Editorial
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic recession have challenged gains made towards women’s empowerment and gender equality, both in Africa and worldwide. In response, the OECD Development Centre in partnership with the African Development Bank Group and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, invited nearly 1 000 experts to participate in nine policy dialogues during the first half of 2021. This diverse group of stakeholders, including experts, activists, policy makers and donors, with expertise and first-hand knowledge spanning women’s health, economic empowerment and political voice, discussed obstacles to progress and evaluated the remaining challenges towards women’s empowerment and gender equality in the region. The participants reaffirmed political commitments and stressed the need to accelerate and deepen efforts on gender while assuring progress achieved to date. The dialogues and a series of workshops under the title “From Data to Policy Action: Tackling gender-based discrimination in social institutions” underscored the need for action, even as available data fail to capture the full impact of COVID-19 on women’s empowerment in the region.
The OECD Development Centre has been working for over a decade to promote a more robust understanding of the barriers to women’s empowerment. Through its flagship Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), the Centre has produced and mobilised data on the root causes of gender inequality – discrimination in formal and informal laws, social norms and practices – and has supported its member and non-member countries in designing policies to promote women’s empowerment by addressing these discriminatory social institutions. In all areas of life, and throughout the entire lifetimes of women in Africa, these institutions create persistent barriers. For example, discriminatory social norms threaten women’s health by promoting gender-based violence against women and girls, while formal and informal laws governing land ownership and administration hinder women’s economic empowerment, and common practices promoting unequal decision-making power marginalise women’s political voice. These are only a few of the many interrelated root causes of gender inequality in the region explored throughout this report.
The OECD Development Centre remains committed to supporting the social transformation required to achieve Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063. Though the collection and dissemination of data on discriminatory social institutions and evidence-based policy recommendations designed to address these as the root causes of gender inequality, we will continue supporting national and regional efforts to promote women’s empowerment in the face of challenges brought by the COVID-19 crisis.
