Noxolo Kabane

Throughout the developing and the developed world, women carry an unduly high burden of poverty. This poverty is experienced not just as material deprivation, but also in the form of marginalisation, which means that those living in poverty often have little or no opportunity to influence the political, economic and social processes and institutions that control and shape their lives, keeping them trapped in a cycle of poverty.

For poor women, this experience of marginalisation is effectively doubled: they belong to communities that exist ‘on the edges of society’, and they are also often denied a voice within the communities, and households in which they live, dominated by men and male interests. Their lack of voice functions as a critical factor in perpetuating gender inequality and poverty, which effectively blocks women’s access to decision-making and opportunities to lead these processes. This situation contributes to an invisibility of women as public actors and constitutes an exclusion of their rights to equal participation (Africa Renewal).

Not only is women’s participation and leadership an essential element for poverty alleviation and tackling gender inequality, it is also a basic human right. International human-rights treaties and conventions, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the third Millennium Development Goal on gender equality, recognise that women have the right to participate equally with men at all levels and in all aspects of public life and decision-making, whether it is deciding how the household income is spent or determining how the country is run, and such conventions commit signatories to realising this goal (www.wedo.org).

Despite these commitments to promoting gender equality in formal structures of representation and decision-making, women continue to be under-represented in all areas of decision-making and face significant barriers to their full and equal participation in the structures and institutions that govern, and directly affect their lives (www. wedo.org.za).

Encouraging Leadership Roles for Women

In this day and age, it is essential to provide targeted training to women and young girls who want to assume positions of leadership. This is one way of enabling more women to influence decision-making processes. Research definitively shows that educating girls and applying pro-active strategies to develop and empower women and girls to take on leadership roles in their communities dramatically improves all social indicators in a developing country (www.oxfam.org.uk).

An important challenge for government and organisations is how support can be delivered in as impartial a way as possible, in order to sustain an increase in women’s participation in all the developmental institutions.

Another challenge is that of making sure that women from a diverse range of backgrounds, ethnicity, age, level of education, (dis) ability and socio-economic status are included in training and development activities.

While training and support is important for women as they seek to attain positions of power, women find that they are left to ‘fend for themselves’ in what can be a very hostile environment. Hence France's Christine Lagarde, the world's first female minister of finance advised women by saying, "Don't assume that you're going to be better heard because you shout louder, because you use slang, and behave like the boys around the table. Just be yourself. We have plenty of energy, confidence, and technical expertise to fit the bill and to hold the position without having to necessarily comply with the model that has been set by other people,” (www.sacsis.org.za).

The main aim should not be preparing women for formal positions of leadership, but rather encouraging women living in poverty to engage with the institutions that make decisions which impact on their lives (www.gwsafrica.org). Central to this is building these women’s confidence, and encouraging them to recognise that they have the right to challenge situations and decisions they think are unfair, or will have a negative impact. But another important aspect has been preparing those in positions of power and leadership so that they are ready to really listen to what the women have to say, in order to make such exchanges as worthwhile as possible for both sides (www.gwsafrica.org). Beyond developing women’s capacities to lead, there is a need to transform models of leadership development so that they become more gender responsive, and include issues such as participatory governance and inclusive dialogue.

Lobbying the Men

If increasing the profile of women in leadership roles is to be successful as a means of benefiting women living in poverty, this must be linked to a broader process of promoting women’s rights and initiatives to combat poverty. We should be talking to girl children and women, but we also have to talk specifically to men. In this way we can start to break the paradigms that we ourselves have developed. In South Africa there is a huge movement dedicated to gender justice, but it's made up almost exclusively of men. The problem for women is not women, but men. Programmes aimed at strengthening women’s leadership and participation will have limited impact unless the structures that uphold gender inequality and other forms of inequality begin to change. For such challenges to be successful, men must be brought on board at all levels to accept the idea of women occupying positions of power, to support women in attaining and carrying out effective leadership that challenges all forms of inequality, and to work with women to develop collective agendas for upholding women’s rights (www.oxfam.org.uk).

Some of the principles that need to guide this process of upholding women’s rights can be achieved through making sure that there needs to be a particular focus on supporting the participation and leadership of women living in poverty or who suffer discrimination on the basis of aspects of their social identity, such as disability, ethnicity, background, HIV status, religion, or age. Work to support women’s leadership will only advance poor women’s interests if accompanied by long-term support for claiming and exercising their rights in other areas, such as access to and control over resources, access to public services like education and health, or protection from violence (www.gwsafrica.org).

A final important lesson concerns the need to base any programme work on an in-depth understanding of the particular gender issues facing a given community or organisation, and hence the particular barriers to women’s participation and leadership in that context. Perhaps most significant to overcoming gender inequality, and the other forms of inequality and discrimination that keep women in poverty, is the work that feminist and women’s rights organisations are already doing to articulate the needs of poor women, and to push for their strategic interests to be met. These groups, whether working at the local or national level, are made up of individuals who are already proving to be effective leaders, and are enabling other women to gain greater control over their lives, and to engage with their communities as active citizens.

References
•    ‘African Women Are Ready to Lead’, Africa Renewal, July 2006, 7. 
•    http://www.gwsafrica.org/teaching-resources/gender-conflict-peace/organisation-profiles
•    http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/learning/gender/downloads/prog_insights_gender1_overview.pdf
•    Women’s Environment & Development Organisation (WEDO), www.wedo.org 
•    Women’s Leadership and Participation: Overview, Women’s Leadership & Participation, Programme Insights, Oxfam GB. February 2008
•    http://www.sacsis.org.za/site/article/