In fact, African consumers experience a worsening of service delivery, more distortions, shortages and price increases. In addition, workers are unhappy because jobs and social security are shattered while expatriates with huge salaries are being hired. There is inequality in terms of the lack of recognition accorded the womens contributions in building society s welfare, their participation in economic and political decision-making, their access to and control over wealth and the surplus asset generated. Economic policies from colonial times to the adjustment era have progressively developed mechanisms aggravating gender inequality. Their impact is in many cases more alienating for women than informal constraints of preexisting institutions.
Gender equality is yet to move from backstage to center stage.
The momentum successfully created in Beijing is very slow to take place. Some of the answers lie in the fact that conservative men with ideologies of the past lead African governments and international institutions. They surely deserve a failing grade for the gender biased policies they have been carrying out all over Africa. Women need and deserve more than literature and rhetoric in this new century. They want to see concrete, systematic and measurable change to reverse their situation for the better.