17 Jul 2024

Despite improvements, there are still huge gaps in sex disaggregated data across sectors in terms of coverage, accessibility, frequency and timeliness.

 Speaking on Africa Gender Index (AGI) in Gaborone, Wednesday, UNECA delegate, Ms Edna Akullq, said there was a need to improve new and innovative data sources and work with National Statistics Organisations (NSOs) to fill data gaps.

 Ms Akullq said there also was a need to modernize the process for collecting and updating Africa Gender Index (AGI) data.

 She said data harmonization and standardization needed to be improved.

 She also said at a time of shocks and poly-crisis, African women faced lasting impacts of COVID-19, resulting in job losses that took long to reinstate to pre-pandemic levels of economic security, GBV, unwanted pregnancies and long term impacts on women’s health .

 She said about 22 African counties were in debt distress which caused them to spend more on debt services than on education and social protection.

 Ms Akullq said austerity measures adopted as part of debt relief were designed without gender lens, impacting heavily on services for women, among them sexual reproductive health and protection from GBV.

 She said food security in parts of Africa doubled in 2021 and 2022 creating negative coping strategies to impact disproportionately on women and girls who often ate last and less than men and boys.

 She also said girls’ education was deprioritized in times of stress while GBV also takes a hike at the same time.

 She said services for women in fragile contexts were often limited while in displacement situations, female-headed households experienced higher rates of food insecurity.

 She said that women in Sub-Saharan Africa produce 60-70 per cent of food, thereby contributing to food insecurity due to farmer’s unequal access to inputs.

 She also said Africa had experienced sharp rises in conflict and violent extremism over the past two decades making women direct targets of violence with long-term consequences for their physical and mental health.

 She further said victims of such violence often faced the added burden of social stigma.

 Ms Akullq said women were on the frontline of accelerating climate impacts. Food systems came under climate stress, women faced increased time and labour burdens for food production, water and fuel provision and family care.

 She said climate vulnerable sectors were those that women particularly depended on for their livelihoods, among others, agriculture, fishing and forestry.

 She also said there was a common pattern of men being displaced into urban areas, leaving women in charge of land and households.

 She further said where women had an active voice in decision-making, it helped build resilience.

 In her recommendations, Ms Akullq said debt relief packages should exempt women-focused services from spending reductions and encourage gender-responsive approaches to reducing debt pressures. Gender-sensitive shock-responsive social protection systems development should be accelerated.

 She said governments were to increase focus on gender in national agriculture and food strategies to better mitigate the impacts of food security in women. It was essential to ensure that food security data was disaggregated by sex, age and disability status to build a deeper understanding of the different impacts of crisis.

 She further said data collection research and analysis into the causes of boys’ underperformance in higher levels of education, and introduce policy measure to ensure that they were not left behind was to be undertaken.

 She said it was important to recognize the role of women in community-level adaptation and strengthen their voice in decision-making for increased resilience.

 Ms Akullq said there was a need to increase focus on identifying and responding to the needs of women and girls in humanitarian emergencies and mass displacement…..bopa/nat/17072024/ends