Maputo — Mozambique's Gender-related Development Index (GDI) is gradually rising, but remains one of the lowest in the world, according to the latest edition of the National Human Development Report, presented in Maputo on Thursday night.
The GDI is an instrument that measures the difference in human development achievements and capacities between women and men. It takes the same variables used by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to construct the Human Development Index (HDI) - namely life expectancy at birth, the illiteracy rate, and per capita income - and adjusts them to the observed inequalities between the sexes. The maximum value, for both the GDI and the HDI, is one.
The GDI of a country is usually lower than its HDI - which confirms that women still face obstacles to their development all over the world. The larger the gap between the two indices, the larger the inequality between the sexes. Even Canada, the country with the highest HDI in the world (0.935), according to the UNDP's global Human Development Report of 2000, has a slightly lower GDI (0.232).
For Mozambique, the difference is very substantial. The researchers who drew up the National Report, calculated that the HDI rose from 0.346 to 0.362 from 1999 to 2000, while the GDI rose from 0.289 to 0.304. The gap between the two indices has thus remained almost unchanged.
The GDI is growing at roughly the same rate as the HDI, and the figures suggest that at least inequality is not getting any worse. The report concludes that "while disparities between men and women are not increasing, the policies intended to promote the advancement of women in a deliberate manner, particularly as regards access to education, health and other social services, are not yet producing the desired effects".
The rise in the HDI is due overwhelmingly to higher levels of literacy. But it is men who have benefitted most from this educational advance: the male illiteracy rate fell by 4.4 percentage points, but the number of women illiterates dropped by only 2.9 percentage points.
If we take as our starting point the 1980 census, then illiteracy among men has fallen by 28 per cent over two decades, and among women by only 19 per cent. When broken down by province, the GDI of Mozambique shows the same pattern as the HDI - it is much higher in Maputo than anywhere else, and the central province of Zambezia is lagging seriously behind.
Maputo city has a GDI of 0.620, more than twice the national average, and close to its HDI of 0.622: from which one can deduce that Maputo is far and away the best place for a Mozambican woman to live. The GDI of Zambezia, however, is a mere 0.183. Zambezia is the only one of the 11 provinces where the GDI has declined from the 1999 figure (which was 0.185).
The figures indicate that inequality between the sexes is considerably worse in the centre and north of Mozambique than in the southern four provinces. This edition of the national report deals specifically with gender issues. Looking at political and administrative power, it finds that this lies overwhelmingly in male hands.
The central state bodies have made an effort in the direction of gender equality: thus 29.4 per cent of the members of parliament elected in 1999 are women (one of the highest percentages, not only in Africa, but in the world).
In the government 14.3 per cent of the ministers and 29.4 per cent of the deputy ministers are women. 31.3 per cent of the permanent secretaries in ministries are women. But at lower levels of the civil service the picture is bleaker: only 16 per cent of national directors and 19.6 per cent of deputy national directors are women.
Not one of the 11 provincial governors is a woman, and only 7.6 per cent of provincial directors and 20 per cent of deputy provincial directors are women. In the 138 districts, it is rare to find a woman in a powerful position. 4.7 per cent of district administrators are women and 4.4 per cent of district directors.
Statistics for the breakdown of work between the sexes are particularly revealing. They show that the formal, wage-earning sector of the economy is largely a male preserve. Thus in urban areas, 62.9 per cent of the men at work, but only 22.1 per cent of working women, are in public companies, the public administration or the private capitalist sector.
The vast majority of urban working women fall into the category of self-employed (51.8 per cent), or "unpaid workers" (23.7 per cent). These are the women workers of the informal economy of petty trading, agriculture in the city suburbs, tiny household businesses and a good deal of domestic service - the latter are usually family members paid not by a wage, but by food and accommodation.
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In the rural areas most people, men and women alike, are peasant farmers, and thus do not earn a wage. But what little wage labour there is in the countryside goes overwhelmingly to men - the formal sector (public and private companies, and the public administration) accounts for 9.1 per cent of rural male workers, but only 1.8 per cent of rural female workers. 62.4 per cent of working women in the countryside are described as "unpaid workers", doubtless working on the family fields.
Taking the country as a whole, the self-employed and the "unpaid workers" account for 93.7 per cent of all women workers, but only 75.1 per cent of male workers. The report notes that, while deprivation is generalised in Mozambique, the data show "that women face greater privations than men".
Furthermore, it is a delusion to imagine that economic growth in itself will change this, and the report calls on the government to adopt "social policies sensitive to the advancement of women".
"The advancement of women and the promotion of equity do not result from a technocratic process, just as human development does not result simply from economic growth", it stresses. "Both depend on political will".
