10.032016

Gender equality as a pathway for sustainable development: lessons learned in Eastern and Southern Africa

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In order to advance sustainable development in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is necessary to address cross-cutting issues on gender, environment, and climate change simultaneously. Despite this, a key challenge remains in ensuring that such coordinated and integrated approaches are prioritised and implemented in national, sector, and local budgets. That is the problem discussed in this gender brief by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), which draws on the experiences of an ongoing partnership between UN Women and the United Nations Development Programme. The brief includes examples of gender, environment, and climate change integration in policy and programming in Mozambique, research in Malawi and Uganda, and programming in Tanzania, as well as in areas concerning the strengthening of institutional capacities and knowledge sharing.

 

The key messages highlighted on the first page of the gender brief emphasise that addressing gender, environment, and climate change as cross-cutting issues can advance sustainable development and empower women, and that this will necessitate the strengthening of institutional and stakeholder capacities. Furthermore, data are needed to demonstrate the added value of integrating gender into climate and natural resource frameworks to convince decision-makers to take action, while proven climate- and gender-smart technologies must be quickly up-scaled.

 

In terms of recommendations, the brief closes by presenting three key pieces of advice:

 

  • The experiences presented in this brief point to the importance of informing policy-makers and practitioners in the design and implementation of cross-sectoral gender-sensitive climate and environment policies and programmes.
  • Concerted action and partnerships leveraging the tools of government, the legislature, civil society, and the private sector are needed to enact the kind of policies that can achieve the SDGs.
  • Partnerships between UN agencies and other multilateral organisations should be strengthened to increase support for the integration of gender, environment, and climate-linked concerns in policies, budgets, and...
10.032016

Technical seminar on measuring rural women’s empowerment: key issues and challenges

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Global success for policy actions on poverty reduction have been patchy over the last 15 years; East and South Asia have seen significant advances, but in other regions the story is different, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa where poverty has actually deepened. Facts and figures are abundant in detailing various impacts of such poverty, but consistent data availability and reliability is a huge problem, with universal limitations as well as context-specific challenges. In preparation for a 2015 UN Women technical seminar in Milan on measuring rural women’s empowerment, CeSPI drafted this issue’s paper to explore the specific issues and challenges associated with data gathering in the context of rural women, from design, to implementation, and analysis.

 

The draft defines and conceptualises women’s empowerment through a literature review, before explaining the strategic importance of rural women’s empowerment, and discussing the challenge of making proper measurements and indices. On this last point, the authors talk about the strengths and weaknesses of a variety of gender and development related indices produced by different international agencies, and note that all suffer from a lack of data availability. Lastly, the implications and limitations of the measurement of social institutions are covered, from family to government, with striking commonalities highlighted across all regions and cultures.

 

The paper then picks out ten key considerations from the topics discussed that are important to keep in mind when continuing the debate on proper measurement regarding rural women’s empowerment:

 

  • It is important not to lose sight of the conceptual level in a preoccupation with measuring trends and impact; definition, conceptualisation, and measurement must all be clearly related, understandable, and accessible.
  • Data availability and quality varies greatly around the world, which is a particular problem in developing countries with limited capacities. Such data cannot be considered comprehensive, nor complete.
  • Multiple, complementary measurements should be used when describing something as complex as women’s empowerment. Trade-offs are inevitable, and it is reasonable to limit investigations so long as these parameters are clearly communicated.
  • Data collection is expensive yet invaluable to policy makers, so it is important to make indicators count, to stand for something important, to be time- and place-relevant, and accessible to measurement, and for data to be accessible to as many people as possible to foster innovation and participation.
  • Research should be encouraged to go beyond the micro-macro and quantitative-qualitative paradigms, and experiment with different combinations of research methods and sources, including new opportunities opened by coming data revolution.
  • As many countries and actors as possible need to join in innovation programmes on statistics and data collection, at every level of society, and disaggregated by gender and socioeconomic factors.
  • Smallholder farmers, the majority of whom worldwide are women, must be recognised for, and empowered in, their eco-service provision, yet data collection in rural areas is difficult, complex, and lacking.
  • The debate on the post-2015 development agenda links women’s empowerment to food security and nutrition, recognising the multiple vulnerabilities and proposing transformative goals that address gender inequality and discriminatory social norms; a dual-track of mainstreaming a specific goal concerning gender equality throughout all other goals is required.
  • The last decade has seen a number of frameworks, indicators, and research methods employed, with many strengths and weaknesses identified; these can act as inspiration for enhancement and debate.
  • Finally, the authors recommend that the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) and its sub-indices represent an excellent starting point to measure the interaction between social institutions and women’s empowerment, as it reflects the root-cause societal practices and legal norms perpetuating gender inequalities.

 

It is hoped that these considerations can help inform what remains the key question for discussion at the seminar in Milan: how to practically improve the measurement of rural women’s empowerment in the short- and long-term, at national...

10.032016

Micro-credit as a strategy for poverty alleviation among women entrepreneurs in Nasarawa State, Nigeria

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All over the world, poor people are routinely excluded from the formal finance system, ranging from full exclusion in developing countries, to partial exclusion even in developed countries. This fact contributes to making poverty a major development challenge, with one often touted solution being that of providing access to micro-loans. Research has continued to report mixed findings on the effects of microfinance factors on poverty alleviation. However, the increased involvement of women entrepreneurs in the major markets in Nasarawa State, Nigeria, in the activities of microfinance banks, NGOs, associations, cooperatives, rotating savings groups, self-help groups, and savings mobilisation groups (or adashi) suggests that further investigations on the relationship between microfinance factors and poverty alleviation should be conducted.

 

That is the aim of this study, which was carried out to identify and assess the relationship between microcredit, and self-employment, education, training and skills acquisition, and economic empowerment in a Nigerian context. It begins by contextualising the needs and challenges of women entrepreneurs, and outlining the microfinance environment. Next, the methodology of the study is explained, which includes the adoption of a survey-based research design, a systematic sampling technique to select the elements that completed the research questionnaire, and a regression statistical method, employed to analyse the data collected from the 343 selected respondents of women entrepreneurs.

 

The null hypotheses tested were that micro-credit: has no significant effect on the self-employment of women entrepreneurs; is not positively related to the education, training and skills acquisition of women entrepreneurs; and has no significant positive effect on the economic empowerment of women entrepreneurs. Through literature review, the authors define and discuss the nature of micro-credit, and how it relates to women entrepreneurs, poverty and poverty alleviation, self-employment, and education, training and skills, and economic...

10.032016

Inequality, poverty among Nigeria women and youth and the challenges of inclusive growth in post-2015 Millenium Development Goals

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Economic growth is the primary driver of poverty reduction, yet in Nigeria, despite a decade of significant growth and bountiful natural resources, 67% of the population were estimated to live in abject poverty in 2011, while wealth inequality grew. This stands in contrast to the huge gains in poverty alleviation in China and India, which have seen more success toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). To try and identify the source of this discrepancy, this journal article examines the challenges of inequality and poverty reduction among Nigerian women and youth, with a focus on inclusive growth in a post-MDG context.

 

The paper features a literature review which underwent a content analysis to address the problem of the study, using a framework that emphasises inclusive growth based on innovation. This review included the HDI Education Index for Nigeria, and the Gender Development Index, which shows an Intensity of Deprivation for Nigeria at 55.2% for 2013, comparatively high for how wealthy the nation is. The study findings indicate poverty reduction efforts in Nigeria are generally ineffective, mainly due to the misdirection of programmes from rural to urban areas, inadequate funding, lack of control, transparency and accountability, and inadequate coverage of the poor. However, significant progress has been made in terms of primary school enrollment, which is on target to hit the MDG target for 100% enrollment by 2015.

Drawing from the research, the author concludes that a number of actions need to be taken if Nigeria is to improve on its position of 152nd out of 187 countries in the HDI poverty reduction programme. First, entrepreneurial training programmes and capacity-building need to be increased, together with inclusive efforts aimed toward providing education and health facilities, catalysing integrated growth, income distribution, and financing land ownership. Additionally, inspiration could be taken from countries such as Chile and Malaysia, who have successfully boosted their economies by growing their agricultural exports. Other suggestions include national youth service schemes, and prison-inmate empowerment programmes to reduce cycles of poverty and crime. If such an integrated, inclusive approach were adopted,  backed by strong, independent, and transparent monitoring, then poverty in Nigeria can be substantially reduced in the coming post-2015 development...