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The Missing Link in Growth and Sustainable Development:Closing the Gender Gap
ADB/Economic Commission for Africa
May 24, 2004

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This Issues Paper was prepared by Alfred Latigo of the Policy Analysis and Advocacy Programme, African Centre for Gender and Development, Economic Commission for Africa and co-authored by Duncan Ironmonger, Consultant.

Introduction
It is no secret that in recent decades, sub-Saharan Africa has been the world's worst-performing region in terms of poverty reduction. Today, nearly one in two people on the African continent survives on less than $1 per day. Between 1987 and 1998, the number of poor people increased from 217 million to 290 million. Of these poor, 80 per cent are estimated to be women. In sub-Saharan Africa, women comprise 60 per cent of the informal sector (including informal trade), provide about 70 per cent of the total agricultural labour, and produce about 90 per cent of the food (World Bank, 2000). Yet, they lack equal access to health, education, finance and other essential resources.

The World Bank (2000) estimates that Africa would need to grow by 5 per cent per year just to keep the number of poor from rising. If the number living in extreme poverty is to be halved by 2015, as called for in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), not only will economies need substantial growth of 7 per cent or more, but incomes will also have to be distributed more equitably. The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) estimates that an investment of 33 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) is needed to reach the desirable growth rates.

This Issues Paper discusses how to take gender into consideration when addressing growth issues and how to close the disturbing gender gap in African development. It recommends socially recognizing the contribution of household production and services, to which women provide substantial labour, and then integrating these figures into national budgeting and policymaking processes.

The paper has three primary objectives. The .rst is to address the linkages between gender inequality, economic growth, and sustainable development in Africa, with a view to proposing further options for promoting pro-poor growth policies in Africa. The second is to provide Ministers of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development, as key decision-makers directing structural economic reforms, the opportunity to further deepen their understanding of gender equality as a necessary component of national growth and poverty reduction strategies. The third is to garner the commitment of the Ministers to act on this understanding by integrating measures to overcome gender-related obstacles into national strategies and budgetary policies and procedures in order to achieve the objectives of the New Partnership for Africa's Development
(NEPAD), Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The paper is divided into three parts.

In the first part, two sections address the nature of the problem. The starting points in Section 1 are the following factual elements:

(i) households are the most influential social and economic units of the nation, their outputs comprising non-market work, and subsistence and informal sector production;

(ii) men and women both play substantial -though different-roles in African economies; and

(iii) there is a large body of microeconomic empirical evidence, and increasing macroeconomic analysis, which shows that gender inequality directly and indirectly limits economic growth in Africa.

Section 2 examines gender-based inequality in access to:

(i) time;

(ii) education and health opportunities;

(iii) direct productive assets; and

(iv) decision-making.

Because their economic margin is slim, poor women are more vulnerable not only to external shocks, but also to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The main policy implications of this analysis are that because gender inequality acts as a powerful constraint to growth in Africa, removing gender-based barriers will make a substantial contribution to realizing Africa's development potential.

In the next part on presenting the solutions, Section 3 examines the challenges of integrating household production data into national policies, and introduces concepts and tools to address these needs.

Finally in the last part on applying the solutions, Section 4 reviews recent international and regional commitments made mostly by Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development to remove gender-related obstacles to development. As a follow-up to these pledges, the paper presents specific issues for consideration by the Ministers.

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