312, 1921).
The four areas that I felt warranted much more work than we can do at a forum like this: one is obviously the issue of culture that cuts across everything we do. And we do not want to underestimate the value, the importance, and the potential constraints that culture places on issues of gender and law, and I think it is Sherif Hassan who put it very well this morning: that when it becomes convenient, some of the Muslims fall back on the Koran because then it becomes an excuse to perpetuate the status quo. And that is what we are seeing more and more, when it becomes convenient, when the status quo is threatened, then culture becomes a convenient vehicle. And we need to sort out when is culture being used as a convenient vehicle and when it is a viable instrument that needs to be preserved as we reform our laws. Ultimately that reconciliation will only come with greater socioeconomic development as our Norwegian colleague said this morning; what made a difference finally in Norway was not so much the lobbying—although that was important, not so much the gender
awareness—although that was important, but it was the true and highưlevel education of women. Once women begin to attend secondary level education and tertiary level education and they get into the labor market, then they become a forư
midable force; and even as we focus on legal issues, we must look at that broader spectrum. How are women creating a ground swell through education in order to change this in a permanent manner?
The second issue is that we found that there are major issues to do with the law itself. There are contradictions in the law, in the various laws that we have. I enjoyed the example that I believe Gladys Mutukwa gave us yesterday that when a woman gets a divorce she is entitled to 50 percent of the family property. But if she waits until the husband dies, she risks losing everything; and obviously there is something very wrong with that because, and I'm sure, whoever put those laws together had not seen the obvious implications with that. And therefore there is a need to look at laws within the same country to avoid those kinds of absurd contradictions, to make sure they are not working against each other. Secondly within the law itself, we found that there are contradictions within the various laws, religious laws, statutory laws, customary laws and therefore a need to reconcile them. Not in a conflictual manner, but in a manner whereby they reinforce each other. And finally with the law, the main bottleneck obviously is the gap between the implementation and the passage of the law, between the implementation and actualization.
The third point I picked up is that we've got to contend with the structural basis for disempowerment. We all, I think without exception, are emerging from a historical situation that is highly patriarchal, where it is assumed, or where the reality is, that the man is the head of the family, the man is the one who holds the resources. And what struck me yesterday afternoon, when we did the plenary, was the passiveness with which we were treating the issue towards, in a polygamous household women are fighting over resources of a man. The man is there holding the bag of money, and all our efforts are aimed at getting our fair share of it. And this is not because we are passive or because it couldn't be done differently, it is simply because of the highly patriarchal nature of the situation that we are all emerging from. And I think a fundamental concern as a followưup to this has to be how do you empower women as women? Not as wives or daughters, but how do you empower women as women and give them alternative ways of living their lives so that they are not fully dependent? You know in the Zimbabwe paper as you saw—was it the Zimbabwe paper? [no, audience remarks, it was in the Kenya paper]—where you have one husband for bread and one husband for house. I think that's a Freudian slip, I didn't want to admit it was Kenya. But you know what I mean. When a woman has to go the level of having various husbands, for various material reasons, then something is very wrong with the structural basis of our resource allocation. And that needs to be attacked at the
fundamental level. Are we raising our girls as potential wives and daughtersưinưlaw or are we raising them as women who are an integral part of the society, who are an integral part of the economic process? Maybe I'm getting philosophical. But I was disheartened that the whole argument on land, the whole argument on property, was hitching on what do I get out of this from this guy who is polygamous and who has two other wives or three
Appendix A— Closing Statements. 153
other wives? And I know it is true, and I know that is the pain that is hurting most women, particularly in the rural areas. But there is something wrong with the structural basis with that.
And finally the issue that also struck me is, how disempowering poverty is, how destabilizing poverty is as a root cause of marital violence. And the point that, as the member of the audience kept reminding us of, when men become threatened because their role has been undermined, mainly because they are not able to be effective economic heads of households, then in response, violence becomes one of the ways of dealing with it, and we should not underestimate that. In the same way, with the issue of land that we are all trying to grapple with, we are not dealing with a static situation. One of the things that struck me from the Zimbabwe presentation this afternoon is that we are talking about reforming the law in order to enable women to access communal land but only this morning on CNN they were talking about the difficulties that Zimbabwe is experiencing with land and how they are attempting to get it from the white farmers because there is not enough communal land to go around.
If there is not enough to go around, who is going to give up what in order to accommodate the women to obtain the land? We are dealing with a decreasing cake at a time when women are becoming aware of the need to get a seat at the table, and there are no more seats left. So, we've got to appreciate that because it is a constrained situation. It is not simply speaking loud enough in order to be heard, we've got to find other ways of getting a seat at that table. And I wonder whether I might throw the challenge to the Zimbabwe team to revisit the issue of the communal land and see whether there is not an opportunity, as this land is released from the white farmers, for the women to get more of it since they didn't get it the first time around. So that we deal with an evolving situation.
I know I said it was the last point, but it was only the last point of the key issues; but I will be very quick, Mr.
Chairman. I think it was our fault as the organizing committee to expect that you could come up with action plans for issues as complex as we were dealing with, in two hours. And I do not take that what you put around the table this afternoon is the full extent of your thinking. I see that as indicative of your thinking of some of the directions you are going to take as you think more about this. I'm not too worried about the details of the action
plans; what I'm a little bit concerned about is what is going to be the institutional mechanism for following up on this. Many of you are very busy; it is an honor to have you here for two days. But you are all going to go back to your various jobs; who is going to carry this forward in an institutional manner? I suppose in the Kenya case you've got the task force, and that can be used as a machinery. I suppose, perhaps with the Uganda case the decentralization mechanism is in place and you can push that forward through the Ministry. But I'm not clear in my own mind—and I'm not asking for [an] answer, it's just what was going on in my own mind—with the other situations; how are going to deal with issues that are very multifaceted in an institutional manner in a way that carries the momentum forward? And I would like to just put that on the table as something you might want to followưup because we need more information on some of these issues; clearly, we need some legal reform, some of which was identified; we need to have what was proposed yesterday, a kind of watchdog, that ensures that as new issues emerge—whether it is decentralization or privatization or HIV/AIDS—that wherever there are likely to be genderưrelated legal issues there is somebody there who is keeping an eye out and is saying: hey, girls, we need to be vigilant about this, we need to do something about this. And I don't get a sense that that institutional mechanism exists. I could be totally wrong; I'm just throwing that to you.
Some of the remaining challenges I see is really working with the full range of issues, from the youth to young women to older women, you know, I mentioned that. Secondly, to keep pace with the evolving situation, we are not dealing with a static situation, particularly with the countries that we are working with here. You know, two years ago Eritrea was not born, three years ago; it is now a country that has made a tremendous amount of progress, and we cannot talk about these issues as if they are static. Even as we talk about land or marriage, or decentralization, or whatever it is, we need to be thinking about it as if the train is moving even as we try to catch up with it. And that is very important to keep in mind.
Appendix A— Closing Statements. 154
Finally, I would just like to throw a question to us all and say: Are we being bold enough? Are we shaking the system strongly enough to bring about the change that we require? And I feel that perhaps not. And I don't think it's because we can't do it. I don't think its because you don't have the ideas; I think we have the highest
concentration of ideas on this issue anywhere. I think, because it is such a new issue the tendency is sometimes to bite it in small pieces, and I feel that the countries represented here are evolving so quickly at so many levels [that] we cannot afford to take small baby steps. Let us be bold; let us have others say you are moving too fast rather than giving us token
responses because our requests were not bold enough. We from the Bank are there to assist you, we have two of the country directors here. Oey Meesook, who is the country director for Ethiopia and Eritrea; and please, send any requests big and small to Oey, and she is going to work with the colleagues in the Bank to follow it through.
Harold Wackman is here for Kenya. And then Jim Adams— as we were told was not able to come— for Uganda and Tanzania, he is going to be coming to Uganda soon. And he does spend a lot of time in Tanzania and Uganda, as you all know. Get him, write to him, he is very responsive. And then the only one you have not met is the Zimbabwean country director, Barbara Kafka; but the Bank coordinators can give you the name and the contacts of these people. The country directors are our entry points to the programs. They are the ones who take in any new ideas that you have. I'm not absolving myself of responsibility here, but like the true bureaucratic that I am, let's work through the country directors; but of course we all work as a team and we'd be happy to support you and to respond to you. With that, I'd like to thank all of you for making us all proud. I feel with teams such as yours, donors are going to become increasingly more irrelevant or they are going to have to assume a very different role in terms of being responsive as opposed to being dictative as to what happens.
Josephine Ouedraogo, Director, African Center for Women, Economic Commission for Africa The organization of this meeting was a very good opportunity for ECA, and in particular for the Africa Women's Center, to collaborate closely with the World Bank through the Eastern and Southern Africa Human Development Unit—the unit managed by Ruth [Kagia]. And it was a very good experience because we now know better the concerns of the World Bank in the area of gender, and in particular the area of gender and law. And I think that they also know better the concerns and priorities and the strategies of the African Center for Women. And we are at that occasion starting a way of collaboration.
Secondly, this meeting was very, very good; very important and helpful for us because we have this opportunity to know, to hear, the concerns, the priorities of these six countries and through their action plans—it has been very difficult work. I mean for, during two days, to come out with national action plans in this area of gender and law. But the more interesting thing is that these countries through their policy−makers and other actors have started this process before the meeting, so that there has been, I suppose, a very good exercise for these organi−
zations and public services, I mean ministries to elaborate these situations, these papers/statements and action plans before the meeting.
Third, the African Center for Women, is in the process of strengthening its own capacity. As you heard this morning we are in a process of reorientation, of reform, deep reform within ECA itself and within the Center itself. And we are strengthening our own networks, and we need to build partnerships with all the organizations which can support us, but that we can support also to act, to work in a better−focused way in the field. This meeting has been very beneficial in two areas. We have now have [a] long list, a very good list of organizations, of services, and resource persons, and now I think that we know the situations in these six particular countries.
And it is a base, the first step to begin interesting work through partnership with these countries and these
organizations. This meeting gave to you the opportunity to know the Center. I know that many of you didn't know what ECA is. Sometimes it is not easy [to] know the situation of an organization like ECA, which is going
Josephine Ouedraogo, Director, African Center for Women, Economic Commission for Africa 155
through major reform, and the Africa Center for Women, I suppose that you can now know better our priorities and we now what you are expecting from us. It was very interesting this morning to hear your questions and your critiques. It will be helpful for us to better orient our priorities.
I will conclude by saying that the collaboration with the World Bank for this meeting has been very nice. I think that it has been nice because of the sympathetic character of Gita [Gopal], Shu−Shu Tekle−Haimanot, and Sena Gabianu. They were the three people who have worked closely with the Women's Center. I'd like to finish by thanking all of you, but in particular the heads of the delegations. I have been very impressed by their simplicity and the way through which they involved themselves in the discussions. It has been very, very rich and useful. I would like to thank all of you and hoping that it is a start of a process of collaboration and partnership with you.