Eswatini women hampered by legal, social, economic challenges
MBABANE – Women in Eswatini face multiple legal, social and economic challenges. This prevents them from participating in, or earning good income from economic activities in the informal and formal sectors.
This was revealed during a workshop for Women Employment for Economic Recovery (WEER) which was held at Happy Valley Hotel, to capacitate human resources (HR) officers on gender power dynamics and mainstreaming.
Kwakha Indvodza Communications Officer Bandile Lukhele, said United States Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Fund (W-GDP), American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI), Grameen Foundation USA and Kwakha Indvodza (KI), with the support of USAID, were working closely with government and the civil society organisations to advocate for women participation in the economy of Eswatini.
He said the challenges they came across included a legal framework that does not promote women’s participation in the economy.
Another was limited access to finance for business growth and productive assets like farmland.
There was also heavy household workloads, high rates of gender-based violence (GBV) as well as the global COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating economic impact.
Lukhele said while advocating for female participation in the economy, three dimensions in terms of addressing the issue had been looked at.
He noted that the first component was on legal reform to address laws that limited women’s freedom to participate in the economy and society more fully.
Lukhele shared that Section 20 of the Constitution of Eswatini guaranteed equal protection under the law, including the basis of gender.
Discrimination
Meanwhile, Lukhele said Eswatini women continued to suffer disproportionately high levels of discrimination and lack of opportunity in the workforce, constrained access to credit, legal status, property rights as well as high levels of GBV.
“For the legal system of Eswatini to be legally reformed and be gender impartial, it should pass the following standards: Remove the minority status (inequality) in all laws and policies; enact affirmative action in all leadership positions and finalise numerous bills, policies, and gender-related laws,” he said.
He said for partners under WEER project, they worked towards achieving legal reform in Eswatini by supporting law reform; validation through consultation with key stakeholders and consultation coalition building with government, civil society, private sector and beneficiaries to advocate for relevant change.
In the second component on financial inclusion, which was to increase women’s access to finance to start and grow businesses, Lukhele said over the three-year project duration, the WEER project had been trying to improve access to finance through Digital Financial Services (DFS) and other innovative approaches.
This meant conducting a financial inclusion gap analysis in Eswatini and launching a DFS innovation prize to expand financial products and services to women.
Finacial
Lukhele said statistics had proven that women in Eswatini needed digital financial services to improve participation in the Economy. “Only 6.7 per cent of Eswatini adults use loans from formal financial service providers, another 19.4 per cent borrowed from informal financial institutions and 67 per cent adults do not use any form of credit ,” said Lukhele.
He shared that entrepreneurs made up roughly 79 per cent of the total Eswatini population and were one of the most active client segments for financial services. “Despite all that, women make up 55 per cent of the population, but they are eight per cent less likely than men to access financial services.”
The communications officer also indicated that Eswatini was still a highly patriarchal society that holds many traditional views regarding women’s participation in society and the economy.
Because of that, he said women were held to more traditional roles and often limited in their options to access opportunities on an equal basis with men, which impeded women from living up to their full potential.
In collation with public and private sector he stated that Kwakha Indvodza had worked towards advancing the participation of women economy in Eswatini.
“To that end, Kwakha Indvodza had made great stride. The organisation had been able to train corporates on three consecutive workshops. The corporates were inclusive of Nedbank, Eswatini Mobile, MTN Eswatini, Construction Industry Council, Status Business Capital and Montigny, among a few,” he narrated.
Furthermore, Lukhele said HRs personnel got capacitated on the Matrimonial Bill, Employment Act, citizenship issue and land right issues, most of which affected women.
“These workshops were aimed at capacitating the human resources about bridging the gap in gender pay, gender employment while promoting the employment of women. To this extent, the corporates had the privilege of having a learning and sharing experience with Mondelez International, through a presentation by Mandla Shongwe,” he said.