The Beijing PFA recommends the removal of all obstacles that hinder women's economic empowerment to enable them to enjoy their economic rights and achieve equality in access to, and participation in economic structures and policies.

In southern Africa, one country that has taken a practical move to narrow the gender gap in access to and participation in economic structures and policies is South Africa, through its innovative Woman's Budget Initiative (WBI) that was introduced in March 1996.

The WBI, which is proving to be one of the best practices to engender national budgets, is designed to impact on the structures of allocating resources to ensure that women and men benefit equally.

Other countries in the region such as Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania have also started devising ways to introduce women-friendly national budgets following the South African experience.

The initiative was started by a group of researchers, both from the universities and NGOs, with support and backing of the Gender and Economic Policy Group of the South African Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Finance.

The WBI is not a separate budget for women. However, the initiative assesses the national budget from a gender perspective and seeks to mainstream gender into the budgetary process by examining the impact of the national and provincial budgets.

The WBI analyses whether the national and provincial budgets further entrench the disadvantages of women or promote women's empowerment and gender equality. This is done by distinguishing three aspects of expenditure namely:

• Amounts allocated to women-specific projects, such as bursaries for young girls or income- generating projects;
• Affirmative action and other policy initiatives within government employment which promote the development of female staff; and
• Funds allocated to all the other policies and programmes of government, and the effect of these expenditures on different groups of women, and on women relative to men.

The WBI takes account of the financial constraints and the country's macro-economic strategies and questions:

• How much is spent on what?
• How are services to be delivered?
• How does possible expenditure relate to provision by business organisations, voluntary and community groups?
• How does expenditure relate to the informal and unpaid provision of services through households and family networks?
• Who will benefit in terms of access to services?
• Who will benefit in terms of public sector employment?
• How do the poor women access more time, better nutrition, better health and better skills?
• What are the assumptions regarding the way society is organised, and what are the implications of this for those who do not conform?

The initiative further concentrates on the most disadvantaged women, the poorest, whose poverty is not measured by money alone but also in time.

After analysing South Africa's 1997 budget using the WBI concept, results showed that:

• the national budget did not serve women as much as it served men;
• women benefit the least from the national budget; and
• besides having a greater need of government service women, who constituted a higher rate of unemployment, earned lower wages and had more caring responsibilities than men.

South Africa's tremendous efforts to integrate women into the mainstream economic agenda is attributed to the fact that the country's deputy Finance Minister as well as one of the four Director Generals are women whose support has been instrumental in the Ministry's acceptance of the initiative.

Six countries in the region -- Lesotho, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe -- have identified elimination of inequality in women's access to, and participation in economic structures and policies as a national priority area of concern.

Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia on the other hand, include reduction of poverty among their national priority areas of concern. Activities toward meeting these goals are being implemented in some of these southern African countries.

In Tanzania, the government is working towards providing 30 percent women with access to credit in their own right by the year 2000 through local development funds and by encouraging donors to have credit facilities for women in all projects.

In Zambia, the on-going development of a gender sensitive macro-economic policy and programme for women in the peri-urban and rural areas including female-headed households is one such activity.

The Cabinet in Zambia has two female ministers following the appointment of , Edith Nawakwi and Professor Nkandu Luo in March 1998. Nawakwi becomes the first female Minister of Finance in the SADC region, Luo is Minister of Health. There are also some female deputy ministers, a number of female permanent secretaries and heads of parastatals. The Central Bank has a woman deputy Governor of Administration in Chilujua Mbalashi.

The draft gender policy - Strategic Plan For the Advancement of Women (SPAW) in Zambia - outlines among others, the following activities to improve the economic situation of women in the country from 1997 to the year 2000:

• designate 10 percent of social sector spending for women's income generating activities;
• collect gender and age-disaggregated data on poverty and all aspects of economic activities;
• lobby donors for funds to support economic empowerment of women;
• give financial and other support to financial and credit institutions specifically targeting women with collateral problems; and
• amend and revise administrative practices that hinder women's access to and control over factors of production like land, credit, technology and information.

In Mozambique, the Ministries of Social Welfare, Labour, Environment and Agriculture have established training projects for women, that provide credit facilities for self-employment and other types of support to enable income generation as a measure to alleviate poverty, especially in the female-headed households.

The Women's Desk, which operates at the National Institute for the Development of Local Industry (UDIL), has been supporting women in small-scale economic activities to improve their businesses through training and information.

At the regional level, plans are underway to address the issue of economic policies and women's access to structures and productive resources.

The RAC in collaboration with the Gender Unit at the SADC secretariat intends to review and analyse sectoral policies to assess their impact on women's lives and how women can access them. A review of inter-country trade policies and tariff regulations with a view to facilitate women to gain better access to markets is also in the pipeline.

A special trade exhibition for SADC women entrepreneurs was held in Harare, Zimbabwe, from 20 - 25 November 1997. The trade expo, which was organised by the UN Development Fund For Women (UNIFEM) regional office for southern Africa provided a forum for exhibition of products produced by women's community-based groups from the SADC region.

Among the participants were community-based organisations (CBOs), trade fair organisations, NGOs, government departments and parastatals involved in women's activities, private sector institutions and the donor community.

UNIFEM's main purpose for hosting the expo was to break the isolation of small-scale producers so as to give them and their products commercial exposure.

The expo also provided a forum for discussing specific constraints and opportunities faced by women in the informal sector in developing their enterprises.

At least 13 SADC countries participated in exhibiting items, which included among others, mining products, gemstones and jewellery, ceramics, carpentry products, textiles, leather products, paper-based products, and processed foods.

• Introduction to the SADC Gender Monitor
• Global, Regional and National Commitments
• SADC Countries' National Priority Areas of Concern