The MDGs and the Sub Saharan Africa the quest of development?
Publisher: Viriato Teotónio Tamele
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Maputo Mozambique
Language: eng
Description: “Genderising” the MDGs
Gender equality is intrinsic to all the MDGs. Yet it is assumed that eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education will result in women empowerment. On its own this target is no longer an issue in Southern Africa. Many countries are close to achieving this target. The issue is of girl's poorer performance at secondary school level as a result of among other things teenage pregnancies, dual roles at home, safe environments, as well as glaring disparities at vocational and tertiary level.  The MDGs do not seem to recognise women's rights as a development goal hence the absence of gender equality indicators in all the other MDGs, especially indicators for No Domestic Violence. Southern Africa needs to deepen democracy if gender equality is to be realised. Some can have women in large numbers in institutions but if the institutions are not functioning well, women loose on the gains already made. As well cultural institutions such as the Chieftainship limit women’s participation in democratic processes in many Southern African countries. Women’s issues are still not fully understood yet still required to vote.
Gender inequality causes and perpetuates poverty and vulnerability. But greater gender equality can help to reduce the root causes of poverty and vulnerability and contribute to sustainable pro-poor growth. Given that the MDGs address key development challenges, one would expect a gender focus throughout the goals. The fact is that experiences of poverty differ according to sex, age, ethnicity and location. However, gender is only explicit in MDGs 3 and 5. 
MDG3 measures gender parity in education; the share of women in wage employment; and the proportion of seats held by women in national legislatures. 
MDG5 focuses on maternal mortality and, since 2005, on universal access to reproductive health. This explicit inclusion in just two MDGs is too narrow, and sidelines other gender specific risks and vulnerabilities, roles and responsibilities, and power relations. It is unlikely to lead to gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women, or tackle the development challenges that must be overcome for sustainable poverty reduction. These limitations are compounded by the gender blindness of other MDG indicators, and the fact that the gender dynamics that cut across the goals are relatively invisible in policy dialogues. 
Despite slow progress on MDGs 4 (child mortality) and 5 (maternal mortality), discussions linking the MDGs to the need for gender-sensitive systems of care have been limited. Taking a gender and care perspective, however, moves us beyond a sole reliance on technology (such as vaccines) and infrastructure (such as new health clinics) to policies and programmes that are informed by a clear analysis of underlying social determinants, including gender. 
Promoting the ability of women to articulate their views in a meaningful way (voice) and to become the agents of their own empowerment (agency) is vital to overcome engrained socio-cultural conditioning and the gendered division of labour. 
MDG3 deals with two aspects of empowerment – education and national political representation. However, as experience in Latin America shows, with widespread quotas for women in legislatures and rates of higher education for women often outstripping those for men, empowerment requires a more comprehensive approach. This includes efforts to improve women’s access to resources (e.g. credit, training, inheritance and land rights) and their capacity to use them (e.g. through anti-discrimination and gender-based violence legislation, gender-aware justice systems, and government mechanisms to improve gender inequality).
MDG8, which focuses on improved international aid and cooperation, could be an important opportunity to create an international environment that is more supportive of women’s voice and agency. While MDG8 has been criticised for setting few indicators to measure the North’s contribution to the MDGs, and for the absence of a gender perspective, it is only by recognising the ways in which global macro- economic and political issues are gendered that it is possible to find effective, sustainable ways to achieve other goals. Recent Free Trade Agreements in Latin America, for example, included commitments to gender issues, but concerted action by governmental and non-governmental actors in North and South is needed to put them into practice.
On aid, the recognition of gender equality as a crosscutting issue in the Paris Declaration, and the Development Assistance Committee’s creation of a gender marker to assess the contribution of overseas development assistance to gender equality goals, is important first steps. However, in the context of the move to General Budget Support, there is a growing consensus that more proactive measures are needed to combat policy evaporation and to ensure that all sector working groups use a gender lens. New modalities are also needed to give civil society groups working on gender equality adequate resources and capacity strengthening support to facilitate their representation in policy dialogues. With a growing number of public private partnerships, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, delivering international development ‘goods’, innovative approaches are also needed to raise the awareness of the private sector on gender issues.
An understanding of how improvements in gender equality link to poverty reduction and natural resource management needs to resonate across the MDGs. Calls for strengthened global partnerships in international development should be complemented by a renewed commitment to existing gender related frameworks, including the Convention
Social protection policies could help to achieve the MDGs in a synergistic and gender-sensitive manner. Aiming to reduce household vulnerability and chronic deprivation, social protection strategies are being put in place across the world to cushion the impact of shocks and help poor households take advantage of opportunities presented by globalisation and economic growth.
Social protection could maximise synergies across the MDGs by: reducing poverty and inequality	through strengthening access to, and demand for, quality basic and social services; supporting economic productivity; and facilitating a better balance between care giving and productive work responsibilities. Many of the social protection programmes attracting inter- national attention incorporate gender issues. Cash transfer schemes in Brazil and Mexico, for instance, have resulted in improved education, health, and nutrition for millions of extremely poor households, by targeting cash payments at the caregiver. Evaluations suggest that these programmes support women’s empowerment by increasing their control of resources and decisions within the household.
Some gender analysts, however, caution that current programmes reinforce women’s traditional caring role and underestimate their time constraints, while making only limited contributions to such strategic gender approaches as the egalitarian division of labour between men and women. Few programmes to date have answered the call for ‘transformative’ social protection that would address gender-specific risks and vulnerabilities, including discrimination and social exclusion, violence and poverty.
A gender-sensitive approach to social protection means re-focusing programme design and encouraging agencies responsible for livelihood promotion and protection, basic and social services, and the enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation, to work together to achieve gender equality and the MDGs.
Table of contents: title: Contend; title: The MDGs: which partnership?			3; title: MDGs and southern Africa				3; title: MDGs and PRSP						4; title: Macroeconomic and the MDGs			7; title: MDGs, debt and Trade					9; title: The MDGs and Aid					9; title: Financing the MDGs					12; title: Financial Deregulation and Investment		13; title: "Genderising" the MDGs				14; title: MDGs, environment and climate change		17; title: Conclusion							19; title: MDGs and Southern Africa; title: If the MDGs are to be achieved in southern Africa, they need to be grounded in national ownership. This required a solid and capable structures at grassroots level that can consistently and continuously monitor state of machinery to ensure macroeconomic discipline, bolstering of agriculture productivity, increased support to infrastructure development, strengthening of institutional capacity and improvement in the management of public expenditures. The challenge was to be able to "own" the MDG process, which is globally adopted and set within a long-term framework. The problem with universal indicators assumed the playing field is level with MDGs being presented in absolute terms. Yet in Southern Africa MDGs are being realised in degrees. Ownership, which begins with leadership, as is the case with MDGs, does not always fit in the development profile on the ground; neither does it translate into bottom-up commitments necessary to move the MDGs process forward.; title: Twenty-three sub Saharan countries are failing in half or more of the goals, and progress in addressing the challenges of child mortality, basic education, malnutrition, improved water supply, maternal mortality and gender discrimination in primary enrolment, remain very slow. On average, sub Saharan countries spent about twice as much to comply with their financial commitments visa vie external creditors than to comply with tier social obligation visa vie their population. To spend more on external debt than on basic social services – when tens of millions of people lack to access the basic education, primary health, sanitation, adequate food and safe drinking water.; title: The Africa continent require an average economic growth rate of at least 7 percent per annum; this 7 percent may very well be seen as being a very minimalist amount, and it is more realistic that the continent would need 10-12 percent growth per annum. In the 1990’s, the growth rate was a low 2.1 percent for the entire decade. By 2003 the continent accounted for only an average of 3.5 percent economic growth. 2007 growth figures are estimated to be in the region of 5 to 8 percent, still below the target of 7 percent as set by the AU. Only 4 African states averaged a real GDP growth rate of 7 percent or more in 1998-2006. On top of the 7 percent per annum growth rate, the continent requires an investment/GDP ratio of between 21 and 46 percent; that is an average investment ratio of 33 percent. Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) also estimates that Africa has to reduce poverty by an average of 4 percent per year in order to attain the international development goal of reducing poverty by 50 percent by the year 2015.; title: The President Joaquim Chissano sometimes ago argued that, “Africa may not meet the MDGs on health”, He went on saying, “although progress had been made in the health sector, more effort and resources were necessary in the remaining seven years to ensure that the goals…were met”. About 45 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/AIDS, with about 29, 4 million people having already died from the disease. Africa and the Caribbean are the worst affected areas. In order to face the situation resources from the industrialised powers, and the policy urgency from Africa, should come as a matter of urgency.