H.E. Minister of Gender of the Republic of Rwanda,
H.E. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Rwanda,
Africa Union Ministers of Gender and Women’s Affairs here present,
African Union Members of the Diplomatic Corps here present,
Honorable Members of Parliaments,
Representatives of Regional Economic Communities,
United Nations Agencies, AU Organs, the Private Sector, African National Human Rights Institutions, and Civil Society Organizations,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
A warm welcome to all participants at this 3rd AU High Level Panel on Gender, a timely panel as we enter the second halve of the African Women’s Decade.
I am particularly pleased that this gathering is taking place in the Republic of Rwanda, the world’s leader in gender equality, women’s empowerment, women’s leadership and political participation. Allow me, therefore, to express my profound gratitude to H.E. President Paul Kagame, and the Government and People of Rwanda, for the warm welcome and hospitality since we arrived in the Land of a Thousand Hills.
The High Level Panels on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment are organized before each mid-year Summit of the African Union Heads of State and Government to consult with relevant stakeholders on pertinent gender equality and women’s empowerment issues, with a view to influencing policy and decisions of the AU Policy Organs.
The theme for this 3rd AU High Panel on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment is “The contributions of Maputo Protocol on Women’s Rights in Achieving Gender Equality in Africa: Stocktaking, Opportunities and Accountability”
As the transformation from the OAU to the African Union culminated in the adoption of the Constitutive Act of the AU in 2002, the women’s movement on the continent recognized the need for an African gender platform, building on the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
The Maputo Protocol was specific to the issues faced by African women and girls, finding African solutions to these challenges and binding to African governments.
It became a tool for mobilisation and organization for women in government and parliament, in civil society, business, academia and unions; and a focus for campaigns on maternal and child mortality, on economic empowerment, on violence against women, on issues of representation, peace and security and a number of other issues contained in the Protocol.
There is no question, as the report by the Gender Directorate on the review of the Maputo Protocol will show, that we have made progress in a number of areas.
And yet, as the UN Women last year noted, at the same pace of change since Beijing, it will take the world 81 years to reach gender parity in the work place, 75 years to reach equal pay for equal work and 30 years for gender parity in the political spheres. That is quite frankly too long a time to wait.
The reality is that across the world, including in Africa, we are making progress at a snail’s pace, and we seem to accept that this is how it will be.
My message to you today is that we must challenge ourselves, to understand why progress is so slow, and what needs to be done to change this situation.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me start with a quote from Thomas Sankara on International Womens day in 1987, when he said:
We have no need of a feminized apparatus to bureaucratically manage women’s lives or to issue sporadic statements about women’s lives by smooth-talking functionaries.
What we need are women who will fight because they know that without a fight the old order will not be destroyed and no new order will be built.
We are not looking to organize what exists, but to definitively destroy and replace it.
The women’s movement, emerging side by side with the anti-colonial and national liberation movements, always had to fight: to have their voices heard, and for gender issues to be incorporated into the national and Pan African struggles. Thus thousands of women took their place side by side with the menfolk in the struggles for African independence.
The adoption of the Maputo Protocol in 2003, was a recognition that though women’s position improved in post independence Africa, this change has not gone deep enough, and that we need to do much-much more to build a non-sexist Africa and improve the conditions of millions of women and girls. The Maputo Protocol thus became a guide to action.
Over the thirteen years, we have made progress, raised awareness and ensured that women’s issues are on the agenda of our continent and countries. However, this struggle is not yet over. In fact, we are at a cross-roads, where we can decide that we are satisfied with the slow pace of change, with tinkering at the edges, or to take a qualitative leap in women’s situation that is so necessary to build the Africa we want and envisaged by Agenda 2063.
Ladies and Gentlemen
There are a number of issues to address, which impact on our will to fight, as we pursue the struggle to destroy the old order of patriarchy and build a non-sexist, peaceful and prosperous Africa.
The first is the tendency of women, because of our socialization, not to rock the boat, to be the voice of compromise and to want to build consensus. Whilst this search for consensus and peace is laudable in many societal matters, it often means that when we get into government, parliaments, organisations, institutions, or into business we tend to conform, to seek to do well within the existing culture and not to transform these institutions so that they also include and work for the other half of our populations.
Conforming is the path of least resistance, whilst transformation means that we have to challenge the status quo we find in the institutions we join. More often than not, when we do so, the issues that we challenge, because the system never before had to provide or cope with women, are dismissed, trivialized when we raise them or met with resistance.
We also know that without challenge, we will not change the situation, nor open the door for other women. This requires that women, when getting into positions of responsibility and leadership, we are conscious of the situation of women in the institution, how it works for and relate to women, and to work with other women to transform.
However, if we conform in order to fit in and make it in the man’s world, we settle for less, and celebrate the snail’s pace of change, whilst it also opens space for backlash to the rights that we have won or thought we have won.
A second challenge is the resistance to change from men. We must accept that no king will voluntary give up his throne. Patriarchy is structured to advantage men, in particular to maintain control in public, economic and family life; and of women’s bodies.
As Thomas Sankara said in the same Women’s day message referred to earlier: “The man, no matter how oppressed he is, has another human being to oppress: his wife.”
When women therefore fight for representation, it is seen as taken something away from men. What they and often we ourselves don’t realize, is that women are equal in their own right, not because of the largesse of men, and that women’s rights are human rights. That is why Samora Machel said: ‘the emancipation of women is not an act of charity.’
For example, often when we talk about 30% representation (not even gender parity) some men bitterly complain that they are becoming an endangered species, when in fact they still hold over 70% of positions. We’ve found this in the AU Commission, where we are at less than 15% women in professional positions (double than what we had before), but there are bitter complaints from men that they are being overlooked when we appoint women.
Linked to this resistance, is how as women we collude in our second class status, internalized our oppression and perpetuate the reproduction of oppressive gender roles and stereotypes in the next generations. This range from how we socialize our boys and girls to ‘know their place’, to the role we play as mothers, aunts, grandmothers in perpetuating harmful cultural practices.
Our campaigns around these issues must therefore be about raising consciousness amongst women of all ages, about the need to give their girls better opportunities through education, and help them to break the cycles of oppression.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
These issues have implications for the tactics and strategies of the women’s and gender movement, highlighting the need for women who will continue to fight.
It means that as a women’s movement, we must be organized and be united as a movement. It means that we must also build alliances with, mobilise and organise women in all sectors, and unite the wide range of grassroots women’s groups across the length and breadth of the continent.
We did not just symbolically declared 2015 as the Year of Women’s Empowerment for the implementation of Agenda 2063. We did it because decisive progress on the empowerment of women and girls; and decisive progress in getting a critical mass of conscious women in government, parliaments, business, the security forces, the judiciary, in peace negotiations; the boardrooms, universities and professions, will make a difference in whether we move ahead in Agenda 2063.
But it also means that as a women’s movement and as women, we take a stand on matters critical to the continent. One such issue is the financing of our Union and of our continental programmes. Our continent has to address its failure to finance itself, and the women’s movement must lead the way.
I was saying to the Director of Gender yesterday, that we are forever scrounging around and begging for money for these Gender events, often at the expense of our principles and our autonomy. Is’nt it time that as women activists, we contribute and mobilise other women to contribute even just a a dollar a month to fund the activities and programmes we think are important for African women?
The women’s movement also must be in the forefront of Pan African approaches to matters, like the women in maritime are doing, trying to organise and establish a Pan African women’s shipping company or the initiative by women in other sectors, in agriculture, in trade and the professions.
We must also be more assertive about the importance of those issues close to our hearts and to the well-being of our people: education and skills development, health, access to good nutrition, water and sanitation, the transformation of agriculture and economic transformation, to ensure a better life for the next generations of Africans.
As women, we must in large our numbers join all the movements and organisations for change on the continent, including political parties, trade unions, business associations, civil society, faith based organization so that we fight for women’s empowerment and non-sexism in all spheres of society, and conscientise men that women and girls empowerment make for more democratic, inclusive, peaceful and prosperous societies.
We often talk about Africa as a young continent, conscientising girls and young women and working with them is therefore critical to the sustainability of our cause.
As a robust women’s movement we should be guided by our successes and not shy away from challenges. It is our collective duty not to let our struggles become routine, easy to dismiss, but instead to continue to renew and broaden the women’s movement in order to realise radical and sustainable continental change.
Ladies and Gentlemen
These are some of the ideas of what needs to be done to ensure that we do better, and do it faster during the second half of the decade of African women.
I thank you for your support to me during these four years at the helm of the Commission, knowing full well that our struggle to destroy the old order and build the new must continue, and must become more assertive and inclusive.
I thank you
