4 Conclusions and recommendations.

The socioeconomic situation of women in Ethiopia needs significant improvement. The needs are urgent, and actions cannot be delayed. It is, therefore, important that the legal and institutional constraints and issues identified in the last two chapters be addressed or mitigated. But, given the regionalized and decentralized arrangements, solutions are not simple, and actions need to be taken in a coordinated fashion by a number of players: grassroots women, local and regional governments, federal government, players in the nongovernmental sectors, and donors. Possible steps to address issues identified in the previous chapters are discussed in this chapter and summarized in table 4.1. This chapter concludes by summarizing the implications of the findings for donors.

Legal tools are critical for ensuring equitable development. First, legal statements are an important facet of public policy. Legislation should be consistent with stated policy and, above all, in conformity with constitutional principles, the highest law of the land. Also, where the state proposes to intervene with new legislation, it should ensure that such legislation is equitable and supports development of both men and women alike. Second, the law must establish fair and transparent processes for participation, ensuring clear accountability and equitable access for both men and women, if development is to be expedited. Third, the law must provide a framework that discourages discriminatory behavior against women, particularly in a socioeconomic environment in which women are at relatively greater disadvantage.

At the same time, the law can play only a limited role in changing economic relationships within the household. This is strongly evidenced in Ethiopia by the history of the forward-looking provisions of the 1960 civil code. Recognizing this severe limitation of law, particularly in the area of personal and family matters, only a few legal recommendations are made:

* Satisfy the need for consistent public policy

* Mitigate the impact of inequitable customary practices

* Increase access to economic resources

* Improve access to legal remedies and

* Increase the participation of women in development activities.

Regional governments using scarce resources have established fairly extensive administrative arrangements for planning and implementing the women's policy. However, such entities cannot function effectively or fulfill their mandate due to a number of issues identified in the previous chapter. These institutional issues must be addressed:

* Strengthen capacity at the regional levels and

* Formulate and implement gender-sensitive development plans.

Establishing Consistent Public Policy

The civil code confers management responsibility for a household's economic matters on the male spouse. These provisions are inconsistent with the principles of gender equality contained in the 1995 constitution. Amendment of these provisions is essential to ensure consistent pub lie policy and eliminate state support for the existing division of labor within households. It will also reiterate the state's commitment to gender equality, which cannot be complete as long as inequitable provisions form part of the legal framework.

Mitigating the Impact of Inequitable Customary Laws

Under the constitution, enabling legislation may permit the application of customary laws to disputes related to personal matters, if the parties agree to such application. As demonstrated in chapter 2, customary laws governing the division of household resources do not provide women with equitable access--as envisaged by the constitution. Therefore, the enabling legislation is critical in that it will propose to apply gender-biased customary laws to personal disputes within the constitutional framework of gender-equality. Ethiopian drafters will need to grapple with the issue of uninformed consent of women, who are unaware of the superior economic rights conferred on them by the civil code. In this context, lawmakers may wish to consider (a) widening the civil court's scope of review of an arbitrator's decision, (b) casting a legal obligation on an arbitrator to explain the legal rights of each party to the dispute, and (c) declaring an arbitral decision as irregular when a woman claims that her consent to the application of customary law was not given voluntarily.

It is critical to prepare and develop region-specific information, education, and communication programs to create and strengthen awareness of the economic roles of women and their legal rights. Such programs should first target clan leaders and elders within each community and, then, women and children. Given the high illiteracy rates, this program should be administered at various levels--through women's associations, public media (whose coverage is low), schools, health clinics, kebeles, and innovative means such as street plays and other forms of entertainment. It should strengthen the positive aspects of customary practices, counter those that are detrimental to the welfare of the community as a whole, and explain the proposed constitutional position that customary practices

may be applied only with the consent of all parties to a dispute.

Increasing the Access to Economic Resources

Given the discriminatory customary provisions, women are denied equitable access to economic resources within the household. Do women, then, have access to economic resources outside their homes? The answer, here too, is unfortunately no. Given their high illiteracy rates and absence of skills, women are unlikely to gain employment with the government (the largest employer) or the newly emerging small private sector. Rural women, then, rely on the informal labor market for generating additional income. Here, women's entry is not easy, although only little quantitative gender-disaggregated data are available on the rural labor market. Tied in with the labor market are land and land-related resources--critical productive resources for rural communities. These are administered by the kebeles, and customary attitudes still limit women's ownership of them. Also, increasingly, common-property resources like forest and grazing land are being regulated, further alienating women from productive resources available to them in the past. In none of these areas does the regulatory system facilitate women's access to resources. This is particularly important because gaining access to resources outside the household is an important avenue for empowering women and helping them to fight against the stronghold of discriminatory customary practices. The following recommendations should be considered:

* Ease the entry of women into labor markets. The legal framework does not facilitate or support the entry of poor women into the agricultural and informal labor market, which given their skills and capacity, is the only viable source of income outside the household. Regional governments must study the unintentional impact of existing regulations that control access to trading places, licenses, and credit for their gender-disaggregated impact on the informal labor market. Also, the key issue constraining women microentrepreneurs from moving into more formal labor markets is the need to simplify the procedures for licensing and allocating marketplaces. The federal proclamation authorizes regional governments to simplify existing procedures, but they have yet to follow through with these regulations. In doing so, regional governments will have to ensure that the new regulations facilitate women's entry into formal labor markets and increase their access to microcredit.

* Increase women's access to land resources. If the Amhara legislation is a prototype of future promulgations on land, it may be useful to learn from the experience. Legislation is applied and interpreted, and disputes resolved, at the kebele level. Kebele elders often apply customary practices that limit women's access to land--an essential asset if they are to use opportunities provided by development benefits. Although women's access to land seems to have improved in Amhara, after the recent land distribution regulation, it still seems constrained: married women continue to access land through their husbands, and the position of single and divorced women is not clear. Moreover, many terms like "related to agricultural activities" are not defined or explained. Regional governments should consider issuing guidelines or regulations in addition to the proclamation. These guidelines should explain the meaning of specific terms and guide kebeles in order to ensure that they interpret the proclamation, implement its provisions, and settle related disputes in a gender-sensitive fashion.

* Ensure access to common-vroverty resources. Women are significantly constrained by the need to collect fuelwood and fodder. Yet by licensing the use of such resources, the proclamation dealing with forests limits women's access to forests and other common-property resources. Two responses are necessary. First, in issuing regulations governing the use of forests and common property, regional governments should consider the interests of the poor who seek subsistence-level support from these resources. While strictly requiring licenses from commercial entities, it may be useful to permit poor households to collect limited resources for consumption. Second, simultaneous development interventions are needed that provide women with alternate options, reducing their dependence on forests and common-property resources. These could take the form of programs for alternate forms of energy or could involve women in local social forestry schemes that generate fodder or fuelwood. Failing to recognize the adverse impact of this legislation and mitigate it will further exacerbate the socioeconomic status of women.

Increasing the Access to Legal Remedies

The family arbitration system places women at a disadvantage, because family arbitrators are usually men, who are not trained in the law. When customary laws were applied, such training was not necessary. Older and wiser people, with knowledge of customary laws, were selected. However, once customary laws were superseded by the civil code, knowledge of legal provisions became critical. In the absence of such awareness, family arbitrators continue to apply customary laws. Therefore, it is important to train family arbitrators on constitutional principles of gender equality and the more equitable provisions of the civil code. It may be useful for professional groups among lawyers and NGOs to offer such training on a voluntary basis.

The lack of women arbitrators poses a severe constraint. Poor women, at least in Addis Ababa, would welcome the recruitment and training of women arbitrators. It is recommended that legal groups or associations receive incentives to train respected and older women in the law applicable to families and personal matters and that a small legal aid fund be piloted to pay for the services of these women arbitrators for poor women. This program would encourage the use of women arbitrators as well as provide some relief to poor women unable to appoint qualified arbitrators on their own.

Enhancing the Participation of Women

Empirical evidence indicates that women are unable to participate effectively in development interventions because they have difficulty forming small groups that have a separate legal identity. The recent agricultural cooperatives act provides a framework for registering such small village-level groups but requires further regulations specifying the rules and procedures. Regional governments should use this flexibility to create an enabling environment for the establishment of small self-help groups that can more easily participate in development activities.

The constitution permits the use of affirmative action as a tool with which to address gender inequality. In order to bring women into decisionmaking roles, regional governments should seriously consider employing affirmative action measures for women in the wereda council. In many countries, this is a useful tool not only for ensuring that women are involved in decisionmaking positions but also for ensuring that communities, themselves, are forced to inject women into the political process. However, a word of caution is in order: significant efforts to sensitize communities and build the capacity of women must accompany such a measure if both men and women are to participate meaningfully in the political and development process.

Strengthening Capacity at the Regional Levels

Institutional capacity is critical, in particular the capacity to design and implement development projects in a participatory manner. Capacity-building initiatives should start with those institutions currently involved in the formulation of development plans, and these differ from region to region. At the same time, regional governments should take steps to transform the image of kebeles and give them greater powers that can be exercised in a transparent and accountable manner. These institutions exist all over the country and should be empowered to play a more meaningful role in the development of grassroots communities.

Also, gender sensitivity of regional government staff outside the women's bureaus and departments needs to be strengthened considerably. Their lack of support for or appreciation of gender issues further marginalizes these women's offices. The federal government should formulate programs to increase awareness of and sensitivity to gender issues at higher echelons of regional governments. The revision of the current curriculum for civil service training would be one quick and economical way to ensure that at least the next generation of civil servants understands the costs of assuming that gender-neutral development plans will benefit women equally. It is understood that the government is already reviewing this matter and that the revised curriculum would increase the sensitivity of new cohorts of government employees.

Undertaking Gender-Sensitive Development Planning

The analysis of institutional aspects leads to a simple conclusion. Currently, regional governments have established women's affairs bureaus and departments, staffed them, and provided them with significant recurrent budgets. However, these units do not have the requisite power or authority to fulfill their mandate. They are marginalized and unable to ensure or coordinate gender-sensitive development. Given their inability to play a strong role, other players in the field, like nongovernmental entities, are unable to play a strong supportive role. All in all, the existing arrangements severely constrain gender-sensitive development. A number of measures need to be taken at the level of the regional government, and these are discussed below and summarized in table 4.1.

* Empower women's affairs bureaus arid departments. Women's affairs bureaus and departments should be empowered to fulfill their mandate as articulated in the women's policy. Women's affairs bureaus should act as coordinators and watchdogs and ensure through a network of horizontal and vertical linkages that all development plans and processes are gender-sensitive. They should be given a seat at the table where important decisions related to development planning are made, including macro-level decisions on the allocation of resources among sectors. As noted by the women's affairs offices themselves, the inability to integrate gender issues into the mainstream activities of sector bureaus is perceived to be a failure of the women's affairs departments. This perception is incorrect. Sector bureaus have failed to establish procedures and processes that integrate women's affairs departments into mainstream activities. Regional governments should require sector bureaus to develop plans of action to ensure integration and should hold them accountable for their failure to prepare gendersensitive sectoral plans. Also, there are no incentives--in fact there are disincentives-- to joining women's units. These disincentives need to be tackled if these entities are to be strengthened.

* Improve participation in development planning. It is important to ensure that there is adequate participation of both men and women in formulating policy at all levels and in planning and implementing development interventions. Processes must be found to ensure that women's voices are heard and considered, particularly those of the women affected, be it through participatory appraisals, beneficial assessments, consensus building, public hearings, or stakeholder analysis. Planning bureau guidelines should mandate the preparation of participatory gender-sensitive development plans with monitorable performance and impact indicators at different levels of policymaking and implementation. It is highly recommended that women's affairs bureaus be given authority to finalize all development plans in the regions. This would ensure that they are involved in the preparation of development plans. Clearly, such a key role will require building the capacity of existing staff, and such investments will need to be made, if women's affairs bureaus are to fulfill their mandate as envisaged under the national policy.

* Increase the availability of gender-disaggregated data. The lack of gender-disaggregated data is a significant constraint on development planning. Policymakers are unable to make informed decisions or monitor and evaluate the impact of development interventions on men and women. There is an urgent need to collect gender-disaggregated data on welfare. Regional governments should seek support in doing this from the ministry of planning under the ongoing World Bank-financed welfare monitoring component of the Ethiopia Social and Rehabilitation and Development Fund Project.

* Enhance monitoring and evaluation. In order to ensure that regionalization does not marginalize women further, it is essential that planning bureaus also monitor gender-disaggregated impact. Monitoring should be undertaken in a coordinated manner with the different sector bureaus. In consultation with women's affairs bureaus, sector bureaus should translate their stated objectives and goals into gender-sensitive, monitorable, and measurable targets. Women's affairs bureaus, as coordinators of women-in-development activities, should then seek to ensure that the bureau of planning incorporates the key indicators into its monitoring activity. The bureau of planning should also be obliged to provide other stakeholders with periodic reports on the data generated and to analyze the impact of development interventions on women.

* Provide financial incentives to sector bureaus to undertake gender-sensitive development interventions. Regional governments should provide incentives to sector bureaus to mainstream gender issues in their operations, in addition to designing and implementing special programs for women, where necessary. Incentives could include special credit programs, training or employment creation programs, day care centers, and so on. Regional governments could provide matching funds to bureaus that undertake priority activities for women or could provide them with additional capital budget upon confirmation that they have undertaken activities of benefit to women. They could also make special funds available to regional bureaus willing to undertake joint activities in consultation with their women's affairs departments and bureaus.

Implications for Donors

What do these findings and recommendations imply for donor assistance in this area? The answer is simple. There is urgent need to ensure that all donor-financed projects or programs are gender-sensitive not only in design, but also in impact. This may often require building capacity at the regional level or strengthening the gender-sensitivity of regional staff. In evaluating these programs or projects, donors need to examine these issues with the same vigor they accord other technical issues.

Mitigation should be accomplished through well-designed development projects. The legal analysis reiterates the fact that development interventions targeted at a household cannot reach all members of the household equally. Development planners must stop assuming that targeting a household will benefit women. They should ensure that the design and implementation of a project channel benefits in a gender-sensitive manner. For example, a development project could require that any project assets provided to the household be registered in the name of both spouses. Thus, if better or improved land is provided under a resettlement plan, there is nothing in the Ethiopian law that would prevent the project from requiring that such land be registered in the name of both husband and wife or that additional land be given to unmarried female adults.

A second point for project designers is that women's lack of ownership rights to certain important economic resources does not necessarily result in their lack of access to, or control over, such resources. Even though, customarily, the husband is the head of household, the wife is expected to manage the domestic domain within the household. In this position, a rural Ethiopian woman often has access to, and control over, a number of resources. In some regions, she may be allotted a small piece of land that she cultivates. All agricultural products from such land normally belong to her and are under her control. Across regions, women seem to have control over livestock products, particularly those of smaller animals and poultry. In addition, the husband often allocates a portion of his agricultural product to his wife, who then uses it for household consumption or sells the surplus. Currently, activities involving such resources are not part of mainstream development activities, although sometimes they are the subject of special programs for women. Although the nature and degree of control differ from region to region, development interventions should target such activities and assist women to use these resources more productively.

Project designers should assist single adult and divorced women, who are not necessarily heads of household; these women are often discriminated against and have lesser access to, or control over, economic resources. Project design should ensure that these women are active beneficiaries of development interventions and are provided an opportunity to benefit from the increased economic opportunities. For example, a project activity that provides credit or grants for income-generating activities could target and, perhaps, study the need to accord priority to divorced or single women who are not heads of a household.

The World Bank, in addition to ensuring that proposed donor-supported government interventions in health, education, rural water supply, energy, and roads are gender-sensitive, needs to focus on four areas:

* Capacity building. Capacity-building interventions need to focus on the subregional levels and should include training in identification, design, and implementation of gender-sensitive development interventions. This includes simple management techniques focusing on economic and efficient use of funds, bookkeeping, evaluation and monitoring, and group formation and organization. It should not only target wereda and kebele officials but also poor communities, informal women's groups, and small indigenous NGOs or associations that work with communities.

* Literacy, family planning, and early childhood interventions. The participatory rural assessment reiterates the critical importance for women of interventions in the areas of literacy, family planning, and early childhood interventions, and donors should support programs or projects in these areas.

* Support for women's microenterprise. Donors should support interventions that provide technical, financial, and other support for poor women microentrepreneurs. In addition, a number of women have gained ownership of land (for example, in Amhara). It is extremely important to support these women's efforts to use their landholdings productively, before these holdings are alienated.

* Legal and institutional reform. Donors should support government activities that result in gender-sensitive reform of the existing legislative and institutional framework for development planning and implementation as well as for increasing women's access to economic resources. An effective information, education, and communication program is also essential and deserves immediate support from donors.

Table 4.1 Recommendations

                                                   Responsibilities
Objective                    Activities              and comments

Ensure              * Amend legislative          Federal government
consistent            provisions that
public policy         continue to
                      discriminate against
                      women

Mitigate the        * Ensure that enabling       Federal government
impact of             legislation for
customary laws        applicability of
                      customary laws to
                      personal matters is
                      consistent with
                      constitutional promise
                      of equality

                    * Formulate and implement    Regional government
                      region-specific            in lead, with
                      information, education,    community leaders,
                      and communication          NGOs, and partners
                      campaigns to strengthen
                      awareness of the legal
                      rights of the poor and
                      provide education on
                      inequitable customary
                      practices

Increase the        * Provide guidance to        Regional governments
access for women      kebeles to administer
to economic           land matters in a
resources             gender-sensitive
                      fashion
                    * Regulate access to         Regional governments
                      natural resources,
                      sensitive to the impact
                      on the poor and on
                      women
                    * Facilitate the entry of    Regional governments
                      women into the informal
                      labor market

Improve the         * Formulate and implement    Regional government
access to             training programs for      of Addis Ababa
legal remedies        family arbitrators
                    * As a pilot, identify       Regional government
                      and train women            of Addis Ababa
                      arbitrators in Addis
                      Ababa
                    * Establish a legal aid      Regional government
                      fund to assist poor        of Addis Ababa
                      women in arbitration

Increase the        * Enact affirmative          Federal and regional
participation         action measures to         governments
of women in           encourage the entry of
political and         women into senior
development           government-level
activities            positions and political
                      positions at the
                      grassroots or kebele
                      and wereda levels
                    * To facilitate              Federal and regional
                      involvement of informal    governments
                      groups in development
                      interventions, issue
                      regulations under the
                      agricultural
                      cooperatives
                      proclamation

Enhance             * Offer training in          Federal and regional
capacity at           leadership,                governments, NGOs,
the regional          communication, and         and the private
level                 gender issues for          sector
                      elected women
                      representatives;
                      training in gender
                      analysis and planning
                      for sector and regional,
                      zonal, and district
                      staff; and training for
                      the staff of women's
                      affairs offices in
                      gender planning and on
                      the use of
                      gender-disaggregated
                      data and advocacy
                    * Strengthen and             Federal and regional
                      gender-sensitize           governments, NGOs,
                      regional entities,         and the private
                      particularly strengthen    sector
                      and revitalize kebeles

Improve             * Provide women's affairs    Regional governments
development           boards and departments
planning              with powers, duties,
                      and finances necessary
                      to implement their
                      mandate
                    * Devise planning            Regional governments
                      guidelines that mandate
                      the formulation of a
                      gender-sensitive
                      development plan,
                      requiring clearance by
                      the women's affairs
                      board of all regional
                      or sectoral development
                      plans and preparation
                      of monitorable
                      indicators
                    * Have the Central           Regional governments
                      Statistical Authority
                      help regions to
                      establish
                      gender-disaggregated
                      data collection systems
                      and management
                      information systems
                      under the Ethiopian
                      Social and
                      Rehabilitation
                      Development Fund
                      Project
                    * Have regional              Regional governments
                      governments provide
                      incentives by
                      allocating additional
                      resources to bureaus
                      investing in
                      (a) addressing gender
                      issues or (b) rewarding
                      good performance in the
                      area of women