EN

Welcome Remarks by the Chairperson of the SADC PF Standing Committee on Gender Equality, Women Advancement and Youth Development, Wednesday, 14th April, 2021

SALUTATIONS

  • Honourable Members of the SADC PF Standing Committee on Gender Equality, Women Advancement and Youth Development
  • The Secretary General of the SADC PF, Ms Boemo Sekgoma
  • Ms Anne Githuku, UN Women South Africa Country Office Representative
  • Ms Chama Mwandakesa, Women’s Rights Programme Manager, Oxfam Zambia
  • Ms Betty Zulu, Committee Secretary
  • Representatives of Civil Society Organisations
  • Representative of the Media Organisations
  • Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

It is my honour and privilege to welcome you to this very important meeting of the SADC PF Standing Committee on Gender Equality, Women Advancement and Youth Development. As a Committee that has the mandate to consider issues of women empowerment and advancement, we cannot avoid the matter of unpaid care and domestic work. This is why our theme for this meeting is “Unpaid Care and Domestic Work: Why Should Parliament Care.”

Honourable Members, Distinguished Guests

Women empowerment has, in the recent years, become a key focus in the public sector to eradicate poverty. Women empowerment and the autonomy of women and the improvement of their social, political, economic and health status is a highly important end in itself. However, this empowerment and autonomy is hampered by so many factors, one of which is the issue of Unpaid Care and Domestic Work (UCDW).

Honourable Members, Distinguished Guests

Women and girls in low income countries are responsible for a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work. It is disconcerting that in 2018, 606 million women of working age declared themselves to be unavailable for employment because of unpaid care work while only 41 million men were inactive for the same reason.

This undermines women’s well-being, fosters financial dependence and limits options for decent work, to a point of restricting women to low status. Unpaid Care and Domestic Work has been identified as an obstacle to women’s empowerment and advancement, and as Parliament, it is time that we start to recognise and value it. 

Honourable Members

The Unpaid care work carried out by women and girls often goes unnoticed and unrecognised in the calculations of a country’s economy. It is not included in labour surveys or in Gross Domestic Products (GDPs). Due to this fact, the realities of women’s and girls’ work burdens are excluded from data that inform policy making.

Distinguished Guests and Partners

SADC member states are committed to ensuring that time-use surveys are conducted and policy measures that promote shared responsibility between men and women within household and family adopted. We are committed to recognising and valuing unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies pursuant to Article 16 of the SADC PF Protocol on Gender and Development. However, this objective can only be achieved with your assistance.

As Members of Parliament we have the opportunity and influence to provide insight into the importance of addressing issues of gender equality and unpaid care work and catalyse and strengthen effective national and regional mechanisms that can develop policy responses to this type of work. 

Honourable Members

We need to make unpaid care work and unpaid work a dialogue issue with relevant stakeholders and promote the systematic use of gender responsive budgeting as a method to analyse this type of work, and incorporate it into the development agenda. We need to identify policy responses and put in place budget lines for implementing policies and ensure that any labour laws, labour markets and social security programmes and labour force surveys include unpaid care and domestic work.

Honourable Members, Distinguished Guests

By recognising, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work, time will be freed for women and girls to engage in formal jobs, and socio-economic and political activities. For example, ensuring that affordable and quality care services, alternative fuels such as solar, biogas and wind energy, and piped water are available, women’s economic empowerment will be promoted.

My earnest appeal is to my female parliamentarians, who face many similar care issues to be motivated to influence other parliamentarians on unpaid care and domestic work so that we start taking it out of the private and family sphere and positioning it as a human rights-based issue.   

My profound gratitude goes to the Secretary General, Ms. Boemo Sekgoma and her dedicated team from the Secretariat for a job well-done in facilitating this virtual meeting. I wish to urge the honourable Members of the Committee to actively participate in this engagement. 

I THANK YOU.

Welcome Remarks by the Chairperson of the SADC PF Standing Committee on Gender Equality, Women Advancement and Youth Development, Wednesday, 14th April, 2021

About Us

The Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF) was established in 1997 in accordance with Article 9 (2) of the SADC Treaty as an autonomous institution of SADC It is a regional inter-parliamentary body composed of Thirteen (14) parliaments representing over 3500 parliamentarians in the SADC region. Read More

Contact us

Address: ERF 578, Love Street off Robert Mugabe Avenue Windhoek, Namibia

Tel: (+264 61) 287 00 00

Email: