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COPYRIGHT 2002 African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET)
The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) is formulated from a neo-liberal economic perspective and based on a modernist approach to development. A body of critical literature addressing both neo-liberalism and modernism, particularly as they impact upon African women, already exists. The NEPAD makes no attempts to respond to such critique.
NEPAD's 'appeal to African peoples' urges us, as African citizens, to 'regain confidence' and support our 'mobilisation' to achieve the NEPAD's goals. This ignores the fact that our mobilisation around issues addressed by the NEPAD are still stifled--particularly in the rural areas where African state control is strong--by some of the AU's member states and that Africans continue to pay high prices for attempts at such mobilisation in those states.
There is some recognition of the need to address women's needs and existing gender gaps in the region's development through the implementation of the NEPAD. In the NEPAD, for example, African leaders are urged to take responsibility for (among other things) 'promoting the role of women in society and economic development' through 'education and training,' 'access to credit' and 'assuring women's participation in political and economic life.'
However, there is only a limited recognition of the systemic barriers and discrimination faced by African women in every sector addressed by the NEPAD. Emphasis is placed on the need for self-development and self-improvement of African women rather than on the need for African states to remove these systemic barriers and address systemic discrimination against African women. The NEPAD is thus essentially premised upon the Women in Development (WID) rather than the Gender and Development (GAD) approach to gender mainstreaming in development.
The NEPAD also includes some full IDGs which explicitly relate to African women, such as eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by4he year 2005, reducing maternal mortality rates by the year 2005; reducing maternal mortality rates by three quarters by the year 2015; and ensuring access to reproductive health services by the year 2015.
However, the actions proposed under the second sectoral priority, human resources, which covers education and health, are gender-blind and have nothing to do with these International Development Goals (IDGs) It is unclear therefore how implementation of the will assist in achieving these...
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