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34 q ASSESSING PROGRESS

Asia and the Pacific

early 1980 s mid-1990s

latest available

Pakistan

Fiji

Malaysia

Indonesia

India

Korea, Rep.

China

Philippines

Hong Kong,China

Singapore

Sri Lanka

Thailand

No New Data

47

46

45

45

41

40

38

45

44

44

42

40

39

39

38

36

31

8

42

24

40

40

48

37

36

37

32

26

5

16

15

12

Latin America and the Caribbean

early 19 80 s mid- 19 90 s

latest available

46

45

43

30

40

42

36

El Salvador

Barbados

Honduras

Bahamas

Jamaica

Peru

Venezuela

Costa Rica

Trinidad& Tobago

Panama

Brazil

No New Data

45

42

40

39

35

33

44

44

39

38

35

33

50

49

47

47

32

39

43

34

37

32

40

42

47

48

43

32

33

CHART 4: Changes in Female Share ofWage Employment in Non-Agricultural Sector,Early 1980s, Mid-1990s, Latest Available Data

Sub-Saharan and Northern Africa

earl y 1 98 0s mi d-1 99 0s

latest available

Niger

Burkina Faso

Cte d'Ivoire

Ethiopia

Kenya

Swaziland

Chad

Malawi

Zimbabwe

Egypt

Mauritius

Botswana

No New Data

47

38

21

19

11

6

38

37

19

17

11

5

33

32

28

23

12

9

30

36

15

15

9

5

31

21

23

22

12

4

Central and Western Asia


latest available

Syria

Jordan

Turkey

ahrain

Cyprus

Israel

No New Data

48

44

12

10

47

39

10

10

23

11

42

34

7

9

20

9

[ CHARTCONTINUEDON PAGE36 ]

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employment and no legal orsocial protection arising from the job, whether they workin the formal sector of the economy (factories that offerdaily work, for example, as well as contract work) or theinformal sectorq self-employed or own-account workers and employ-ers who have their own informal enterprisesq members of informal producers cooperativesq producers of goods for final use by their households(e.g., subsistence farming)q paid domestic workers employed by households ininformal jobs

Table 5 (p. 38) shows estimates of the share of infor-mal employment (both waged and self-employed) innon-agricultural employment in the 1990s for a groupof developing countries. It is clear that in many coun-tries informal employment is a high proportion ofnon-agricultural employment. In sub-Saharan Africaand Latin America, womens informal employment asa percentage of their non-agricultural employment ishigher than the corresponding figure for men.

Table 6 (p. 39) shows that much of womens informalemployment is self-employment rather than wage work.In fact, in developing countries in all regions, self-employment is the largest share of informal employmentfor both women and men and appears to be on theincrease. According to the ILO,

Between 1980 and 2000 self-employmentincreased from about one-quarter to about one-third of non-agricultural employment world-wide. Self-employment in non-agricultural activ-ities increased in almost all developing regions.However, declines occurred in Eastern Europewhere it dropped sharply, from 18 to 9 per centof non-agricultural employment; and in EasternAsia, where it dropped from 23 to 18 per cent(ILO 2002a:22).

Although the percentage of self-employment isincreasing among both women and men, the propor-tion of women in non-agricultural work who are self-employed is increasing faster than the proportion formen. Worldwide, womens share increased from 28per cent to 34 per cent between 1980 and 2000 whilethat for men increased from 25 per cent to only 27per cent. There are many questions about the increasein informal and self-employed wage work for women:Is this increase beneficial? Are the benefits sharedequally by women and men? Why is wo mens share ofself-employment growing faster than mens? Theanswers will require more sophisticated statistics-gath-ering, models for which are being developed with sup-port from UN agencies such as the ILO, UNDP, andUNIFEM.

As part of the effort to better understand the entirerange of waged employment, the ILO is constructinga set of Decent Work indicators (see Box 6, p. 38).

Should There Be a New Target?Currently, there is no MDG target for gender

equality in the labour market. Various individuals andgroups have argued that an additional target is nec-essary since school enrolment alone does no t addresswomens equality and empowerment. They have pro-posed that this additional target look at wage dispar-ity. The Economic Commission for Latin Americaand the Caribbean (ECLAC) has proposed such a tar-get that would seek to:

Significantly reduce wage differences between

women and men with the same level of skills.To be measured by the ratio of womens tomens average wages by years of schooling.(ECLAC 2002:7)

While we believe this is a good step forward, theindicator (the ratio of womens to mens average wagesby years of schooling) is hampered by the same prob-lem as the gender disparity indicators for educationand literacy: It is possible to reduce the gender wagegap by pushing mens wages down instead of increas-ing womens, as has occurred in the United States inrecent years. To track whether the wage gap is reducedthrough equality in prosperity, it would help toinclude an indicator suggested by a recent ILO paper(Anker et al. 2002): the percentage of workers with

gross hourly earnings that are less than half the medianvalue of hourly earnings in the country concerned.The median value divides the distribution of earningsin two, so that 50 per cent of earners receive belowthe median pay and 50 per cent receive above it. Aperson who gets less than half the median can reason-ably be considered a person with low pay. By measur-ing what percentage of women workers earn less thanhalf the median compared to the percentage of men,it would be possible to identify and analyse gender dis-parities in the labour market.

Another, simpler, indicator might be the percent-age of women and men with hourly earnings below whatis considered a living wage, although defining livingwage has not been easy. One possibility discussed byAnker et al. would be to take the World Bank povertyrate of $2 a day as a starting point, and then to assumethat a living wage should allow a worker to earn morethan $2 a day and support at least one other personbesides themselves, working eight hours a day, six da ysa week, 50 weeks a year. This is a very minimum levelof living since this assumes long hours, a smalldependency ratio and a poverty level income require-ment (Anker et al. 2002:29).

Reducing gender disparity in the economy issuch an important issue that UN agencies shouldwork together to set targets and improve indicatorsat regional and national levels, taking into accountthe differences in economic structures in differentparts of the world.

PR OGR ESS OF TH E WOR LD S WOMEN 2 0 0 2 q3736 q ASSESSING PROGRESS

Eastern Europe


latest available

Albania

MacedoniaFYR

Hungary

Czech Rep

Croatia

Slovenia

Slovakia

Estonia

Lithuania

Ukraine

No New Data

53

53

56

45

43

40

50

37

38

54

53

51

49

47

48

46

51

40

41

53

53

51

51

34

47

47

46

41

48

[ CONTINUEDFROM PAGE 32 ]Western Europe andOther Developed Countries

early 1980s mid-1990s

latest available

51

50

50

50

48

48

46

46

46

45

44

44

40

40

40

40

36

31

51

50

50

48

51

48

46

46

45

47

43

41

39

39

38

37

36

29

41

51

50

45

45

47

46

43

30

40

42

36

36

37

32

23

31

34

25

37

Austria

Malta

Luxemburg

Spain

Italy

Greece

Japan

Belgium

Netherlands

Australia

Ireland

Portugal

France

USA

Norway

New Zealand

United Kingdom

Finland

Sweden

25

No New Data

Source: ILOwebsite; http://laborsta.ilo.org

CHART 4: Changes in Female Share of WageEmployment in Non-Agricultural Sector, Early 1980s,Mid-1990s, Latest Available Data (contd.)

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PROGRESS OF THE WORLDS WOMEN 2 0 0 2 q3938 q ASSESSING PROGRESS

These indicators will be created through theuse of a Peoples Security Survey conducted with2,000-3,000 households in a variety of coun-tries. The survey asks household members a broadrange of questions about wage work, from salary toworking conditions to job security to hours ofwork. In November 2001, a prototype index waspresented, which drew on the Indonesian PeoplesSecurity Survey. The Indonesian survey showed

that while both men and women have a low aver-age score for secure, decent work, womens scoreis lower. The gender gap increases as householdincome rises: Mens work is g enerally more securethan womens. In poorer, more vulnerable house-holds, both men and women are equally at themercy of the vagaries of the job market, with lit-tle protection from layoffs or reduced wages andfew if any benefits.

Results for Argentina, Bangladesh, Braz il,Chile, China, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Indonesia,Hungary, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Tanzaniaand Ukraine will be available through a series ofILO publications.

BOX 6: ILO DECENT

WORK INDICATORS

Table 5: Informal Employment inNon-Agricultural Employment,by Sex, 1994-2000

Region/Country Informal Womens MensEmployment Informa l Informa las % of Non- Employment EmploymentAgricultural as % of Non- as % of Non-Employment Agricultural Agricultural

Employment

N o rth Africa 48 43 4 9

Algeria 43 41 43

Morocco 45 47 44

Tunisia 50 39 53

Egypt 55 46 57

Sub-Saharan

A f r i c a 72 84 6 3

Benin 93 97 87

Chad 74 95 60

Guinea 72 87 66

Kenya 72 83 59

South Africa 51 58 44

Latin America 51 58 4 8

Bolivia 63 74 55Brazil 60 67 55

Chile 36 44 31

Colombia 38 44 34

Costa Rica 44 48 42

El Salvador 57 69 46

Guatemala 56 69 47

Honduras 58 65 74

Mexico 55 55 54

Dominican

Republic 72 84 63

Venezuela 47 47 47

Asia 65 65 6 5

India 83 86 83

Indonesia 78 77 78

Philippines 72 73 71Thailand 51 54 49

Syria 42 35 43

Source: ILO, Women and Men in the Informal Economy:

A Statistical Picture, Geneva 2002a

Region/Country Self-Employment as % of Wage Employment as % ofNon-Agricultural Informal Employment Non-Agricultural Informal Employment

Total Women Men Total Women Men

N o rth Africa 6 2 72 6 0 3 8 2 8 4 0

Algeria 67 81 64 33 19 36

Morocco 81 89 78 19 11 22

Tunisia 52 51 52 48 49 48

Egypt 50 67 47 50 33 53

Sub-Saharan Africa 7 0 7 1 7 0 3 0 2 9 3 0

Benin 95 98 91 5 2 9

Chad 93 99 86 7 1 14

Guinea 95 98 94 5 2 6

Kenya 42 33 56 58 67 44

South Africa 25 27 23 75 73 77

Latin America 6 0 5 8 6 1 4 0 4 2 3 9

Bolivia 81 91 71 19 9 29

Brazil 41 32 50 59 68 50

Chile 52 39 64 48 61 36

Colombia 38 36 40 62 64 60Costa Rica 55 49 59 45 54 41

El Salvador 65 71 57 35 29 43

Guatemala 60 65 55 40 35 45

Honduras 72 77 65 28 23 35

Mexico 54 53 54 46 47 46

Dominican Republic 74 63 80 26 37 20

Venezuela 69 66 70 31 34 30

A s i a 5 9 6 3 5 5 4 1 3 7 4 5

India 52 57 51 48 43 49

Indonesia 63 70 59 37 30 41

Philippines 48 63 36 52 37 64

Thailand 66 68 64 34 32 36

Syria 65 57 67 35 43 33

Source: ILO, Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture,Geneva 2002a

Table 6: Wage and Self-Employment in Non-AgriculturalInformal Employment, by Sex 1994-2000

Sources: www.ilo.org

ILO 2002b

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Key FindingsqAround the world women are largely absent from par-liaments, on average accounting for only about 14 percent of members in 2002. There are no systematic dif-ferences between rich and poor countries, and consid-erable variations within each region.q In 2002, only 11 countries had achieved the bench-mark set in the Beijing Platform for Action of 30 per

cent representation by women in parliament: Sweden,Denmark, Germany, Finland, Norway, Iceland, theNetherlands, South Africa, Costa Rica, Argentina andMozambique. In all of these countries quotas werelegislated or adopted on a voluntary basis.q New Zealand just missed the target with womensre presentation in parliament at 29.2 per cent after itsmost recent election.q Nevertheless, there was continued progress in allregions between 2000 and 2002 towards thebenchmark.qWomens share of seats in parliament fell in 22 coun-tries. Particularly disappointing were two cases in whicha return to democracy was accompanied by a reductionin womens representation. In Nigeria womens share ofseats fell to a very disappointing 3.2 per cent. InIndonesia womens share fell from 11.4 per cent to only8 per cent.q The large fall in womens share of seats which followedthe transition to market economies in Eastern Europehas been reversed in three countries: Bulgaria, theFormer Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Poland.q In some rich countries, womens representation in thelegislature remains well below that achieved in manypoor countries. Womens share of seats in the UnitedStates is 12 per cent but 38 developing countries havea higher share.

The empowerment of women requires that womenhave more say in all the decisions that affect their lives,

including in the household, the community, the marketplace, the workplace, and in all levels of public assem-blies and offices, from the local to the national to theinternational. It is difficult to produce global estimatesof the degree to which women have enhanced their posi-tion in all these arenas. The only indicator that can cur-rently be tabulated for the world as a whole is women sshare of seats in national parliaments. Although it doesnot truly cover the breadth of womens involvement indecision-making, it is nevertheless useful.

The goal of increasing womens representation inparliaments is a long-standing one, and was agreed uponat numerous international conferences prior to the

Millennium Summit. The target of 30 per cent re pre-sentation in key decision-making positions was endorsedby the UN Economic and Social Council and was reit-erated in the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action (para .182). Women in many parts of the world have been cam-paigning to meet this target, and to go beyond it toachieve true parity (see Box 7, p. 42).

But increasing womens share of seats in parliamentis not a panacea. It can only level the playing field onwhich women battle for equality. While women the worldover campaign for equal representation, most recognizethat this is not, and never can be, a guarantee that women

in power will make decisions that benefit the majority ofwomen. And beyond the personal perspectives of indi-vidual candidates, many other factors prevent them frompromoting laws and programmes that aid women: Thepower of parliamentarians may be limited by the deci-sions of international investors; by the rules of interna-tional bodies such as the World Trade Organization(WTO); by the loan conditions of international finan-cial institutions such as the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF); by national con-stitutions that hamper parliamentary power in re lationto the executive powers of government; and by politicalparties that exert strong discipline over their members.Despite all this, womens presence is essential: Theirabsence from national legislatures signals that womenare not accepted as equal partners in political decision-making for the nation.

Womens presence is especially important in post-conflict situations, when new constitutions and new par-liaments are often being created. Until recently womenwere almost completely excluded from peace-buildingand post-war decision-making. Now, with the supportof UNIFEM and many other organizations, the issue ofwomens participation is receiving more attention. TheUN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 inOctober 20 00 urging Member St ates to incre a s ewomens representation at all levels of decision-makinginstitutions for preventing, managing and resolving con-flict. It calls on all actors negotiating and implementingpeace agreements to adopt a gender perspective and toinclude women in implementing mechanisms of thepeace agreement. Since then, women have been includedin the decision-making mechanisms setting up the new

Democratic Republic of East Timor. In August 2001elections were held to set up a Constituent Assembly,with women gaining 26.1 per cent of the votes. This bodybecame the national parliament on 20 May 2002, whenEast Timor officially became independent.

Table 7 (pp. 42-43) gives a regional and co untrybreakdown of womens share of seats in national parlia-ments in November 2002, based on the data compiledby the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

Changes in Womens ShareThere has been continued progress towards the 30

per cent benchmark in recent elections in a significant

40q ASSESSING PROGRESS

A polling station worker holds a ballot box for anelderly woman in the Czech Republic, part of an

e ff o rt to help home-bound citizens v ote.

SEATS IN PARLIAMENT

The Gender Gap in Representation inPa rlia me n t

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CHART 5: Changes in Womens Share of Seats in National Parliament, 1987-2000-2002

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Botswana

Burkino Faso

Burundi

Ethiopia

GabonGambia

Mozambique

Namibia

Rwanda

Senegal

Sudan

Togo

Uganda

Tanzania, U R

Zambia

Guinea-Bissau

MauritiusNigeria

Zimbabwe

Cote d'Ivoire

Egypt

Malawi

Mauritania

Sub-Saharan and Northern Africa

1 98 7-2 00 0 2 00 0-2 00 2

Progress

Regress

Virtually No Change

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Central and Western Asia

1 98 7-2 00 0 2 00 0-2 00 2

Cyprus

Iraq

Israel

KyrgyzstanTajikistan

Azerbaijan

Bhutan

Korea, Rep.

Lao PDR

Malaysia

Mongolia

Philippines

Singapore

Thailand

Vietnam

Bangladesh

IndonesiaSamoa

(Western)

Vanuatu

Iran

Nepal

Sri Lanka

Asia and the Pacific

Progress

Regress

Virtually No Change

Regress

Progress

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Latin America and the Caribbean

1 98 7-2 00 0 2 00 0-2 00 2

Argentina

Bolivia

Chile

Costa RicaGuatemala

Haiti

Nicaragua

Peru

Suriname

Trinidad& Tobago

Colombia

Ecuador

El Salvador

Honduras

Mexico

Venezuela

Progress

Regress

Eastern Europe

Progress

Regress

Virtually No Change

Belarus

Bulgaria

Croatia

Czech Rep.

Macedonia,FYR

Moldova,Rep.

Poland

Romania

Slovakia

Slovenia

Bosnia-

HerzegovinaLithuania

Ukraine

Albania

Hungary

Yugoslavia

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Progress

Regress

Virtually No Change

Western Europe and OtherDeveloped Countries

Australia

France

Greece

JapanNew Zealand

Spain

Sweden

Germany

Italy

Netherlands

Canada

Denmark

Ireland

Norway

Portugal

UnitedKingdom

United States

1 98 7-2 00 0 2 00 0-2 00 2

Progress: Increase of more than 1 percentage pointRegress: Decrease of more than -1 percentage pointVirtually No Change: Change in range +1 to -1 percentage pointsSources: Inter-Parliamentary Union Website: http://www.ipu.org;The World's Women 1995: Trends and Statistics. 2nd ed.New York: UN Statistical Division.

PR OGR ESS OF TH E WORL D S WOMEN 2 0 0 2 q45

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per cent in 2002; Poland, which saw womens sharego from 20 per cent in 1987 to 12.6 per cent in 2000then back up to 21 per cent in 2002; and the FormerRepublic of Macedonia, where womens shareimproved from 7.5 per cent in 2000 to 17.5 per centin 2002. In Bulgaria and Poland the increase canpartly be attributed to the work of womens organiza-tions. In Poland, OSKA, a national NGO, supportedwomen candidates with the assistance of UNIFEM. InBulgaria, several womens NGOs worked with a newpolitical party to bring women into office (see Box 8).

In Russia, there is no real sign of recovery. There

has been a slight change in the last two years, withwomen re p resenting 5.6 per cent o f parliamentari-ans in 200 0 and 6.4 per cen t in 2002, com pare dto their 32 per cent in 1987. In some of the newcountries in the region, such as Croatia, the CzechRepublic, Moldova and Slovenia, womens share ofseats has increased in the last two years. At the sametime, womens share fell substantially in Bosnia andHerzegovina (from a high of 21% all the way downto 6.4%), Lithuania (from 17.5 to 10.6%) andslightly less so in Ukraine (from 2.8 to 5.1%). Thereis clearly no guarantee that upward trajectories can bemaintained or that losses can be recouped.

In Western Europe and Other DevelopedCountries, there were elections in 17 countries. NewZealand almost succeeded in attaining the 30 per centgoal and Australia and Spain came closer to it thanever before. However, Canada and the UnitedKingdom did not maintain their upward traj e c t oryand are stuck at around 17 per cent and 24 per centrespectively. Germany and the Netherlands registeredslight drops, though their shares remained above 30per cent. The United States remained at one of thelowest levels of all developed countries: 12 per cent.

The following charts show those countries that arein the lead according to the targets and indicators setout in the Millennium Development Goals as well asthose that have the furthest to go. We are presentingthese charts in full recognition that many of the coun-tries in the lead have benefited from years of devel-

opment, stable political situations and robusteconomies (see Table 8, p. 48). That is why it is par-ticularly noteworthy that Argentina, Costa Rica andSouth Africa are in this group, since none of the threehave had the same social, economic or political sta-bility as the Western Developed nations on the list.

Table 9 (p. 48) summarises the MDG indicatorsfor those countries that have the furthest to go inachieving the goals. These are largely poor countr ies,many of which have suffered from internal conflictas well as other factors that intervene in their abilityto attain the goals. All but one of the countries withthe lowest levels of achieve-

number of countries in all regions. Chart 5 showschanges in womens share of seats in parliament, inthe period from January 2000 to November 2002,in those countries where there have been elections (thered lines) and compares those changes to the periodfrom 1987 to 2000 (the black lines). This may not

exactly correspond to the dates of elections, since thereis often a gap between the holding of elections and theposting of the results on the IPU website.

In sub-Saharan Africa, during the most re ce n tperiod, there were elections in 23 countries, ofwhich 14 increased their representation of women.Four experienced virtually no change, and fourelected fewer women than previously. Mozambiqueand Uganda contin ued their upward tra j e c t o r y .Equally noteworthy were the improvements inBurundi, where wome ns re p resentation jumpedfrom 6 per cent all the way to 19.5 per cent andRwanda, where the increase was from 17.1 per cent

to 25.7 per cent. However, the return to democra cyin Nigeria did not result in a greater voice for womenin parliament, with womens share of seats fallingbelow its previous level of 7.3 per cent to a very dis-appointing 3.2 per cent. In several countries in theregion, racked by internal conflicts, there is no func-tioning parliament.

In Northern Africa, Egypt was the only countrywith an election during this period but there was vir-tually no change, with womens share of seats stuck atjust above 2 per cent.

In Central and Western Asia six countries held

elections in this period, with five of them showingimprovements. The increase in Tajikistan was par-ticularly marked: Wom e ns share w ent fro m 2.8 percent to 12 per cent. However, Azerbaijan, which hadbeen one of the better performers in a region whererepresentation is on the whole not high, slipped backfrom 12 per cent to 10.5 per cent. In this re g i o nt here are a number o f countries in which women sright to stand for election, and even to vote, has not

yet been recognized. These include Kuwait, Oman,Qatar, Sa udi Arab ia and United Arab Emira t e s .Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have never had anelected parliament.

In Asia and the Pacific, there were elections in 16countries, and of these nine showed some progre s s,three showed virtually no change and four showedd e t e r i o ration. The large decline in Mongolianw o m e ns share of s eats, wh ich plumme ted fro m 25per cent in 1987 to 7.9 per cent in 2000, wasreversed, although not dramatically. Women held10.5 per cent of all parliamentary seats in 2002. InBangladesh, however, w omens re presentation wasreduced from 9.1 per cent to only 2 per cent. And inIndonesia, as in Nigeria, democratization did notimprove wom ens re p resentation: T heir share o fseats fell from 11.4 per cent to 8 per cent.

Latin America and the Caribbean show significantprogress in some countries, counterbalanced by deteri-oration in almost as many. There were elections in 16countries during the period, during which Argentinaand Costa Rica passed the 30 per cent benchmark andN i c a ragua reversed its earlier decline, when it haddropped from 15 per cent in 1987 to 9.7 per cent in

2000. Womens share of seats is now at 20.7 per cent. InMexico, although the 2000 election was heralded as avictory for democracy because it removed the Pa rtidoRevolucionario Institucional (PRI) from power afterdecades of unchallenged rule, there was no gain forwomen. Their share of seats fell slightly from 17.9 percent to 16 per cent.

Womens share of seats in parliament has suffereddramatically in Eastern Europe during the transitionto market economies. Three countries have managedto reverse that trend in recent elections: Bulgaria,where women had a 21 per cent share in 1987, droppedto 10.8 per cent in 2000, and then jumped to 26.2

The rise in the representation of women inBulgarias parliament has been credited to twofactors: campaigning by womens NGOs and thepolicies of a new political party.

Campaigning by NGOsqThe Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation(BGRF) produced a report at the end of 2000entitled Equal rights and equal opportunitiesfor women in political life in Bulgaria, whichadvocated for increased attention by politicalparties to the problems of women in politicsand for new legislation introducing affirmativeaction. The report called for at least 40 percent of the candidates in eligible positions tobe women.q The Womens Alliance for Development (WAD)conducted a pre-election campaign for morewomen in parliament.q Under the slogan Women can do it, theGender Project of the Bulgaria Foundation con-ducted extensive training for women who wishedto develop political careers.qWo m e ns NGOs organized meetings withparliamentarians from all the political par-ties and suggested changes in the electoral law

that would provide for 50/50 participationof women and men in all eligible electora lpositions.q The NGOs were supported by the GenderTask Fo rce of the St ability Pact for SouthEastern Europe.

Policies of a New Political Party

In April 2001 Simeon Kobourg Gottha,the returning former King of Bulgaria,formed a new political party. The new partyaccepted the ideas put forward by thew o m ens NGOs and placed women in 40 percent of eligible positions. It went on to winthe national elections in June 2001 with 40per cent of the votes. Women won 26.2 percent of the seats in the new parliament.

Assessment

The re p resentation of women in theBulgarian parliament has not been an unmit-igated success. A study for the BGRF foundthat women in parliament were not fully pre-p ared for their new careers. They did not seethemselves as re p resenting womens inter-ests, nor did they see themselves as havingcommon i nterests with each o ther. NG O swill need to continue to work with the newwomen parliamentarians t o bring women sissues higher up on their agendas.

BOX 8: WOMENSREPRESENTATION IN THE NEW

BULGARIAN PARLIAMENTWorldwide, women make up more than half the

population, but they hold only 12.7 percent of all parlia-mentary seats. Whats wrong with these numbers?

No government can claim to be democratic until women

are guaranteed the right to equal representation. At the

1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women, 189

governments agreed to this principle in the Beijing Platform,and committed themselves to take steps to achieve it.

But the percentage of women legislators has onlyincreased .5 percent a year since then. At that rate, it would

take 75 years to reach an equal gender balance!WEDO 50/50 Campaign www.wedo.org

The Wo m e ns Envir onme nt andDevelopment Organization (WEDO) launchedits 50/50 campaign in 2000, during the five-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action(PFA). The campaigns goals are to take the tar-get of 30 per cent in the PFA and push it to truegender equality: 50/50 representation betweenwomen and men. The campaign is working toincrease the percentage of women in local andnational legislatures worldwide through edu-cation, training potential candidates and meet-ings with political leaders. It has been adoptedby 154 organizations in 45 countries and manycountries have launched their own 50/50 cam-paigns. WEDO has also taken the campaign tothe United Nations, where it is has called onMember States to divide the top positions intheir missions equally between women andmen. At the end of 2002, 94 per cent of UNmissions were headed by men.

BOX 7: THE 50/50CAMPAIGN:GET THE BALANCE RIGHT!

[ C O NT I NU E DO N PAGE 4 9 ]

AN MDG SCORECARD

Source: personal communication, Genoveva Tisheva ( BGRF)

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ment in girls enrolment insecondary school and gender equality in enrolmenta re in su b-Saharan Africa. As numerous studies,including our own, have shown, women in this re gionare more disadvantaged than in any other region. AsTable 10 shows, sub-Saharan Africa has the highestpoverty rates and the lowest per capita GDP. Moreover,on average, the regions production is not growing butshrinking, with GDP per capita declining in the period1990 to 2000 at an average rate of -0.3 per cent a year.

This deepening poverty has profound impacts onwomens lives. As Table 11 shows, maternal mortality ra tesare much higher than in other regionsmore than twiceas high as in South A sia, t he next highest r e g i o n .HIV/AIDS prevalence among adults is also much higherin sub-Saharan Africa (see Table 12, p. 50)more thanfour times the rates in the Caribbean which has the nexthighest rates.

Despite the dire conditions in sub-Saharan Africa,women are taking steps to increase their voice in publicdecision-making. As shown in chart 5, in most of the 23countries in which there have been elections in the regionbetween January 2000 and November 2002, womensshare of seats in parliament has increased. At the end of2002 women in 13 sub-Saharan countries had a highers h are of seats in parliament than did women in theUnited States.

Women parliamentarians in several sub-Saharancountries are working together with women researchers

and community activists to develop gender budget ini-tiatives (see Box 9, p. 51). These initiatives examine theimpact on gender equality of the ways in which govern-ments raise revenue and spend money. They advocatefor more attention to the priorities of poor women andgreater accountability towards them, providing a beaconof hope in an area of mounting distress.

RECOMMENDATIONSIn assessing the progress of women in the context of

the MDGs, the limitations of the MDG indicatorsbecome apparent. We have proposed certain alterationsor additions that will provide a clearer picture of actualachievement.1. For girls enrolment rates in school:

q Monitor the actual level of girls enrolment inaddition to gender disparities.

q Track completion rates as well as enrolment rates.2. For literacy:

q Track the actual level of literacy, as well as thegender disparity.

3. For womens economic equality and empowerment,develop additional indicators to:q Track womens participation in informal wage work.q Develop a decent work indicator.q Create a target to end gender disparity in wages.q Me a s u re the extent to which women are paid a

living wage.


Table 8: Countries with Highest Levels of Achievement in GenderEquality and Womens Empowerment

C ou nt ry 30% Wo m e ns Female/Male Ratio F e mal e Female Share ofS ha re of Seat s Ne t Secondar y En rolment Rate Paid Employment inin National School Enrolment, in Secondary N on -Agr icu lt ura lPa r li ament ( 9 5- 1 05% ) Sc ho ol S e c to r, (44-55%)

S w e d e n 45.0 104 98 51

D e n m a r k 38.0 103 91 49

F i n l a n d 36.5 102 96 50

N o rw a y 36.4 101 96 48

I c e l a n d 34.9 104 78 52

N e t h e r l a n d s 31.5 100 92 44

G e rm a n y 31.0 101 88 45

Ve ry Close to t he Highe st Leve ls of Achievement in Gende r Equali ty and Wo m e n s Empowerm e n t

Costa Rica 35.1 113 46 39

A rg e n t i n a 31.3 109 79 43

South Africa 30.0 110 95 n.d

[ C O NT I NU E DF R O MPAG E 43 ]

Percentage Per Capita Growth ofPopulati on GDP Per CapitaBelow $1 2000 GDP, Annuala Day (ppp US$) Average1999 1990-2000

(%)

Sub-SaharanAfrica 47 1690 -0.3

Middle Eastand North Africa 2 4793 0.7

South Asia 37 2404 3.3

East Asia andthe Pacific 14 4290 5.7

Latin Americaand Caribbean 15 7234 1.7

Central andE a s t e rn Europeand Central Asia 4 6930 -2.4

Sources:Population below $1 a day: MDG data basePer capita GDP:UNDP, Human Development Report 2002, Table 1, p.152Growth of per capita GDP: Human Development Report 2002, Table 12, p. 193

Table 10: Poverty and EconomicGrowth, by Region

Maternal Deathsper 100,000 LiveBirths, 1995

Sub-Saharan Africa 1100

Middle East and North Africa 360

South Asia 430

East Asia and the Pacific 140

Latin America and Caribbean 190

CIS/CEE and Baltic States 55

Source: Maternal mortality in 1995: Estimates developed

by WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA, Geneva, 2001.

Table 11: Maternal Mortality,by RegionFemale Enrolment Female/Male Female Youth Female Share of Womens Share of

Rate i n Secondary R at io in Seconda ry L it er acy Rate Wag e E mployment Seats i n Nat ionalSchool School Enrolment in Non-Agricultural Parliament

Sector

Below 10% Below 50% Below 50% Below 20% Below 5%

Burkina Faso Benin Bangladesh Bahrain Algeria MoroccoBurundi Cambodia Benin Burkina Faso Armenia NigeriaCambodia Chad Burkina Faso Chad Bangladesh NigerChad Cte dIvoire Guinea-Bissau India Djibouti Sri LankaCongo, DR Equatorial Guinea Iraq Malawi Egypt SamoaGuinea Guinea Mauritania Niger Iran (Western)Mozambique Guinea-Bissau Nepal Pakistan Jordan TurkeyNiger Mali Niger Syria Kenya TogoTanzania, UR Togo Pakistan Turkey Kuwait Yemen

Yemen Senegal Zimbabwe Lebanon UAEMauritania Vanuatu

Table 9: Countries with Lowest Levels of Achievement in GenderEquality and Womens Empowerment

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Following the pioneering work of South Africa,at least 10 other countries in sub-Saharan Africaare carrying out gender budget initiatives, includ-ing Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia,Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda andZimbabwe. Started in response to the structura ladjustment policies imposed in the region in thelast two decades, they have highlighted the fact thatthe contributions of men and women to economiesa re counted and recompensed very differe n t l y .

Women contribute 90 per cent of all food pro-cessing, water and fuelwood collection, 90 per centof hoeing and weeding on farms and 60 per cent ofharvesting and marketing, along with almost all the

work of caring for family members, but most ofthis is unpaid.

Most of the gender budget initiatives also reflectthe movement towards more transparent and par-ticipatory forms of gov ernance in t he re g i o n ,including a concern to give poor and marginalizedpopulations a political voice as well as a gre a t e rshare in public resou rces. While parliaments arefinding ways to play a greater role in determiningbudget priorities, womens groups and civil societyorganizations are advocating with parliamentari-ans to influence this process and providing theirown analysis of existing budget flows.

As a result, some of the most effective initiativesare carried out jointly by civil society and parlia-mentarians. One example is the Gender BudgetProject in Uganda, which is a creative partnershipbetween the Forum for Women in Demo cra c y(FOWODE) and a caucus of parliamentarians rep-resenting women, youth, workers and people withdisabilities. Through the partnership, supportedby the UN Develo pment Pr o g ra m m e(UNDP),UNIFEM and other international agen-cies, research and analyses done by FOWODE aretaken up in parliamentary committees and includedin parliamentary reports on the budget. Focuse don expenditures in education, health and agricul-ture, the project has succeeded in involving gov-ernment planners from those three sectors as wellas the Ministries of Finance and EconomicPlanning and Gender, Labour and Socia l

Development. Recently, it has also begun to focuson how revenue is raised.

E l s e w h e re, Tanzanias Gender BudgetingInitiative, started in 1997 by a coalition of women sgroups, and taken forward by the Tanzania GenderNetworking Pr o g ramme, was a response to thed ramatic cuts in social services, particularly tohealth care and education, together with massivelayoffs of public sector workers caused by structuraladjustment policies. In addition to examiningresource allocation in national and local budgets,the initiative seeks to strengthen womens lobby-

ing and advocacy skills in order to incre a s eresources to sectors that impact women, youths andother disadvantaged groups. An integral part of theinitiative is a popular education effort, featuringa reader-friendly guide to the budget process andeconomic policy.

Mozambique is an example of a government-ledinitiative. Under the leadership of the Ministry ofPlanning and Finance, the Government presenteda Social and Economic Plan with a gender perspec-

tive to Parliament in 1998 and began collecting gen-der -d is a ggregated data for the 1999 budget pro-posals. The Ministry also facilitated training fortechnical staff in preparing the national budget froma gender perspective. UNIFEM has recently sup-ported the production of a popular guidebook ongender budget analysis that aims to make womensunpaid work visible and to see that it is accounted forin macroeconomic policy making.

In Nigeria a UNIFEM-supported genderbudget exercise is being developed under theleadership of the M inistry o f Wo m e ns Affairsand Social Development as part of its work toimplement the Beijing Platform for Action. Theinitiative focused first on the federal budget fora g r icu lt u ral and rural development as well as ontwo state-level budgets the budget for health in

Akwa Ibom state and the budget for commerc eand industry in Ebugu state. A training manualis in the process of development. UNIFEM is alsoliaising with the European Union and the OpenSociety Institute for West Africa (OSIWA) topromote gender mainstreaming in their publicbudget reform progra mm e s.

In Rwanda, which is struggling to recover froma decade of war and upheaval, the Governmentfaces the twin challenges of building democrat i cgovernance and restarting a devastated economy.Poverty rates, especially among women, are amongthe highest in the region: 62 per cent of female-headed households are living in poverty co mparedto 54 per cent of male-headed households. Mostpeople depend upon farming for livelihoods, butwhile women make up over 80 per cent of farm-ers, they have limited access to or control over land,

m a r kets and credit. With support from the UKDepartment for International Development(DfID), the Rwanda Government is carrying out agender budget exercise under the leadership of theMinistry of Gender and Women in Development.It is collaborating with the Ministry of Finance andEconomic Planning, which is coordinating reformof governance and development strategy. Startingwith pilots in five sectors, the initiative is focused onbuilding capacity within the ministries and work-ing with the Dire c to rate of Statistics to genera tesex-disaggregated data.

BOX 9: GENDER BUDGET INITIATIVES

Sources: Budlender et al. 2002; UNIFEM 2002

Table 12: HIV/AIDS, by Region, 2002

Adults and Childre n Adults and Children Adult Prev a l en c e % of HIV Posit iv eLiving with HIV/AIDS Newly Infected Rate (%)* Adults Who Are

with HIV/AIDS Wo men

Sub-Saharan Africa 29.4 million 3.5 million 8.8 58

N o rth Africa andthe Middle East 550 000 83 000 0.3 55

South and South-East Asia 6.0 million 700 000 0.6 36

East Asia and the Pacific 1.2 million 270 000 0.1 24

Latin America 1.5 million 150 000 0.6 30

C a r i b b e a n 440 000 60 000 2.4 50

E a s t e rn Europeand Central Asia 1.2 million 250 000 0.6 27

We s t e rn Euro p e 570 000 30 000 0.3 25

N o rth America 980 000 45 000 0.6 20

Australia andNew Zealand 15 000 500 0.1 7

To t a l 42 million 5 million 1.2 50

Source: UNAIDS/WHO. AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2002. http://www.unaids.org/

* The proportion of adults (15 to 49 years of age) living with HIV/AIDS in 2002, using 2002 population numbers

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To accelerate progress towards achieving the

Millennium Development Goals, t he UN Secre t a r y -

Ge neral and the Administrator of UNDP have launched

the Millennium Project, a three-year effort to identify the

best strategies for meeting the MDGs. The Projects ana-

lytical work will be carried out by 10 Task Forces, comprised

of representatives of academia, the public and private sec-

tors, and civil society organizations.

The Task Force on Education and Gender Equality has

produced background papers on each of its two compo-

nents. The paper on gender equality, entitled Promises

to Keep: Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment

of Women, offers an analysis of the selected targets and

indicators for Goal 3, summarizes progress to date along

these measures, and makes recommendations for tracking

progress in the future. Many of the Task Forces observa-

tions and recommendations affirm what is contained in

this volume. They also propose alternative targets and indi-

cators for tracking progress.

The Task Force puts forward three primary domains or

components of equality between men and women:q The capabilities domain refers to basic human abili-

ties as measured through education, health and nutri-

tion. It is the most fundamental of the three domains and

is necessary for achieving equality in the other two

d o m ai ns.q The access to resources and opportunities domain

refers primarily to equality in the opportunity to use or

apply basic capabilities through access to ec onomic assets

(such as land and property) and resources (such as income

and employment).q The agency domain is the defining element in th e con-

cept of empowerment and refers to the ability to make

choices and decisions that can alter outcomes. Gender

equality in this domain can only result from an equalizing

in the balance of power between women and men in the

household and societal institutions.

These three domains of equality are inter-re l a t e d .

Pr o gress in any one domain to the exclusion of the oth-

ers is insufficient to meet the goal of gender equality.

While they are inter-related, the three domains are not

necessarily dependent on one another. For i nstance, illit-

erate women, who are lacking in the capabilities domain,may organize, thereby building their agency to influence

their circumstances and those of their households. Not

surprisingly, the women then use that agency to demand

capability (better health or education) and opportunity

(access to decent work). Similarly, women with capabili-

ties (as measured by education) may have limited eco-

nomic opportunities, owing to persistent gender dis-

crimination in employment and a ccess to re s o u rc e s .

The Task Force recommends using this framework to

expand the number of targets necessary to reach Goal 3

and adding some indicators to the four that were origi-

nally selected. For the targets, it recommends two addi-

tional ones to be met by 2015: 1) eliminate gender

inequality in access to economic assets and employment;

2) achieve a 30 per cent share of seats for women in

national parliaments.

For the indicators, it recommends the following sup-

plements:q Completion rates in addition to enrolment rates for all

levels of education;q Region-specific economic indicators such as gender

gaps in earnings in wage and self-employment, sex-dis-

ag g regated unemployment rates or occupational segre-

g a t ion;q Prevalence of domestic violence in the past year par-

ticularly focusing on physical violence experienced by

women ages 15-49 at the hands of intimate partners.

The paper contains a brief discussion on policies and

p ro grammes needed to achieve the two proposed targets

and the already-existing one. Some of the highlights

in cl u d e:

Target 1 Eliminate gender disparity in primary and

secondary education, pref erably by 2005 and in all lev-

els of education no later than 2015. On the global level,

the authors recommend using the "Education for All"

(EFA) framework established after the World Conference

on Education for All in 1990 to set priorities and chan-nel resources. The EFA declaration includes a commit-

ment to "ensure access to and improve the quality of edu-

cation for girls and women and to remove every obstacle

that hampers their active participation." In 2002, the

E FA Fa s t-Track Partnership was endorsed, which would

channel increased development support to countries

indentified as having a sound educational sector strategy.

At the regional and national levels, the authors high-

light the need to address supply and demand constraints .

On the supply side, strategies include increasing the num-

ber and reach of primary and secondary schools, partic-

ularly in rural areas; reducing school costs; staffing

schools with female teachers; instituting policies that pro-

mote girls attendance (such as permitting married ado-

lescents to attend); and improving the safety of schools,

the quality and gender-sensitivity of curricula, and thedesign of facilities. Demand-side strategies include mobi-

lizing parent and community involvement in monitor-

ing the quality of education, undertaking campaigns to

inc rease awareness of the value of gi rls education, and

introducing broader economic policies that increase the

returns to girls education.

Target 2 Eliminate gender inequality in access to eco-

nomic assets and employment by the year 2015. The

authors recommend using the ILOs Decent Work cam-

paign (see Box 6, p. 38) as the global framework for mon-

BOX 10: THE MILLENNIUM PROJECT

itoring equal access to employment and remedying inequal-

ities in access to economic resources. Specifically, they pro-

pose two pathways: improving womens access to economic

assets and improving womens access to employment and

labour markets.

With regard to the first, they propose that an essential

first step is legislation allowing women to inherit, acquire

and control productive assets, including land and hous-

ing. These legal reforms will need, as well, effective

e n f o rcement mechanisms. Beyond land and housing,

providing poor women with access to credit is another

way to enhance their asset ownership and access to sav-

ings. Microcredit programmes have been recognized as

contributing to the stabilization of household income,

although they are less effective in stimulating economic

growth. With rega rd to employment and labour markets ,the authors note that strategies for improving women s

access to employment include expanding their advance-

ment from primary to tertiary schooling and boosting

their participation in science, engineering, technology

and other fields to pre p a re them for jobs in the global

economy. They also note the importance of: a) employ-

ment-targeted economic growth as a prerequisite for low-

income countries coupled with social policies that elim-

inate discriminatory employment barriers; b) equity in

earnings, with secure earnings as an important means to

Simprove womens bargaining power; c) equitable dis-

tribution of state re sources that close gender gaps in eco-

nomic and social well-being.

Ta rget 3 Achieve a 30 per cent share of seats for

women in national parliaments by the year 2015. The

authors point out that quotas have been an effective way of

bringing about change in the number of women in posi-

tions of political leadership in the short term. While not-

ing that opinion is mixed about whether or not a greater

number of women in political office translates into policies

and budget authorizations that benefit women overall, they

point out that it does have an important symbolic effect by

generating a public discussion of gender equality in poli-

tics and decision-making.

In addition to the discussion of the t argets and indica-

tors, the authors propose that womens agency can bei n c reased by a commitment to ending violence against

women. They call on the Secretary-General of the UN to

lend his leadership to a campaign of zero tolerance for such

violence, and recommend CEDAW as a useful international

mechanism to hold countries accountable for meeting Goal

3. They point out t hat all the nati ons that have r a ti f i e d

CE DAW are required to report on the specific measure s

they have taken to advance womens status, and that the

C E DAW mechanism can similarly be used to monitor

progress toward the MDGs.

A labour market for women in Beijing. Women gather here to wait for an employer to offer them a job.

Source: Grown et al. 2003

PROGRESS OF THE WORLDS WOMEN 2 0 0 2 q53

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