Rural women get worst treatment: Conference
By Santi WE Soekanto
BEIJING (JP): The Fourth World Conference on Women dedicated yesterday's discussions to the fate of rural women, focusing on the "feminization of poverty" and on ways of helping women become more financially independent.
Queen Fabiola of Belgium, as a representative of the International Steering Committee for the Economic Advancement of Rural Women, said the most serious discrimination and injustices are suffered by poor, rural women.
Queen Fabiola is one of 67 first ladies who adopted, in 1992, a "General Declaration of Rural Development" on the hardships and needs of rural women.
The declaration seeks to "raise the awareness of the policy makers" of the perspective of women, especially those in the rural areas, the queen told a press conference here.
Other first ladies who participated in yesterday's discussions included Suzanne Mubarak of Egypt, Queen Mata' Aho of Tonga, Dato Seri Datin Paduka of Malaysia, Aguirre de Calderon of El Salvador and Mariam Abacha of Nigeria.
Most speakers said the empowerment of women would come through, among other things, financial self-sufficiency.
The campaign to help women gain financial independence often encounters obstacles from banks, which are reluctant to provide credit to women, the conference heard from Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.
Lynn Bennett of the World Bank concurred, adding that, ironically, loans to women have a repayment rate of 95 percent and deliver great private and social returns.
Bennett spoke on the question of building institutions that make financial services accessible to poor women in a way that is also financially sustainable and not forever dependent on subsidies from governments and donors.
She praised Bank Rakyat Indonesia and its village unit system as successfully generating profits while serving poor rural dwellers, especially women.
The bank has been "able to generate a healthy profit while serving, if not the very poorest, at least a large segment of low-income rural men and women who have not previously had access to the formal banking system," she said.
Bennett advised organizations working for the advancement of women to invest in the "self-management capacity of groups and stress a business-like rather than a welfare approach to their clients."
Leena M. Kirjavainen of the Food and Agriculture Organization said that more than 550 million people, or 60 percent of the world's rural population, live below the poverty line.
"This is a 50 percent increase for women since the 1970s, compared to 30 percent increase for men for the same period," Kirjavainen said. "This conference is a unique opportunity to devote attention to the fate of the poorest among the poor."
Minh Chau Nguyen, the World Bank's Manager of Gender Analysis and Policy, said that over a third of the Bank's lending portfolio, currently around US$25 billion, addresses gender concerns.
A decade ago, the figure was less than 10 percent, she said. In addition, "about $3.5 billion of the bank's annual lending is devoted to improving women's status in primary education, population, health, nutrition and agriculture," she added.
Chau Minh Nguyen said studies by the bank showed progress in the campaign to promote gender equality in developing countries. For instance, 85 girls for every 100 boys are now enrolled in primary schools, compared with 65 girls for every 100 boys in 1960.
However, many inequalities persist, she said, noting that 77 million girls of primary school age are not in school, as compared with 52 million boys. In addition, women's wages are only 60 to 70 percent of men's wages and women spend more time on both paid and unpaid work than men do.
"The inequalities between men and women have high personal costs, but they are also very costly to countries and their economies," she said.
"These inequalities hamper economic growth," she said. "Governments can no longer afford not to invest in women."