Gender and economic reforms in Africa: The hidden political and ideological agenda

Gender analysis is increasingly reduced to technical and sectoral matters and is not being used as a political tool for women’s emancipation and empowerment, says Zo Randriamaro.

THE findings of the first round of 16 research and advocacy projects that the Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa (GERA) programme has supported in 11 African countries confirm that the economic policy reforms of the 1980s and 1990s were not gender-neutral. They have had an adverse impact on African women and gender relations as a whole, and reinforced existing inequalities by region and along class lines.

Key issues raised by the research on gender and economic policy reforms, globalisation, debt relief, trade and investment liberalisation, and by the use of some feminist concepts in different contexts, were discussed during a special ‘Beijing + 5’ workshop organised by the GERA programme and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Africa on 5 June in New York.

The research recognised that the architects of these economic policies themselves - the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - are imbued with gender imbalances and neglected women’s interests and concerns.

In response to these criticisms that challenge the dominant economic paradigm, these institutions have trivialised the participatory action research undertaken by gender activists and civil society organisations (CSOs) as not being ‘rigorous’ enough. They claim that external factors such as inefficient government or lack of human capital, not their policies, are the main causes of the crisis.

What is ‘rigorous’ research and how do people’s economic and social realities fit in?

These claims raise fundamental questions for gender activists and CSOs: what is ‘rigorous’ research, and should such research disqualify human beings and their condition as starting points for analyses? Who set the criteria and for what purpose? How can the immediate needs of the communities be addressed without losing sight of the larger macroeconomic policy issues? How can one go beyond coping strategies so as to develop real alternatives?

The responses to these questions should take into account the depoliticisation of gender issues by most of the donors. Gender analysis is increasingly reduced to technical and sectoral matters and is not being used as a political tool for women’s emancipation and empowerment. Similarly, some of the central concepts in feminist analyses have been hijacked and ‘neutralised’ to maintain the status quo in the basic economic power relations.

The politics of globalisation or how to improve the management of exclusion

In political terms, globalisation is a process of exclusion, not inclusion, of Africa, in contrast with the early stages of capitalist development. The focus on liberalisation, privatisation, and promotion of foreign direct investment in African countries during the last two decades has led, among other things, to a decline in the share of world trade for African goods and overseas development assistance (ODA).

The process of exclusion also operates along gender lines, as seen in the increasing dependence on women and children as unpaid labour in the informal sector and smallholder farms.

Despite these realities, the globalisation process itself is presented in the dominant official discourse as a benign process: as the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, put it during the opening ceremony of the Geneva 2000 Forum, people are poor ‘not because they have too much globalisation but too little...’

Annan conceded that many people are being hurt in a globalising planet, but ‘not from globalisation itself but from the failure to manage its adverse effects’. It appears that initiatives such as the World Bank-led Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process are part of such  management.

Ultimately, they are meant to better manage the exclusion of whole segments of populations from the global market, using a core feminist principle such as ‘participation’ to meet needs and interests that are not those of the marginalised groups, especially women. The civil society participation called for in the PRSP process is mainly meant to help legitimise economic reforms and globalisation.

As part of the conditionalities of HIPC, CSOs - including some of the most radical ones - have been involved in these processes and believe that they are part of a new transformation.

On the other hand, while CSOs and feminists have succeeded in mainstreaming gender issues into some African government budget-making processes under the Gender Budget Initiative (GBI), the ultimate outcome and meaning of the GBI raise a critical question about the use of another core feminist concept, which is gender mainstreaming: is this gender mainstreaming or domestication, in the context of existing policies and government structures of power, and in the absence of any call for a radical change in macroeconomic policies on the part of the concerned CSOs?

The main lesson learned from the experience of Tanzania is the danger of co-optation by the global management system and, subsequently, of losing the ability to resist the dominant ideology and to identify alternative macroeconomic policy reform.

The political economy of investment and trade liberalisation

Investment and trade liberalisation are an essential part of the global management system. Indeed, during the last two decades, trade policy reform and foreign investment have become key elements of the internal policy changes and strategies aimed at consolidating the economic reforms undertaken under the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in African countries.

The structural reforms carried out by African countries are being institutionalised by multilateral arrangements based on trade policy reform and foreign investment such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Lome Convention and the US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.

Altogether, they seek to underpin relationships with Africa on a new agenda of investment and trade liberalisation.

The international trade and financial institutions, namely the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, support macroeconomic policies that further the interests of transnational corporations (TNCs) in their search for new markets and new sources of cheap labour, and reinforce the exclusion of disadvantaged social groups, especially women. At the same time, new institutional mechanisms to link these institutions are being developed and experimented. This increasing collusion between the most powerful global institutions is legitimised by the need to coordinate policy and implementation to ensure that everyone will benefit from the globalisation process, especially the poor.

As underlined by the UN Secretary-General in his speech at the Geneva 2000 Forum, ‘they are poor not because they have too much globalisation but too little or none at all’. In the same speech, he also affirmed that the UN has made common cause not only with the World Bank and the IMF, but also with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the so-called ‘rich men’s club’ of donor nations.

The questions raised by these developments include the role of the African nation states in this process, particularly in meeting demands for gender equality and social and economic  justice,  and  the  role  of  global institutions  in  the  actual  management of African economies and societies.

A new orthodoxy in economic analyses, mainly based on the neo-classical and neo-liberal paradigms, justifies post-adjustment policies by providing the rationale for consolidating the economic reforms undertaken under SAPs, regardless of their detrimental impact on peopleŐs lives, especially women’s lives, and by imputing all the adverse effects of current trade and investment policies to the African nation states themselves, and not to these policies or to the market.

This new orthodoxy also legitimises the subordination of women, namely by overlooking the differences in both entitlements and constraints between men and women, and by building on the assumption that women’s work is free and infinitely elastic, and that they will therefore continue to supply their unpaid contribution to the care and reproduction of society in the ‘global village’.

Research is the only way to demystify this new orthodoxy. It is the only tool that can enable CSOs and gender activists to find empirical evidence which can link the daily situation of people, particularly women, to macroeconomic reforms, and assist in developing sound arguments about why reforms of dominant macroeconomic policies are needed. The immediate challenge facing researchers, gender activists, and CSOs committed to gender equality and economic justice is to develop and to stand for their own definition of ‘rigorous’ research: people-centred and gender-sensitive are certainly among the possible criteria.   

Zo Randriamaro is the Programme Manager of GERA at TWN-Africa. Initiated in 1996, the GERA Programme aims to increase the participation of African research organisations and women’s groups in research, analysis, and advocacy to transform economic policies from a gender perspective.