforfeministforeignpolicy.org/journal/2018/12/18/feminist-utopia-in-post-genocide-rwanda-dismantling-the-narrative-around-womens-political-representation">Some question</a> whether the increased political representation of women is necessarily a good thing, particularly in the context of Africa. They argue that it’s not entirely coincidental that many of the countries making the greatest progress in including women in politics are making far less progress in terms of democracy. </p>
<p>As others have argued, high profile efforts to promote women’s rights can help authoritarian leaders to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-myth-of-the-modernizing-dictator/2018/10/19/5f4bef0c-d30a-11e8-b2d2-f397227b43f0_story.html?utm_term=.da3b8e1746f1">present themselves as modernisers</a>. This, they hope, will attract the interest of both investors and lenders. </p>
<p>Including more women in positions of power <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/23/sometimes-autocrats-strengthen-their-power-by-expanding-womens-rights-heres-how-that-works/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f76fac8ce3a4">can also be useful domestically</a>. It allows leaders with authoritarian leanings, or dubious democratic credentials, to expand their support base and bolster political stability. The recent reforms in both <a href="https://theconversation.com/abiys-big-steps-shouldnt-obscure-undercurrents-in-ethiopia-106788">Ethiopia</a> and <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/07/24/security-human-rights-and-reform-in-egypt-pub-76943">Egypt</a> could well be the product of such strategies, rather than a genuine commitment to promoting gender equality. </p>
<p>Does this mean that there’s nothing to be gained by including more women in politics? There may be no guarantee it promotes democracy. But there are reasons to believe it might pay off in terms of development.</p>
<h2>Impact on development</h2>
<p>It’s <a href="https://womendeliver.org/2018/why-women-in-politics/">often said</a> that opening up positions of political power to women will lead to development policies that are more effective and better implemented. Now, we’re starting to see evidence that this is in fact the case.</p>
<p>For example, several recent studies show that improving the representation of women in parliament has a positive impact on the health sector. Political scientists Amanda Clayton and Pär Zetterberg have shown that <a href="https://amandaclayton.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/7/1/25717216/claytonzetterbergjop2018.pdf">“quota shocks”</a> – large increases in women’s parliamentary representation after the introduction of a gender quota – tend to be followed by rises in government spending on public health.</p>
<p>Other researchers have shown that increases in the number of women in parliament are associated with a variety of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-gender/article/political-cure-gender-quotas-and-womens-health/4015C9B9E943CA63F4A2606EA17606D4">positive health outcomes</a>. These include improvements in women’s life expectancy and reductions in both maternal and infant mortality.</p>
<p>These positive impacts are notable, and make sense. There’s plenty of debate about exactly <a href="https://www.sipri.org/commentary/blog/2018/lets-talk-about-womens-issues">what constitutes a “women’s issue”</a>, but there’s good reason to put health in that category. Surveys from sub-Saharan Africa show that both women citizens, and women parliamentarians, are more likely to <a href="https://amandaclayton.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/7/1/25717216/claytonetal2018cps.pdf">identify health as a priority issue</a> than their male counterparts.</p>
<p>Moreover, this “gender gap” in priorities is greater between male and female legislators than between male and female citizens. In short, if expanding the political representation of women is to have an effect anywhere, it ought to be in the health sector (and, of course, in women’s rights).</p>
<h2>Lingering questions</h2>
<p>There is, however, some bad news. It’s still not clear exactly how these positive impacts on development come about. In the case of research showing the link between “quota shocks” and health spending, for instance, there is a correlation – but claims about causal effects remain questionable. </p>
<p>New research is desperately needed that untangles exactly how women in politics make a difference. This is important to help justify the continuing campaign to increase women’s political representation around the world. It will also allow international donors to help women in politics make a positive difference. It’s hard to help someone achieve their goals if you don’t understand the tactics they have at their disposal.</p>
<p>With this in mind, an <a href="https://www.wfd.org/research/political-economy-of-democracy-promotion/">ongoing collaboration</a> between the University of Birmingham and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy – supported by the <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/global-goals/igi/index.aspx">Institute for Global Innovation</a> – has started to ask some important questions about women in African parliaments. These include whether women in parliament have an impact even where they lack “critical mass” and, if so, what strategies and tactics they employ to overcome their lack of numbers. </p>
<p>Our ongoing research suggests that parliamentary institutions – including parliamentary committees and women’s caucuses – play an important role in helping female politicians in Africa to shape development outcomes. At the moment, we’re looking into how women in Malawi used these institutions to push for some <a href="http://www.mw.undp.org/content/malawi/en/home/presscenter/articles/2017/12/12/malawi-hiv-law-amended-to-remove-rights-infringing-provisions.html">important changes to the HIV and AIDS Act</a>. </p>
<p>Generating the knowledge needed will require a lot more research, including research by experts within Africa. Some of this knowledge already exists within the region. Putting African experts at the forefront of new research will help the international community to develop programmes that go beyond “just adding women” to politics. It will also help female politicians in Africa to make a difference against the odds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Dodsworth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Opening up positions of political power to women will lead to effective and better implemented development policies.Susan Dodsworth, Research Fellow at the International Development Department, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1024292018-09-03T14:02:04Z2018-09-03T14:02:04ZWhy Tanzanian women entrepreneurs don’t apply for formal loans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234301/original/file-20180830-195319-hw4ka2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Research suggests that women enterprises in Tanzania are shy to take up business loans.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With an annual <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?end=2017&locations=TZ&start=2013">GDP growth of 7%</a> since 2013, Tanzania is one of the fastest growing economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Much of this economic growth is driven by small and medium sized enterprises, more than half of which are <a href="http://www.fsdt.or.tz/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/MSME-National-Baseline-Survey-Report.pdf">owned by women</a>.</p>
<p>But, women-owned businesses in emerging economies like Tanzania often can’t grow because of a lack of financing. </p>
<p>The most important financing source for small businesses worldwide is debt. However, <a href="http://www.ilo.org/empent/areas/womens-entrepreneurship-development-wed/WCMS_430949/lang--en/index.htm">research</a> shows that many women entrepreneurs in emerging economies don’t hold formal loans such as bank and microfinance loans. Traditionally the assumption has been that this is caused by a lack of supply. But data points to a different answer. </p>
<p>A 2013 <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691066.2017.1358927?journalCode=tvec20">survey</a> among women entrepreneurs in Tanzania showed that more than 80% of bank loan applications and more than 90% of microfinance loan applications had been approved. At the same time, only 18% of women entrepreneurs applied for bank loans and 28% for microfinance loans. </p>
<p>This suggests that a lack of demand instead of a lack of supply is to blame for the limited use of formal loans by Tanzanian women entrepreneurs. This is the result of borrower discouragement: women have negative beliefs with respect to bank and microfinance loans, which discourages them from applying. </p>
<p>In our <a href="https://limo.libis.be/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=LIRIAS1719250&context=L&vid=Lirias&lang=en_US&search_scope=Lirias&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,staffnr_U0096673&sortby=date&offset=0">study</a> we set out to identify women entrepreneurs’ beliefs about bank and microfinance loans. We also explored where these beliefs originated from and exactly how they discourage women from borrowing. We interviewed 29 women entrepreneurs from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city and economic capital. </p>
<p>We found that there are many different reasons why women entrepreneurs don’t apply, many of them interrelated.</p>
<h2>Lack of trust</h2>
<p>Most women we spoke to said they didn’t believe that loan officers discriminated against women. But they complained about the unattractive borrowing terms offered by banks. We heard stories of extremely high interest rates (up to 20% or even 30% annually) and collateral requirements. </p>
<p>Many women told us that they had no collateral. They either didn’t own a house or land or didn’t have their husbands’ permission to use them as collateral. </p>
<p>In addition, those who could use their houses as collateral didn’t want to risk losing them in the event of defaulting. </p>
<p>Entrepreneurs mentioned that high taxes as well as adverse economic and political conditions reduced their profits. </p>
<p>As a result, many feared that they would fail to pay back their loan and would then face harassment or abuse by loan officers.</p>
<p>Apart from unattractive borrowing terms and default risk, many argued that application processes were long and costly. One informant told us she couldn’t provide the extensive financial information required because she didn’t keep accounts.</p>
<p>And loan officers often requested bribes to speed up the process or bend requirements.</p>
<p>The women also complained about various types of inappropriate behaviour from loan officers. Two women mentioned that loan officers asked for sexual favours in exchange for a loan. Others blamed them for exploiting entrepreneurs’ lack of financial knowledge. </p>
<p>For example, women who do end up applying for loans don’t know that payments increase if they are late in paying back their loans, or that the bank has the right to sell their collateral. </p>
<p>We also heard stories of loan officers who visited women entrepreneurs in their businesses or even at home to convince them to take out a loan. One informant claimed that loan officers purposefully sought out entrepreneurs with valuable assets in the hopes of seizing them in case of default.</p>
<h2>Painful experiences</h2>
<p>Two mechanisms shape women entrepreneurs’ beliefs: personal experiences and stories from others.</p>
<p>Some informants applied for loans in the past and were rejected; others had trouble reimbursing their loan or experienced other problems such as corruption. Even if they’d had these experiences taking out informal loans, it nevertheless affected their beliefs about formal loans. </p>
<p>Stories of other people’s negative experiences with both formal and informal loans also shaped their beliefs. These stories either come from within the entrepreneur’s personal network or were passed on within the community. </p>
<p>Women entrepreneurs’ negative beliefs about formal loans give rise to negative attitudes. Some mentioned that getting a loan would reduce their freedom to run the business and use the money as they saw fit.</p>
<p>Because of their negative attitudes most women entrepreneurs said they didn’t intend to apply for a loan any time soon. One said that a bank or microfinance loan would be the last thing she would do to access money for her business. </p>
<h2>What needs to be done</h2>
<p>In the past policymakers have tried to address women-owned businesses’ lack of financing by increasing the supply of finance. But our research shows that this is addressing the wrong problem. In Tanzania women entrepreneurs aren’t deterred by a lack of supply. They don’t apply for formal loans for a host of reasons – most of them negative beliefs.</p>
<p>This is what needs to be changed. But that’s easier said than done. </p>
<p>Often, entrepreneurs’ beliefs are rooted in legitimate issues such as loan officers’ inappropriate behaviour. So it’s imperative that policymakers tackle problems such as corruption, harassment and abuse. </p>
<p>In other cases negative beliefs are probably the result of entrepreneurs’ lack of knowledge and low financial literacy. This can be mitigated by educating women entrepreneurs on how to keep accounts, how to invest loans and explanations on the relationship between interest and risk.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vanessa Naegels receives funding from the Belgian Development Cooperation via VLIR-UOS. VLIR-UOS supports partnerships between universities in Flanders and the South, which seek innovative answers to global and local challenges. More info on <a href="http://www.vliruos.be">www.vliruos.be</a>.</span></em></p>Women-owned small business in Tanzania stay away from formal loans because of their negative beliefs about loans.Vanessa Naegels, PhD researcher, KU LeuvenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/913022018-03-08T11:40:32Z2018-03-08T11:40:32ZVery few women oversee US companies. Here’s how to change that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209402/original/file-20180307-146697-1ggogv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men's dominance in the boardroom has barely changed over the years. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Everett Collection/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Women’s participation in the labor force <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002">has soared</a> over the past 50 years, rising from 32 percent in 1948 to 56.7 percent as of January. </p>
<p>Yet those gains have not translated into the U.S. corporate boardroom, where women <a href="http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=5A7755E1-EFDD-1973-A0B5C54AFF3FB0AE">held just 16.6 percent</a> of seats in 2015, according to a Credit Suisse analysis of the world’s largest 3,400 or so companies. That’s up a little from the 12.7 percent five years earlier but still disappointingly low.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=loPMxzAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholars</a> of corporate governance, we felt the answer to this puzzle might require a bit of digging beyond this simple percentage. So we crunched the numbers on individual states over an 11-year period to see where women fared better in the boardroom and why. </p>
<p>Our findings were startling but also suggest a solution.</p>
<h2>The case for parity</h2>
<p>The ethical case for a government promoting or even mandating gender equality, whether in the classroom, office or boardroom, seems fairly straightforward.</p>
<p>Beyond that, research suggests that companies with more female directors achieve better <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/58/5/1546.short">financial results</a>, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/corg.12165/full">are more socially responsible</a> and are less likely to engage in wrongdoing such as <a href="http://amj.aom.org/content/58/5/1572.short">fraud</a>. </p>
<p>While many countries in Europe have used quotas to get more women on corporate boards, in the U.S. there is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/world/europe/german-law-requires-more-women-on-corporate-boards.html">resistance</a> to doing so. Instead, federal government agencies have focused on disclosure, which <a href="https://web.northeastern.edu/ruthaguilera/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/36.-Terjesen-Aguilera-Lorenz-2014-JBE.pdf">has had little impact</a>.</p>
<p>Under the U.S. Constitution, states have significant power in setting their own policies. And while none have instituted a gender quota for corporate boards, some states have gone further than the federal government on a variety of policies that affect women’s career advancement, such as workplace discrimination and family planning. We theorized that these differences might help explain the prevalence of women on boards in some states and not others.</p>
<h2>A wide range of representation</h2>
<p>To find out, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318300444">we examined</a> the boardroom diversity of the 1,500 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 1500 index, which represents about 90 percent of total U.S. market capitalization. </p>
<p>We focused on the period 2003 to 2014 using data provided by <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=3419764">Governance Metrics International</a>, which compiles governance information annually from companies’ proxy statements and public filings. </p>
<p>Nationally, our data showed that just 15.2 percent of S&P 1500 board seats were occupied by women in 2014, up modestly from 9.7 percent in 2003. One explanation for why our figures show less representation than the Credit Suisse data cited earlier is that the largest corporations have done a better job promoting women, while the S&P 1500 includes medium-sized companies as well. This is a correlation also supported by our data.</p>
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<p>Our sample included companies headquartered in 49 states (none were in Wyoming). As some states only had a few companies listed in the index during the period and others had many, we controlled for the economic size of each state as well as several other factors, such as a company’s size and state demographics. This allowed us to more fairly compare each state’s figures and isolate potential explanations. </p>
<p>Overall, the national trend of increasing representation persisted in the vast majority of states from 2003 to 2014, while four experienced slight declines. Not a single woman served on the board of the sole Alaskan company in the index during the period. Beyond that, the data showed wide variation from state to state. </p>
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<p>In 2014, the worst states for women on boards were Louisiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Alaska, all of which had less than 10 percent. New Mexico boasted the most women on boards at 44 percent, followed by Vermont, Delaware, Iowa and Maine. </p>
<p>Another way of looking at the data is to focus not just on basic representation but at what percentage of companies have three or more women in the boardroom. Research shows that this <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10551-011-0815-z.pdf">can constitute a critical mass</a> that enables them to make a real difference by affecting a board’s working style and dynamic and creating a more favorable environment for women’s perspectives to be heard. </p>
<p>By that measure, the data are a lot more discouraging. Only 11 states, such as Minnesota, Connecticut and Washington, had even a third of their companies meet this threshold. In 18 other states, including Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia, less than 10 percent had at least three women on their boards. </p>
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<h2>Women’s rights</h2>
<p>What explains the differences? </p>
<p>Our initial hypothesis was that state policies had something to do with it because <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0007650315613980">existing research</a> has found a link between national governmental policies and participation of women in leadership positions. </p>
<p>So we examined whether states had gender-related policies in three general areas: reproductive rights, anti-discrimination and work-family balance. We then analyzed several databases to find out which states had these policies. </p>
<p>We found that that companies headquartered in states with policies that provided more protections for women than the federal government requires in terms of reproductive rights, such as public funding for abortion and laws against gender discrimination, tended to have a greater share of female directors on their boards. Interestingly, we didn’t find a link with work-life balance policies such as better access to maternity leave. </p>
<p>For example, states like Minnesota, Connecticut and Washington – all of which have a greater level of female board representation than the national average over the 11-year period – also had most of the policies we identified. All three provide funding for abortions through Medicaid and have passed <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/discrimination-employment.aspx">gender discrimination protections</a> that are stronger than exist at the federal level. </p>
<p>In contrast, states where relatively few women sat on corporate boards, such as Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, Georgia, Nebraska and Virginia, tended to have weaker policies protecting women and their rights. </p>
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<p>Overall, we found a strong statistical link between these types of policies and female representation in the boardroom, which held even after controlling for alternative explanations, such as the political orientation of the state and cultural attitudes toward women based on surveys. To us, the point isn’t that these policies in particular lead to more women on boards, but that they broadly represent a favorable cultural environment for women in the workplace. </p>
<p>There were a few notable exceptions to our findings. California, for example, which has progressive policies in these areas, boasts few women on its boards, or about 14 percent in 2014. One possible explanation could be that <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20159898.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Acccc9b1c2022ca9e0a0f530fa8775900">older companies are more likely to have more women on their boards</a>. A significant number of California companies in the index were relatively young. </p>
<h2>Equity without quotas</h2>
<p>Making it into the highest echelons of a corporation is very difficult and typically requires opportunity for training and access to social networks, both of which are jeopardized when, for example, women suffer harassment on the job or incur a “motherhood penalty.” It is not surprising, for example, that female directors are significantly more likely to be <a href="http://www.heidrick.com/Knowledge-Center/Publication/2012-Board-Of-Directors-Survey">single and childless</a>, compared with their male peers.</p>
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<p>European countries such as <a href="https://web.northeastern.edu/ruthaguilera/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/36.-Terjesen-Aguilera-Lorenz-2014-JBE.pdf">Iceland, Norway</a> and <a href="https://www.la-croix.com/Economie/Social/Les-femmes-restent-tres-minoritaires-dans-conseils-dadministration-2017-01-03-1200814337">France</a> have become <a href="http://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/index.cfm?fileid=5A7755E1-EFDD-1973-A0B5C54AFF3FB0AE">world leaders</a> in female representation by instituting quotas. In 2017, <a href="http://eige.europa.eu/gender-statistics/dgs/indicator/ta_pwr_bus_bus__wmid_comp_compbm">women held more than 40 percent</a> of the seats on the largest listed companies in all three countries, a significant increase from a decade earlier. </p>
<p>The good news is that our findings suggest that states – as well as the federal government – have policy options at their disposal short of establishing gender quotas to increase female representation in the boardroom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The share of board seats held by women varies dramatically across the country, from none in Alaska to close to half in New Mexico. A few key policies may make all the difference.Yannick Thams, Assistant Professor of Strategy and International Business, Suffolk UniversityBari Bendell, Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, Suffolk UniversitySiri Terjesen, Dean's Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship, American University Kogod School of BusinessLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/838592017-09-18T23:14:01Z2017-09-18T23:14:01ZThe Deuce: Porn, nostalgia and late capitalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186238/original/file-20170915-8108-1ppqsu7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2165%2C310%2C2801%2C2964&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Paul Schiraldi/HBO)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Gritty” and “authentic” — these words of praise are now commonplace when discussing the television dramas of David Simon. And no less so with <a href="http://www.hbocanada.com/the-deuce"><em>The Deuce</em></a>, his series about the rise of the pornography industry in the 1970s, which debuted Sept. 10 on HBO. But there’s another term that helps explain the show’s appeal: Nostalgia. </p>
<p>Simon’s <em>The Deuce</em> is a searing critique of late capitalism, with the central thesis that pornography itself ushered in an era of libertarian market forces and with it, misogyny.</p>
<p>It was probably only a matter of time before high-quality television attempted to dig into the complex world of 1970s porn, a world that, once profoundly visible, is all but erased from the streets of 21st century New York City. </p>
<p>Today’s porn, now primarily based in Los Angeles, bears little resemblance to the porn produced in the time known as the “Golden Age.” Simon is riding a swell of renewed interest in this curious blip in porn history. </p>
<p>Companies such as <a href="https://vinegarsyndrome.com/">Vinegar Syndrome</a> and <a href="http://distribpix.com/">Distribpix</a> lovingly restore and re-release HD copies of classic porno of the era, while artsy cinemas such as the <a href="http://thenewbev.com/">New Beverly</a> in Los Angeles and <a href="http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/calendar?view=list&month=09&year=2014#day-18">Anthology Archives</a> in New York run XXX retrospectives. Showtime channel aired two seasons of <a href="http://www.cinemablend.com/television/Showtime-Pairs-Dave-Porn-With-Gigolos-Unscripted-Series-Premieres-Later-Month-36013.html"><em>Dave’s Old Porn</em></a> as well as two documentaries, <em>X-Rated</em> and <em><a href="http://www.sho.com/titles/3420285/x-rated-2-the-greatest-adult-stars-of-all-time">X-Rated 2</a></em>, that listed the greatest adult films and adult stars of all time. </p>
<h2>Understanding sex workers</h2>
<p>Marketing surrounding <a href="http://example.com/"><em>The Deuce</em></a> has highlighted the authentic portrayal of the New York City that once was, including the players that lived the golden age.</p>
<p>Series co-star Maggie Gyllenhall has been particularly vocal about her commitment to understanding the women sex workers of the time, reading <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Porno-Star-tina-russell/dp/B0000E8Q64">Tina Russell’s autobiography <em>Porno Star</em></a> and speaking with show consultant, <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnieSprinkle">Annie Sprinkle</a>, a former sex worker and sex educator.</p>
<p>Simon has repeatedly insisted <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/10/david-simon-george-pelecanos-the-deuce-pornography-drama-interview-the-wire">pornography is central to problems of 21st century labour and gender</a> relations. But if we accept pornography (and the sex industry in general) is to blame for everything that went wrong with postmodern America, what does that mean for the progressive politics of work and sex?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186447/original/file-20170918-420-1hs30mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/186447/original/file-20170918-420-1hs30mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186447/original/file-20170918-420-1hs30mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186447/original/file-20170918-420-1hs30mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=371&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186447/original/file-20170918-420-1hs30mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186447/original/file-20170918-420-1hs30mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/186447/original/file-20170918-420-1hs30mj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>The Deuce</em> follows twin brothers, Vincent and Frankie Martino (Franco) and street-based sex workers, Candy (Gyllenhall) and Darlene (Fishback).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Paul Schiraldi/HBO)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The show follows twin brothers, Vincent and Frankie Martino (played by James Franco), and street-based sex worker Eileen “Candy” Merrell (played by Maggie Gyllenhall). They’re looking for ways out of poverty by getting in on the ground floor of the emerging pornographic film industry. For Candy, especially, pornography is a chance to exert more control over her work by moving indoors and selling sex as a performance instead of a trade. </p>
<h2>Gender diversity</h2>
<p>Simon and his co-creator, George Pelacanos, went to great lengths to consult with sex workers of the era, most notably Sprinkle. They also hired women such as <a href="http://www.meganabbott.com/">crime novelist Megan Abbott</a> and <em>Breaking Bad’s</em> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0533713/">Michelle MacLaren</a> into significant creative roles. Gyllenhall also serves as a series producer. </p>
<p>The conscious gender diversity adds considerably to the nuanced portraits of the women characters. Candy, an independent worker, is unique among the women strolling 42nd Street, who typically rely on pimps who simultaneously protect and abuse them. </p>
<p>Yet, Candy is not the only one who sees opportunity in pornography. Darlene (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/domfishback/?hl=en">Dominique Fishback</a>), a sweet-faced young worker, feels exploited when she realizes a client is making money from a film of their date, and turns to her pimp for fair remuneration. It dawns on her that there may be alternatives to the street. Importantly, that doesn’t mean leaving sex work completely, but transitioning into other fields.</p>
<p>There is a lot of promise, then, that as the series unfolds. We will see more than the usual downtrodden prostitutes upstaged by colourful pimps and mobsters. So why suggest, as Simon and Pelacanos have, that <a href="http://variety.com/2017/scene/news/the-deuce-premiere-david-simon-maggie-gyllenhaal-james-franco-1202552037/">pornography is the driving force of 21st century misogyny</a>? </p>
<h2>Lessons on pornography</h2>
<p>Disgust toward sex work runs deep in our culture and will be very hard to redirect if the headlines about <em>The Deuce</em> are anything to go by. “Sleazy,” and “dirty” seem to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/arts/television/the-deuce-hbo-david-simon.html">popular adjectives</a>, alongside some strange longings for the era before a porn industry existed, when misogyny was a little more palatable. </p>
<p>More concerning is the claim that it isn’t pornography per se, but its co-ordination into a major media industry, that has led to the systematic exploitation of women. This is typical of contemporary anti-porn rhetoric which <a href="http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0745651933.html">combines sex panic with vulgar Marxism</a> to suggest the very act of commercializing sex causes gender violence. Such arguments contribute to the stigma that make sex work dangerous in the first place.</p>
<p>Sure, Pelacanos confides, he and his friends would drive downtown to <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2017/09/08/deuce-david-simon-richard-price-george-pelacanos-tv-656421.html">purchase sex when they were 16</a> and engage in “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/10/david-simon-george-pelecanos-the-deuce-pornography-drama-interview-the-wire">locker-room talk</a>” about women, but not as badly as kids these days do. </p>
<p>It’s not surprising many of the reviews of <em>The Deuce</em> focus on the lessons of pornography in the same way <em>The Wire</em> invoked conversations about the drug trade. But there is something qualitatively different going on. </p>
<p>In <em>The Wire</em>, it wasn’t drugs themselves as much as failures of the “<a href="http://www.history.com/topics/the-war-on-drugs">War on Drugs</a>” that were dramatized: carceral or prison culture, institutional racism, political corruption and media sensationalism were searingly depicted as the structural causes for the drug crisis. </p>
<p>Similarly, sex work rights advocates and harm reduction agencies point out the issues that make sex work far more dangerous and its representation more disturbing than it needs to be. These include: Criminalization, whorephobia, gendered poverty and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Stigma-and-the-Shaping-of-the-Pornography-Industry/Voss/p/book/9780415821179">stigma</a>. </p>
<p>There is no question many were harmed in the early porn industry — and many continue to be harmed today. Organized crime underfunded much of the production and pocketed most of the profits. Performer pay was low, with no unionization or occupational health and safety regulations. </p>
<p>But to focus on the sleaziness of porn and not on the kinds of social forces that made the early porn industry rife for labour abuse exacerbates a titillating gaze on sex workers as objects of both prurience and pity. </p>
<h2>A turning point in misogyny?</h2>
<p>While it’s clear <em>The Deuce</em> has no nostalgia for the industry, the sentimentality comes through the claims of its creators who say the era is marking a turning point in misogyny. At the same time, they invest in the stylistics of ‘70s American cinema — an era well-documented for its own sexism, objectification and systematic discrimination of women. </p>
<p>The era of Frankenheimer and <a href="https://www.filmcomment.com/article/martin-scorsese-silence-interview/">Scorsese</a> is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/nyregion/john-frankenheimer-dead-72-resilient-director-feature-films-tv-movies.html">known for great social commentary cinema</a>, but is hardly known for its advancement of women’s rights either representationally or professionally. Meanwhile, feminist champions such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366573/">Veronica Hart</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/11/movies/candida-royalle-maker-of-x-rated-films-dies-at-64.html">Candida Royalle</a>, <a href="http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/veronica-vera-and-robert-mapplethorpe-pioneering-transgender-new-york/">Veronica Vera</a>, <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/ex-porn-actress-gloria-leonard-dead-73-article-1.1601920">Gloria Leonard</a> and Annie Sprinkle found a home in New York’s pornography industry. </p>
<p>Along with many others, <a href="http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/veronica-vera-and-robert-mapplethorpe-pioneering-transgender-new-york/">they thrived personally and artistically</a>, despite the abuse and neglect they faced by systems that should have been working to make them safer. At the same time, they were honestly critical of sex work. Early on, they founded <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Sex-Workers-Unite-P993.aspx">Club 90, a support group</a>, which focused on improving both representation and workplace for women in the industry. Crucially, they built a foundation for sex worker politics to combat both the sleaze and the moral panic inside and outside the industry.</p>
<p>The global pornography industry of today is rife with the same abuses that confound labour activists across all sectors. Monopolies, outsourcing, tax evasion, digital piracy, zoning and gig economies are destroying sex workers’ livelihoods and with them whatever labour victories they had previously earned. </p>
<p>It is also creating new kinds of collectives, built on the foundations of the '70s and the legacies of women porn producers who survived. Does that make up for the misogyny? Of course not. </p>
<p>It is crucial, therefore, to distinguish between exploitative and self-determined sex work and to look for the structural causes rather than claim that sex work itself is at the root of its own exploitation. </p>
<p>Moreover, as sex worker <a href="https://medium.com/@MissLoreleiLee/dear-new-york-times-9f64155b5e19">Lorelei Lee recently indicated</a>, mainstream media might take a look in the mirror. While they borrow the voices, images, and work of sex workers for prestige, awards, and of course, money, the subjects they claim to depict remain at the margins of society.</p>
<p><em>The Deuce</em> has the talent and the expertise to do justice by sex workers. Let’s hope it doesn’t get caught in its own nostalgic gaze.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Sullivan receives funding from University of Calgary Research Grant for project on anti-porn documentary film, Not a Love Story.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Helen Marks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>“Gritty,” “authentic” are words of praise often used for TV director David Simon: No less so with The Deuce, his new series about the rise of the porn industry in New York City in the 1970s.Rebecca Sullivan, Director, Women’s Studies Program Professor, Department of English, University of CalgaryLaura Helen Marks, Postdoctoral Fellow, Tulane UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/826362017-09-04T23:02:02Z2017-09-04T23:02:02ZRape at universities: One program is proven to reduce it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184288/original/file-20170831-22427-m8qk2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance program is the only campus education program proven to decrease sexual assault.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As students return to universities across Canada and the United States this month, the safety of female students is a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/sudbury-colleges-sexual-assault-policies-1.4255460">major concern</a>. Sexual violence <a href="http://www.salon.com/2017/08/26/what-schools-do-not-tell-you-about-campus-sexual-assault_partner/">occurs on all campuses</a> and <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ccsvsftr.pdf">can no longer be ignored</a>. </p>
<p>It’s now widely recognized that universities and governments need to invest deeply in prevention. The province of Quebec, for example, recently announced a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-provincial-sexual-assault-policy-campus-1.4255310">$23 million investment</a> into campus sexual assault policies and prevention. </p>
<p>Less widely recognized is the importance of empowering women to talk about desire. This is a vital part of any comprehensive solution to campus sexual assault.</p>
<p>As a psychology professor who studies male violence against women, I have spent the last 10 years developing the <a href="http://sarecentre.org">Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance program</a>. The program is designed for women in the first year of university, because that’s when the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260514554425">risk of sexual assault</a> is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260508314308">highest</a>. </p>
<p>The EAAA program is the only campus education program proven to decrease sexual violence. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1411131">Study results</a> show that attending women were 46 per cent less likely to experience rape and 63 per cent less likely to experience attempted rape or other forms of sexual assault in the next year. Women who took EAAA also benefited from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684317690119">lower rates of sexual assault two years later</a>. </p>
<p>Women also increased their ability to detect risk in men’s behaviour and their confidence in asserting their rights. They learned, and became more willing to use, the most effective verbal and physical strategies for defending themselves. Importantly, these changes were accomplished while substantially decreasing women’s (already relatively low) beliefs in rape myths and woman-blaming. </p>
<h2>Sexual desire at the centre</h2>
<p>So how does EAAA accomplish all this? In 2001, prominent sexual violence researchers <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1471-6402.00030">Patricia Rozee and Mary Koss</a> synthesized a decade of rape research and suggested the Assess, Acknowledge, Act (AAA) components of an effective program for women. I brought the idea to life and added an “enhancement” — emancipatory sex education. This puts women’s own values and desires at the centre of the discussion. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184383/original/file-20170901-27315-5u4i82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184383/original/file-20170901-27315-5u4i82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184383/original/file-20170901-27315-5u4i82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184383/original/file-20170901-27315-5u4i82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184383/original/file-20170901-27315-5u4i82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184383/original/file-20170901-27315-5u4i82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184383/original/file-20170901-27315-5u4i82.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Helping women to explore their sexual desires and communicate their needs is critical to reducing sexual assault.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The EAAA program focuses on sexual assault by acquaintances and adds to women’s existing strength, knowledge and skills. It provides space for them to explore their sexual and relationship goals and desires. It reinforces, with knowledge and skills, their rights to seek and engage in sex they do want, to resist sex they don’t want and to fight back against threats to their bodily integrity. </p>
<p>EAAA is never prescriptive. The goal is to increase women’s options so that they are able to participate in their lives fully and without fear. </p>
<h2>Asserting sexual needs</h2>
<p>Most of the media coverage about the EAAA has focused on the Act unit which includes two hours of self-defence originating in a long tradition of <a href="http://wendo.ca/">feminist self-defence in Canada</a> and the <a href="https://seejanefightback.com/about-2/">United States</a>. This is definitely a critical element of EAAA and the reduction in completed sexual assaults. But that doesn’t explain how EAAA reduces <em>attempted</em> sexual assaults even more dramatically.</p>
<p>The final Relationships & Sexuality unit is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684310384101">likely responsible</a>. This provides women with sexual knowledge. It offers time for exploring their sexual desires and practice in communicating their interests (in, for example, a specific sexual act) and asserting their needs (for safer sex, for example). It provides a positive sexuality frame within which resistance to sexual assault is contextualized. </p>
<p>Greater sexual knowledge and confidence around desires and values makes coercion visible earlier. If a woman sees coercion earlier, then her options for leaving or resisting in other ways are greater. </p>
<h2>Holding women responsible?</h2>
<p>Some feminists have expressed the view that all interventions for women are implicitly or explicitly holding women responsible for men’s behaviour. </p>
<p>I agree that many campaigns have done this. Women are still being told (by parents, media, posters and talks on campus) that they should restrict their behaviour in various ways. That they should limit where they go and when, how they dress and how they behave — to stay safe. This “advice” is based on myths, not evidence. These social precautions <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J012v04n01_06">interfere with a woman’s quality of life</a> without providing actual protection, especially since most danger comes <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/170711/dq170711a-eng.htm">from men whom women already know</a>. </p>
<p>The EAAA program for women undermines these messages. The program makes it clear that there is no risk in any situation unless there is a man present who is willing to engage in coercive behaviour. “Risk factors” (such as isolation or the presence of alcohol) are described as circumstances which provide perpetrators with certain advantages. Women brainstorm ways of undermining those advantages and come up with strategies that work for them personally. </p>
<p>Our research findings show that this message about perpetrator responsibility gets through; women decrease their belief in woman-blaming explanations for rape. And EAAA is beneficial for women even if they are sexually assaulted after they take it. Survivors who have taken EAAA blame themselves less than do survivors who did not receive the program. </p>
<h2>Beyond bystander education</h2>
<p>Universities need to invest deeply in effective prevention to reduce campus sexual assault. I, like many feminists on campus, would like universities to “tell men not to rape.” Unfortunately, the research evidence shows us that the available educational programs for men <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2014.05.004">do not work to accomplish their goals</a>. Only comprehensive strategies working on multiple levels will produce the individual and campus-wide changes we are striving for. Large and sustained changes cannot be accomplished with brief interventions or during one occasion during a university orientation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184385/original/file-20170901-27276-1hkorrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184385/original/file-20170901-27276-1hkorrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184385/original/file-20170901-27276-1hkorrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184385/original/file-20170901-27276-1hkorrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184385/original/file-20170901-27276-1hkorrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184385/original/file-20170901-27276-1hkorrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184385/original/file-20170901-27276-1hkorrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A range of sexual education efforts are required on campus to shift ‘rape culture.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The relatively recent focus on bystander education is one prevention option endorsed <a href="https://dr6j45jk9xcmk.cloudfront.net/documents/4593/actionplan-itsneverokay.pdf">in Canada</a>, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/ovw/page/file/905942/download">United States</a> and the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/sv-prevention-technical-package.pdf">CDC</a>. And it’s a good choice. Bystander programs have been shown to change students’ attitudes toward intervening when they see a problem. More importantly, they <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0039660">increase students’ actual intervention behaviour</a>. </p>
<p>But these bystander programs weren’t designed to, and do not, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2014.05.004">decrease sexual assault perpetration or victimization</a> in the short term. Additionally, most sexual assaults occur in circumstances where <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0039073">no one is present</a> who could intervene. So they’re primarily effective in increasing interventions in “precursor” settings where risk is elevated (for example, where a man overhears his friend say that he doesn’t care what it takes, he is going to “hit that” tonight) but a sexual assault has not begun. </p>
<h2>A comprehensive solution</h2>
<p>If a good bystander program is delivered broadly and in a sustained way on any campus, over time, we expect that a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.10078">culture shift will occur</a>. In this context, not only would social norms stop supporting a “rape culture,” but perpetrators would also find it extremely difficult to act unnoticed and uninterrupted. Unfortunately we aren’t there yet. </p>
<p>Empowering women is, therefore, another critical piece of a comprehensive solution to the problem of sexual violence. EAAA empowers women students with the resources they need to defend their own sexual rights. It does this within a positive sexuality frame that fits well with other sexual education efforts on campus, such as sexual consent education.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlene Senn is a researcher at the University of Windsor. She is also the founder/CEO of the SARE Centre, a non-profit organization, created to disseminate the EAAA sexual assault resistance program. The research described was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (FRN #110976).</span></em></p>A program developed by a University of Windsor professor significantly reduces a woman’s risk of rape on campus. It also focuses on communicating sexual desires.Charlene Senn, Professor of Psychology, University of WindsorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/821622017-08-08T15:06:25Z2017-08-08T15:06:25ZPros and cons of the three women running for South Africa’s presidency<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181208/original/file-20170807-16774-tzj94a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women singing at a South African ANC Women's League meeting.Three senior women in ANC are contesting the presidency of the party.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa celebrates Women’s Day on August 9th to mark the day in 1956 when <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/1956-womens-march-pretoria-9-august">20 000 women marched</a> to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to insist on their rights. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gov.za/womens-day">Women’s Day</a> provides an opportune moment to reflect on what it would mean for South Africa to be governed by a woman president after the 2019 elections. Three women from the governing African National Congress are running as candidates - Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Baleka Mbete and Lindiwe Sisulu. Because voters vote for a party, the President is elected by the members of parliament. The ANC holds the majority vote, which means that the president will most likely be an ANC candidate.</p>
<p>All three women are ANC stalwarts who can be considered as part of the exile generation. They were all active in the liberation struggle, and all have contributed to the country since the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1994">first democratic elections in 1994</a>. </p>
<p>The question is: will having a woman as president lead to more of the same in terms of the trajectory the ANC has been on since 2007 when Jacob Zuma was elected as President? </p>
<p>And, will a woman at the helm bring a set of feminist values to the table? Women leaders who believe in substantive representation, more than merely numbers in government, will bring a commitment to changing conditions of gender inequality to the position. They are normally influenced by feminist values. Former British Prime Minister <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-no-feminist">Maggie Thatcher</a>, for example, did not care about women’s equality at all, while <a href="https://panampost.com/belen-marty/2015/03/10/bachelet-gives-chilean-feminists-a-shot-in-the-arm-with-new-ministry/">Michelle Bachelet</a> implemented far reaching gender policies in Chile.</p>
<h2>A woman at the helm</h2>
<p>If South Africans get a woman who will govern in the same way as a man they would have gained nothing but a switch in gender. But because the three candidates also participated in the liberation struggle, they know how difficult it is for women to advance in political parties and how gender equality needs to be taken off the back burner.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181176/original/file-20170807-16790-cjdbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181176/original/file-20170807-16790-cjdbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181176/original/file-20170807-16790-cjdbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181176/original/file-20170807-16790-cjdbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181176/original/file-20170807-16790-cjdbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181176/original/file-20170807-16790-cjdbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181176/original/file-20170807-16790-cjdbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1047&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dlamini-Zuma, Sisulu and Mbete are more or less the same age and have long track records as political leaders. In many respects they have similar or better track records than some of the ANC’s male leaders. All three are well educated. </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nkosazana-clarice-dlamini-zuma">Dlamini-Zuma</a></strong> holds a <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nkosazana-clarice-dlamini-zuma">medical degree</a> from the University of Bristol. She has held three ministerial positions – health, foreign affairs and home affairs. She was also <a href="http://www.africaunionfoundation.org/en/council-members/nkosazana-dlamini-zuma">chair of the African Union</a> from 2012 to 2017.</p>
<p>It’s both unfair and sexist to talk about Dlamini-Zuma solely in terms of the fact that she is President <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/ferial-haffajee/heres-a-list-of-nkosazana-dlamini-zumas-accomplishments-so-you_a_21650920/">Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife</a> as though she has no other credentials.</p>
<p>As Minister of Health she spearheaded policies that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/ferial-haffajee/heres-a-list-of-nkosazana-dlamini-zumas-accomplishments-so-you_a_21650920/">made health care free</a> for poor women and children under the age of six. </p>
<p>During her period at the AU she championed gender equality and a gender <a href="http://www.africaunionfoundation.org/en/pages/agenda-2063">vision for 2063</a>.</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/leaders/profile/1044">Baleka Mbete</a></strong>, holds a diploma in teaching and is the national chairperson of the ANC and the speaker of the National Assembly. She was the Secretary-General of the ANC Women’s League from 1991-1993 and a member of the presidential panel of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She has not held a ministerial post. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181180/original/file-20170807-16761-13ylia8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181180/original/file-20170807-16761-13ylia8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181180/original/file-20170807-16761-13ylia8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181180/original/file-20170807-16761-13ylia8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181180/original/file-20170807-16761-13ylia8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181180/original/file-20170807-16761-13ylia8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181180/original/file-20170807-16761-13ylia8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Baleka Mbete.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Staining her record was her connection with a <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Parly-reprimands-Travelgate-MPs-20070329">scandal</a> involving the misuse of parliamentary air tickets, as well as <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/mbete-survived-scandal-much-like-zuma-417256">fraudulently</a> obtaining her driver’s licence.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/lindiwe-nonceba-sisulu/"><strong>Lindiwe Sisulu</strong></a> is the daughter of ANC icons <a href="https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/south-africa-fast-facts/history-facts/inourlifetime">Walter and Albertina Sisulu </a> which is why she’s often referred to as <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/dispatch/sisulus-presidency-campaign-raises-a-number-of-questions-10548291">“ANC royalty”</a>. She has a BA Honours degree in history and political studies and is studying for a PhD. </p>
<p>Of the three candidates she has the most experience in the executive. She has held six ministerial portfolios, including defence and intelligence.</p>
<p>What makes her an excellent candidate is the fact that she is not involved in any faction and has a good record of good governance. She will also be able to deal with the rot in the intelligence sector since she worked as an intelligence officer under Zuma when he was head of ANC intelligence when the organisation was banned.</p>
<p>But what is their relationship with the organised women’s sector?</p>
<h2>The candidates and women</h2>
<p>Mbete was the Secretary-General of the ANC Women’s League at a time before it became a tea club for male leaders. She was also the chair of the women’s caucus in parliament. She understands feminism and was considered a militant member of the women’s league when it returned from exile. At the time she insisted that women should be <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_ANC_Women_s_League.html?id=ebeVBQAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">mobilised to fight for their rights</a>. </p>
<p>But her years as the speaker of parliament have marred her track record. When members of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – which included women – were <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-02-11-eff-chants-zupta-must-fall-as-they-exit-sona">forcibly removed</a> by security guards during Zuma’s State of the Nation Address she stood by as they were manhandled and assaulted. </p>
<p>For its part, the women’s caucus never really took off.</p>
<p>Dlamini-Zuma was a member of the Gender Action Group during the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa-codesa-2">Convention for a Democratic South Africa</a>. But in the first parliament she didn’t stand out as a vocal supporter of feminism in the same way as many other women MPs. These included <a href="http://www.sahrc.org.za/home/index636f.html?ipkContentID=76&ipkMenuID=58">Pregs Govender</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-frene-noshir-ginwala">Frene Ginwala</a>.</p>
<h2>The case for a woman president</h2>
<p>I believe that South Africans should support a woman for president. The fact that they’re being scrutinised more closely than male candidates points to the patriarchal assumption that woman cannot possibly be well qualified as political leaders. </p>
<p>South Africa has lost many opportunities to appoint a woman president. Take <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/phumzile-mlambo-ngcuka">Phumzile Mlambo-Ncguka</a>, who served as deputy president under Thabo Mbeki. She went on to become the <a href="http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/directorate/executive-director">executive director of UN Women</a> where she is doing a sterling job.</p>
<p>What the ANC needs is a candidate who will unite its factions and start to root out corruption. It should be a candidate with a good track record of clean and committed governance and one who is committed to promote a women’s equality agenda. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181174/original/file-20170807-16724-1bmwbhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181174/original/file-20170807-16724-1bmwbhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181174/original/file-20170807-16724-1bmwbhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181174/original/file-20170807-16724-1bmwbhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=721&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181174/original/file-20170807-16724-1bmwbhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181174/original/file-20170807-16724-1bmwbhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181174/original/file-20170807-16724-1bmwbhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lindiwe Sisulu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fact that Dlamini-Zuma has hedged her bets with the Zuma camp has made her a member of a faction. She’s supported by the <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/politics/2017-06-13-anc-youth-league-names-top-leadership-choices-to-drive-transformation-agenda/">ANC Women’s League and the ANC Youth League</a>. But the credibility of both organisations is severely damaged. This may not, however, be the perception of many hardcore ANC supporters and may win her large numbers of votes at the ANC conference due to be held in December. </p>
<p>Support for Dlamini-Zuma could have far reaching consequences. If she’s viewed as representing an extension of Zuma’s patronage networks, her election as his successor could lead to a split in the party, weakening it severely in next year’s general election. </p>
<p>The right woman therefore needs to be supported. </p>
<p>During her term as speaker Mbete used strong arm tactics against opposition parties. Her decisions may have left many voters with a bad taste in their mouth. She is also viewed as a Zuma ally.</p>
<p>That leaves Sisulu, who may be a dark horse. But is she a darker horse than <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cyril-matamela-ramaphosa">Cyril Ramaphosa</a>, another <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/mpumalanga-is-ramaphosas-golden-ticket-analyst-20170712">contender for the presidency</a>? </p>
<p>What is unfortunate is that so far none of the three women have made gender equality the focus of their campaigns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82162/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Gouws receives funding from the National Research Foundation</span></em></p>All three female contenders for the presidency of the ANC and South Africa have strong liberation struggle credentials and have also contributed to democracy. But, are they up to the job?Amanda Gouws, Professor of Political Science, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/816092017-08-07T04:04:10Z2017-08-07T04:04:10ZThis Girl Can(‘t)? Campaign simply reworks 'sex sells’ approach<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180457/original/file-20170801-5515-fgrf03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The problem with the This Girl Can campaign is that the male gaze remains dominant, internalised as self-perception.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">This Girl Can/Sport England</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sport England is to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-25/this-girl-can-sports-campaign-for-women-comes-to-australia/8740124">partner with VicHealth</a> for a social marketing campaign to encourage women to participate in sport based on its <a href="https://www.sportengland.org/our-work/women/this-girl-can/">This Girl Can</a> campaign. However, beyond the campaign’s initial “feel-good” nature, this news may not be as totally positive as it seems.</p>
<p>In its attempt to motivate and empower women, the campaign material may unintentionally work with entrenched norms of sexualising women to perpetuate their self-objectification. This is likely not only to be detrimental to their mental and physical health, but also to further their commodification in society.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/sexualised-girls-are-seen-as-less-intelligent-and-less-worthy-of-help-than-their-peers-46537">Sexualised girls are seen as less intelligent and less worthy</a></em> </p>
<hr>
<h2>The origins of This Girl Can</h2>
<p>In 2015, Sport England launched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toH4GcPQXpc">This Girl Can</a> to encourage women to be more active, regardless of body type or age. The mainstream and social <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/01/12/girl-can-sport-england-s-campaign-influences-28m-women-be-more-active">media response</a> was positive, and the campaign has received significant global attention for its “Just Do It” style of messaging. </p>
<p>The aim was to bridge the gender gap in sport participation. Two million more British men than women were playing sport or <a href="https://www.sportengland.org/our-work/women/this-girl-can/">exercising regularly</a>. Yet 75% of women say they want to be <a href="https://www.sportengland.org/our-work/women/this-girl-can/">more active</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jsP0W7-tEOc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘This Girl Can’ campaign ad.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/this-girl-can-campaign-is-all-about-sex-not-sport-36236">Many</a> have <a href="http://persuasion-and-influence.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/this-girl-can.html">debated</a> the campaign’s <a href="http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/case-study-this-girl-can-16-million-women-exercising/1394836">likely effect</a> on women. But what’s clear is that This Girl Can is an example of the continuing power of hegemonic discipline over women’s bodies and self-conception. </p>
<p>Commercial marketing has always used this commodification of women. But its use in a campaign aimed at empowering women should be of concern.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-a-world-of-difference-between-sex-and-sexism-in-advertising-62226">There’s a world of difference between sex and sexism in advertising</a></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>What’s the problem?</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=733&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180441/original/file-20170801-5515-u9sf06.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=922&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Nike has long traded on women ‘just doing it’ to sell sportswear.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nike</span></span>
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<p>The romanticisation of women who are <a href="http://au.complex.com/sneakers/2015/08/nike-just-do-it-history">“just doing it”</a> has long been used to sell women’s sportswear. This ideology is now reaching a crescendo.</p>
<p>In the This Girl Can advertisement, simulated <a href="http://www.hypersexualdisorders.com/hypersexual-disorder-signs/">hypersexuality</a> is posited as essential to agency and action. This turns a laudably intended campaign of empowerment into one of sexual subjectification and self-surveillance.</p>
<p>The “male gaze” – depicting women and the world from a male point of view – has cemented itself as a staple in advertising, including sports campaigns. What is telling in the This Girl Can campaign is the way in which this male gaze has become an <a href="https://mronline.org/2009/05/23/from-sexual-objectification-to-sexual-subjectification-the-resexualisation-of-womens-bodies-in-the-media/">internalised self-perception</a>.</p>
<p>Another point of distinction in this campaign is a shift from women’s sexualised bodies presented as passive, mute objects of a male gaze to active, desiring sexual subjects. They are women who choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it is in their (implicitly “liberated”) self-interest.</p>
<p>The likelihood of women internalising their agency as directly linked to their sexual capital is highly related to how normalised this is. Research has found that as group identification increases, a person becomes increasingly likely to adopt that group’s behavioural norms. Considering the campaign’s viral status, this is an important consideration. </p>
<p>The exposure of bodies is central to the campaign’s intended message of body confidence and erasing fears of judgement. But, far from what many headlines would have you believe, this campaign is not revolutionary in its construction of women. </p>
<p>Being “confident”, “carefree” and “unconcerned about one’s appearance” are now central aspects of femininity – even as they exist alongside injunctions to meet impossibly high standards of beauty. </p>
<p>So, although we should rejoice at the portrayal of “normal” bodies in this and other campaigns, the same objectification of women is at play. Even when showing women’s bodies in action, rather than focusing on the traits of health, agility and co-ordination, the campaign ad frames the female body as an object. </p>
<p>The focus is on women’s buttocks, faces, hips and chests, the sexualised movements of twerking, “wobbling”, hip shaking and heavy breathing, and taglines such as “Hot, and not bothered” and “Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180443/original/file-20170801-28521-12xyn6g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/different-performance-wear-performances-morgan-leach">Under Armour</a></span>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180444/original/file-20170801-22172-wtc3af.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=387&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/different-performance-wear-performances-morgan-leach">Under Armour</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180445/original/file-20170801-22136-m0iz84.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Under Armour uses empowering language in its campaigns, but the imagery doesn’t stray far from the norm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/different-performance-wear-performances-morgan-leach">Under Armour</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>This approach, while seemingly empowering, could also be read as a simple re-engineering of the objectified female (in contrast to the athletic male) that we often see in sportswear advertising.</p>
<p>An American Psychological Association taskforce, examining the sexualisation of girls in US culture, concluded that this had negative impacts on girls’ cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, body dissatisfaction and appearance, anxiety, sexuality, attitudes and beliefs. </p>
<p>Many would contend that sexualisation can act as empowerment. However, there is some danger in this proposition for selling sports involvement to women. The taskforce highlighted a negative relationship between self-objectification and girls’ sports performance.</p>
<p>The campaign’s use of the text overlay of “I kick balls. Deal with it” reminds the viewer of the traditional androcentric domination of sports. However, we suggest empowerment is not just about claiming back an insult but understanding the reality of the constricted space and physicality of women. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/transnational/iris_marion_young.pdf">Iris Young</a> argues, there is not only a style of “throwing like a girl”, but also “running like a girl”, “hitting like a girl”, and so on. For women in sport, a space surrounds them in imagination that they are not free to move beyond. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-sport-boys-play-like-a-girl-80328">When it comes to sport, boys ‘play like a girl’</a></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>What would a better campaign do?</h2>
<p>A better way forward would be to focus on “real women’s” voices (in more than stylised overlays and sexualised panting) rather than bodies – highlighting the judgement women fear, as well as the pleasure they can get exercising. </p>
<p>It could prove empowering to take the enjoyment often reserved for men’s experience of physical activity – independent of desirability – and allowing that to be the drive for women’s participation. </p>
<p>A focus on the female voice is also prime, as the voiceover in advertising – the credible, convincing and authoritative voice of reason – is overwhelmingly likely to be male. To allow the female voice to exist free from the constraints of the gaze – that is, disembodied, omniscient, objective and empowered – could offer a route to a stronger construction of women in sports advertising.</p>
<p>When campaigns do use images of women participating in sport, a greater reliance should be on the highly relevant and typically unsexualised body parts of hands and feet – signifiers more often used in marketing sports (and <a href="https://www.macys.com/dyn_img/cat_splash/Nike_Mens_Main_Panel_2_Sneakers_1174023.png">sports equipment</a>) to men. </p>
<p>Involving more women in sport is significant. Sport and leisure spaces are a <a href="https://www.ourwatch.org.au/What-We-Do/National-Primary-Prevention-Framework">key setting</a> in the primary prevention of violence against women. </p>
<p>The chance for sport to be a site of redefining power is monumental – the very centrality of sport in gender socialisation is key to its ability to challenge traditional roles and construct new, more positive identities for both sexes.</p>
<p>We do applaud the campaign’s <a href="http://example.com/">success</a> in encouraging women to participate in sport in the UK. Unfortunately, for the most part, it does little to take women away from the usual <em>sex sells</em> approach (albeit with the inclusion of more “real” women) we have come to expect of mainstream advertising.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Harrison has received funding from Consumer Action Law Centre, Australian Securities Investment Commission, Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, Department of Health and Human Services (Victoria), Monash Health and Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura McVey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While getting more women to take part in sport is a laudable achievement, it would be better if the campaign also helped free them from the objectification of the dominant male gaze.Laura McVey, Senior Researcher, Centre for Employee and Consumer Wellbeing, Deakin UniversityPaul Harrison, Director, Centre for Employee and Consumer Wellbeing; Senior Lecturer, Deakin Business School, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638922016-08-18T09:08:02Z2016-08-18T09:08:02ZFive truths about the hijab that need to be told<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134429/original/image-20160817-3605-hcq5je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A women is more than what she wears.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-75375928/stock-photo-tranquil-portrait-of-beautiful-young-black-african-american-woman-wearing-red-hijab-taken-against-a-black-background.html?src=L8rkpFfeUDPAMBZ55hRHxg-1-2">Darrin Henry/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Rio 2016 is proving not just to be a platform for sporting prowess, it is also helping to shake up some traditionally-held cultural misconceptions too.</p>
<p>In the West, many regard traditional Muslim dress like the hijab as a sign of oppression, with women forced to wear the garments by men. But it is not as simple as that: many women choose to wear the hijab as a sign of <a href="https://theconversation.com/muslim-feminists-reclaim-the-hijab-to-fight-the-patriarchy-31126">faith, feminism, or simply because they want to</a>.</p>
<p>Recently, 19-year-old Egyptian volleyball player Doaa Elghobashy’s decision to <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/davirocha/egyptian-beach-volleyball-uniform?utm_term=.rnp55l4l2Q#.jq4YYdwdey">wear a hijab while competing against Germany</a> caused a stir. Her and partner Nada Meawad’s team uniform of long sleeved tops and ankle length trousers were already a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/rio-2016-wearing-a-hijab-wont-keep-egyptian-volleyball-player-doaa-elghobashy-away-from-sport-a7180636.html">“stark contrast”</a> to the German competitiors’ bikinis, yet it was Elghobashy’s hijab that media attention focused on.</p>
<p>Elgobashy and Meawad were the first team to represent Egypt in volleyball at the Olympics and, in the words of Elgobashy, the hijab which she has worn for ten years “doesn’t keep me away from the things I love to do”.</p>
<p>The determination and sporting prowess that Elgobashy displayed is a polar opposite to the assumption that all hijab-wearing Muslim women are passive and oppressed. The <a href="http://www.bustle.com/articles/178053-what-olympian-hijabis-like-doaa-el-ghobashy-mean-to-me-as-a-muslim-woman">support and celebration</a> that Elgobashy’s hiajb has also received is in direct contrast to the banning of burkinis in <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/15/corsican-town-becomes-third-in-france-to-ban-the-burkini-after-r/">several French towns</a> – though to look at both outfits, they cover the same amount of the body.</p>
<p>Many Muslim women today are wearing hijabs and other traditional dress to challenge the assumption that these are symbols of control. In fact, there are several revealing truths about Muslim dress that society must hear.</p>
<h2>1. Women are not forced to wear hijabs</h2>
<p>Some women choose to wear the hijab because it is a <a href="http://gutenberg.us/articles/hijab_by_country">national tradition of their country</a> of origin, or because it is the norm in their local area, city or country. Others wear it to demonstrate their <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/hijab_1.shtml">commitment to dressing modestly</a> and for religious reasons. Like any item of clothing, some women wear the hijab for specific occasions, such as for family or community events, or during particular times of day but take it off at other times, such as wearing the hijab to and from school or work but taking it off while studying or working. </p>
<p>A very small minority may claim to be <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10323303/I-was-forced-to-wear-the-veil-and-I-wish-no-other-woman-had-to-suffer-it.html">forced to wear the hijab</a>. However, many studies show that in fact Muslim women choose to wear the hijab as a way of <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2013.810601">showing self-control</a>, power and agency. </p>
<h2>2. You’re not sexually oppressed</h2>
<p>Many hijab wearers have said that they wear the veil not as a symbol of control by a man, but rather to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/nadiya-hussains-bad-hair---and-the-other-reasons-why-muslim-wome/">promote their own feminist ideals</a>. For many Muslim women, wearing a hijab offers a way for them to take control of their bodies and to <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/news/thoughtleadership/?itemno=22042">claim a stance</a> that challenges the ways in which women are marginalised by men. </p>
<p>Research has shown that for young Muslim women, wearing a hijab says little about the likelihood of them <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09663699925123">having a boyfriend or participating in a sexual relationship</a>. Indeed, some young women have said they would wear the hijab to give them more space to engage in such activities.</p>
<h2>3. You’re not more likely to be linked to terrorism</h2>
<p>Since 9/11, <a href="http://www.livescience.com/25110-negative-messages-muslims-media.html">negative media coverage of Muslim communities</a>, alongside government counter-terrorism policies in many Western countries, has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/04/prevent-hate-muslims-schools-terrorism-teachers-reject">further demonised Muslims</a>. British research has shown that government policies have resulted in Muslims receiving unjustified attention in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2011.645845">airport security</a>, for example. They have also been shown to have created <a href="http://news.sanford.duke.edu/news-type/commentary/2012/time-reset-police-muslim-relations">extra tensions and divisions</a> between Muslim communities and the police.</p>
<p>For some hijab wearers, the hatred towards Muslim communities pushed them to stop wearing the veil after terrorist incidents, like the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33253598">7/7 London bombings</a>, in order to <a href="https://research.ncl.ac.uk/youngpeople/outputs/finalreport/Faith,%20Ethnicity,%20Place%20final%20report.pdf">minimise the chance of them experiencing racism</a>. However, at the same time others started to wear the hijab to show their commitment to their religious faith. The hijab therefore cannot be a fixed symbol, but is far more flexible and changeable – and certainly cannot be deemed a marker of terrorism.</p>
<h2>4. It’s not a ‘West versus rest’ division</h2>
<p>There are many different styles, colours and shapes of hijab including different ways of wearing it. There is also a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/how-the-hijab-went-high-fashion-and-divided-muslim-women/">rising transnational Muslim fashion trade</a> focusing particularly on younger women. In many respects, the hijab is similar to any other item of clothing with businesses marketing different styles and brands in order to maximise sales.</p>
<p>This global fashion trade transcends national and regional boundaries. It is about maximising the market rather than reinforcing divisions between the West and the Muslim “rest”. Rather than asking why a women is wearing a hijab to reinforce difference, we should ask what high street store or online retailer she purchased her clothing from and what attracted her to this brand. For some wearers, this is far more pertinent and telling of their personality.</p>
<h2>5. The hijab is not something to be feared</h2>
<p>A recently published report of <a href="http://tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/tell_mama_2015_annual_report.pdf">anti-Muslim abuse in England</a> found that more than 60% of victims are women, and 75% of these women were visibly Muslim so were likely to be wearing some form of head-covering. Women were also more likely than men to suffer anti-Muslim attacks on public transport or when shopping. The vast majority of the perpetrators in these incidents were white men, motivated by stereotypes. So rather than being feared, it’s more likely that women wearing hijab might fear others.</p>
<p>Muslim women wear the hijab for many different reasons all of which can change over time. This applies if the wearer is a community activist, an Olympic athlete like Elghobashy, a PhD student, a mother of young children or some or all of these. Any assumption that society attaches to the veil will never be right for each individual wearer, and it is for that very reason that we need to start changing the way we view it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63892/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hopkins receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>The hijab is not a sign of control.Peter Hopkins, Professor of Social Geography, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.