SADC Gender Protocol 2013 Barometer

The 2013 Barometer is the fifth in the Barometer series, a landmark year for tracking, naming and shaming, in the crucial countdown to 2015.Since the adoption of the Southern African Development Community Protocol on Gender and Development, and its coming into force, Member States are now legally obliged to fulfil the 28 targets of the SADC Gender Protocol by 2015. The regional SADC Gender Protocol@Work Summit, attended by over 300 people in April 2013, unveiled a large clock counting down to SADC Day, 17 August 2015: months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds. Finalists from the 12 national summits, held during March and early April competed head to head to secure awards for pushing the gender agenda forward. They all had one message: yes we can, and yes we must!
Former South African deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who in August 2013 took up the post of head of UNWOMEN, gave the key note address. “Even though we have made great strides in the emancipation of women, gender justice and the struggles of women remain challenging, from gender based violence, high poverty amongst women, exclusion of women in significant positions, the burden of disease and more. Our work is not yet done,” she said. “We need to work just as hard to mobilise key institutions in society: our churches, schools, sporting bodies, who must continue the struggles. We also need to broaden the base as many more people are needed for us to overcome the complex battles we face. As foot soldier in this struggle we need to continue to lead from the front, back and sideways.”
“As people of SADC let us use the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development to entrench and advance the
women’s cause in our countries. The Protocol must be a living document in all our countries: we must take it to
the people”, Mlambo-Ngcuka added. Overall, the Southern African Gender and Development Index (SGDI) remained stagnant at 66%. There are just about as many red lights as there are green lights in both the narrative summary (Table I) and the data Table IV. This score is an empirical measure of progress against 23 indicators for which data could be obtained across all countries. These cover six of the ten sectors of SADC: governance, education and training, economic justice, HIV and AIDS, media, information and communication. But the big news this year is that women and men in Southern Africa gave their governments a score of 66% – nine percentage points up from last year – using the Citizen Score Card (CSC) that went out to 8860 citizens:
4787 women and 4073 men (a sample four times bigger than last year)

Unlike the SGDI, the CSC is based on perceptions, and captures nuances that are not incorporated in the
empirical data. For example, while the SGDI records enrolment levels for boys and girls, the CSC includes
qualitative aspects like safety in schools and gender biases in curriculum. The CSC also covers the four sectors for which there are no SGDI scores because these are difficult to measure – Constitutional and legal rights, GBV, peace building and implementation. This spurt of optimism shows that women and men are beginning to feel that
gender concerns are on the agenda, even if their objective realities have not changed much. The Southern African Gender Protocol Alliance (SGPA) – 15 country networks and eight theme groups that campaigned for the protocol, its ratification, and now its implementation – is taking its campaign to greater heights in the countdown to 2015.

The Alliance Think Tank or working group will take the key findings of the Barometer to the parallel civil society meeting at the SADC Heads of State Summit in Malawi in August 2013: the first such meeting to be chaired by a woman president. The main message to leaders is not only that time is running out, but also that there are new priorities and concerns on the agenda. Since November 2011, the SGPA has been driving a campaign for an Addendum to the SADC Gender Protocol on Gender and Climate change. At a meeting held in Maputo in February 2013 against the backdrop of floods in Mauritius claiming several lives, gender ministers accepted the principle of the Addendum. Since then the tussle has been over whether to mainstream gender in the forthcoming SADC Protocol on Climate Change, or argue for an addendum to the SGP. The Alliance is arguing for both.

ISBN: 978-0-9869879-6
Publisher: Gender Links
Year of Publication: 2013