Executive Summar
The Federal Democratic Government of Ethiopia has submitted its combined fourth and fifth reports to the CEDAW. The report contains a description of the policy initiatives the government took to meet its obligation to the CEDAW as well as an enumeration of the positive impact of the policies to achieve gender equality during the reporting period.
This shadow report examines and evaluates three broad areas covered or touched upon in the Government report. These are: economic and socio cultural status of women, equality in marriage and family relations and violence against women. Attempt is made to follow a consistent pattern in each section of the shadow report. It opens with a definitional statement of the issue; highlight the government' central claim by a direct quote from the report. This is followed by succinct summary of the reality of the situation; and, closes by providing a balanced assessment of the shortcomings and the strength of each of the government's claims using, when available, statistical data with suggestions and recommendations.
Part 1 is entitled “Economic and Socio- Cultural Status of Women”. It covers specific programs aimed at enhancing the socio-economic status of women, education, employment, women in decision-making, heath-care, and vulnerabilities of rural women. P art 2 “Equality in Marriage and Family Relations'', deals with legal deficiencies and problems of law enforcement. Part 3, entitled, “Violence Against Women” contains an extensive treatment of the prevalence of violence and legislative initiatives to protect women against such practice; treatment to victims; training of law enforcement officers as well as public awareness on violence against women.
Even though the government's initiatives show its eagerness to meet CEDAW obligations, there are many gaps and discrepancies in the achievement side of its report. Insufficient commitment in some areas and serious shortcomings at the level of implementation is discernable in many areas covered by the report. More importantly the report fails to substantiate the government's claim by presenting tangible results. In the absence of a gender disaggregated data, it is impossible to measure achievements and shortcomings or make constructive suggestions and recommendations.
In addressing the socio-ecnomic discrimination of women, high at the government's intervention agenda, the state report states that the government has taken initiatives such as the Ethiopian Women Development Fund (EWDP) and the Women's Development Initiative Project (WDIP). According to the report, these agencies have enhanced women's empowerment. The EWDP came into being because of studies conducted under the WDIP. This initiative targeted around 16,000 women selected from four regions. Although the efforts are to be admired, the report does not provide information on how many women benefited against the target group, what changes were observed in the lives of the beneficiaries and what is being done to extend the effort to other regions. This is important because the reality is that the majority of Ethiopian women remain mired in abject poverty.
Women's share in the formal employment sector does not exceed the (30%) mark. Around 90% of those employed in general are concentrated in low paying jobs. In the informal sector in which women make up the greater majority, the pattern shows that they are either self-employed or work in family-owned businesses. Indeed a nationally representative survey made by the Central Statistical Authority (DHS, 2000) revealed that nearly half of the working women in the survey were self-employed, 43% worked for a family member, against a small number (only 9%) that work for non-family owned business. Of these, 41% did not receive any form of payment.
As mentioned in the report, the government has recently introduced affirmative measure in the Civil Service to benefit women. This is an encouraging initiative. However, the affirmative package has not so far been accompanied by clear policy guidelines. Women in the civil service, the largest employer in the country, remain a small minority. In the legislative and judiciary branches, the situation is worse. Women are seriously underrepresented. In the Federal Parliament, the highest decision making body, women hold only 7.7% of the total seats. The figure shades light on how far the country has to go in the direction of empowering women. Specially in this key area, the government has a long way to go. For without a vigorous effort to level the political playing from a gender perspective, the gap in this area, critical in measuring women's empowerment, will remain wide. The government cannot fully meet its CEDAW obligations and commitments so long as the political representation gap remains as high as it is at present.
The combined report devotes a sizable space to the Government's policy initiative to improve the condition of women in education and increment of female enrolment in the public schools system. Educational opportunity has expanded throughout the country as it is among the upper most priority areas in which the government allocates the bulk of its national budget. Incentives and affirmative measures, as the reports mentions, have been taken to benefit female students. All this again is appreciable; a lot more however needs to be done to narrow the gap in this area too because education means more to women. For it empowers women to attain economic independence, control their reproductive sexual lives, assume decision-making roles and resist harmful traditional practices. Despite the government's best claims, however, the gap in the male-female ratio in all primary, secondary and tertiary levels has not shown any change. For instance, during the implementation period of the Education Sector Development Program I (1997/98-2000/2), designed among other goals to increase girls' school enrolment, the gender gap at the primary level (grade1-8) remained constant at 20%.
The government claims that improving the health care service delivery in the country is another important area in its developmental agenda. According to the government's report, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS issues have been given serious attention to improve the health care condition of women. In this area also, the report dose not put the impact of government initiative in measurable terms. The fact of the matter nevertheless is that health care coverage of the country is only 51%. Women's specific needs are not addressed. According to the Health and Health Related Indicators of the Ministry of Health, (2001/2002) antenatal coverage was 34.11 while attended delivery was only 9.63. Although family-planning awareness appears to be high, practical usage of the knowledge is very low. According to the DHS (2000), only 8% of currently married women were using any modern or traditional method. This is against 31% who do not want any more children and 36% who desire to space their next child bearing by at least 2 years. Another clear indicator that shows that Ethiopian women's health rights are neglected is maternal mortality The DHS estimates maternal mortality at 871 but according to WHO (2001) report it is as high 1100 death per 100,000 live birth. One contributing factor to maternal mortality and morbidity in the country is the widespread practice of unsafe abortion. Although abortion is punishable by law (1957), the practice has not been prevented. The only effect of the law, it seems, is to push the practice underground. All available studies indicate that abortion-related death is very high even by African standards.
The report shows that the government recognizes the fact that women are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS than men are. The report however does not describe the kind of specific programs incorporated to address the gender discrepancy in the prevalence of HIV/ADIS. There is no indicator either in the report to gauge the government's intervention impact especially on the female population.
In addition to sharing the above socio-economic and cultural situations, rural women face particular vulnerabilities. Women in the rural area are largely illiterate, don't have decision making power within the family and in the community, live in difficult conditions, don't have access to health facilities and lack access to resources such as land. The major role they play in the productive activities is not recognized due to which development activities and assistances by the government in the rural area are largely gender insensitive.
An important area that the government has made progress in fulfilling its CEDAW commitment, as explained in the report, is eliminating legal discrimination against women. The effort of elimination of legal discrimination against women in marriage and family relations is a welcome development. As the report states, discriminatory features of the old family laws (1960) have underwent serious revisions. The Family Code introduced by the Federal Parliament (for Addis Ababa and Diredawa) address several issues concerning legal discrimination and gender equality. It is also encouraging that, three more regional governments have integrated key features from the revised family law into their regional family laws. However, more needs to bee done in this direction. For the majority of the regional governments (6) continue to apply the old laws. On the other hand, the revised laws also have some shortcomings that need to be addressed. For instance, there is no provision for post-divorce maintenance in all the revised laws, and in two regions, the law appears to tolerate the practice of polygamy.
In the report the government claims to have taken several measures to address gender based violence, including penal law revision; sensitization of law enforcement agencies; vigorous prosecution of perpetrators and the management of victims of violence. In actual fact, although there are no national studies on the issue of violence against women, available surveys indicate the high prevalence of gender based violence in the society. Among other factors, insufficient law enforcement has contributed to the problem. Law enforcement agencies are beset with several problems, which include, mishandling, delay in investigation and in preparing formal charges. At the level of the judiciary, excessive delay in prosecuting cases of violence against women and the inordinate time it takes for the courts to try cases remains as frustrating as ever. The insensitivity of some judges towards women victims of violence and the lightness of the pattern of their sentences against offenders compounds the problem.
Equally frustrating is the delay in revising the penal code. Neither are the proposed amendments comprehensive enough in fully addressing all the problems associated with gender-based violence in Ethiopia. As encouraging as the government's measures have been in curbing legal discrimination, more effort is needed before discriminatory practices are eliminated from the legal process.
