Harambee fails women’s growthWomen, especially in rural areas, still face harsh inequalities in Namibia. Report shows black women face extreme barriers 0 A recent study has found that the Harambee Prosperity Plan (HPP) does little overall, to strengthen long-term plans for women’s development and gender equality in Namibia.The study, conducted by research IPPR Research Associate Nangula Shejavali, was based on the question of whether the HPP fast tracks women’s development towards the achievements of three long term development road maps for the country.
Overall, the study concluded that the “HPP, while a medium-term goal, does little to fast-track our achievement of long term goals” in terms of promoting gender equality and development in Namibia.
The report also found that women’s development and gender equality requires a more pronounced presence in the policy space and that long-term development goals should be alert to the importance of gender equality in achieving poverty eradication.
The report recommends that the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare “needs to assert itself as a Ministry with a cross-cutting focus with broad impacts”.
Shejavali this week told Namibian Sun that “prioritising black rural women (who are the face of poverty in Namibia) in all efforts in the HPP, for example, would help to achieve various targets in the three long-term plans explored in the paper.”
Although the HPP does “importantly note inclusivity as a key theme throughout the Plan, it doesn’t address the particular challenges that women (particularly rural women) face, which would be important given the broad recognition of the important role that women play in eradicating poverty and inequality,” Shejavali explained.
Moreover, the HPP neglects to address the scourge of gender based violence Namibia is facing.
The report notes that the most common forms of GBV in Namibia are domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment and forced marriages.
She added that as per the paper’s recommendations, “setting in place monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure that women benefit equitably from the various targets set out in the HPP, ensuring gender budgeting, and getting rid of any barriers to women fully benefitting from the HPP would” are steps that can be implemented in the HPP which would address much of the tracking in terms of long term plans.
These plans include Vision 2013, Namibia’s long term development plan in which Gender equality is highlighted as one of the driving forces and which contains 7 targets linked directly to gender development.
The second long term target on which the HPP was measured in the study is the African Union’s Agenda 2063 which contains 4 targets specific to gender.
The third yard stick was the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Agenda 2013, a universal road map in which the SDG five is specifically focused on gender equality with nine set targets.
Overall, the HPP ticks very few of the gender specific boxes set out in the three long term plans. In the Vision 2013 plan, the HPP is evaluated as addressing two of the seven targets in the plan “somewhat”.
The HPP ticks one box in the AU Agenda aimed at gender equality and one somewhat. Out of the nine targets set by the SDG goals, the HPP ticks three boxes, but only just, according to the study.
The IPPR study explored the number of mentions related to women included in the overall HPP documents, finding that the term ‘Gender’ is mentioned only once, while the term ‘woman’ appears three times in the HPP text.
The word ‘female’ appears twice while the words maternal and mother appear 21 and 10 times respectively.
All mentions of these two words relate to the social progression sub-pillar on addressing infant and maternal mortality.
More than 51% of Namibians are female, and statistics say that women are in the majority when it comes to heading households in poverty stricken communities as well as being hit by higher rates of unemployment.
Income inequality is glaring in Namibia with the average annual income per capita, based on 2010 figures, calculated to be on average N$9 000 less than men, who earned N$20 939 on average per year, while women pocketed N$11 645.
In the report, Namibian women are seen representing 42% of members in the National Assembly, and 26% of National Council members are female, while 16% in regional councils are, and less than 42% of representatives in local authorities are women.
Close to 30% of Namibians in decision-making seats in the private sector, are women and women represent 27% of management in parastatals.
JANA-MARI SMITH