Gender Links (GL) is collaborating with Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) and the World Bank in developing a submission on Gender and the New Growth Path. This follows a workshop convened in March (click here for the workshop report). Below are some notes to prompt further discussion and inputs. These will be compiled into a draft submission that will be discussed at a workshop convened by the Ministry of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities in early August. 

Context 
Implicit versus explicit references to gender
Decent work and an inclusive economy 
Social equity
Social development 
Source of inequalities in the labour market 
Unfair discrimination 
Defining equity 
Strategies 
Priority sectors identified 
Employment by industry
The informal sector

The call for submissions is being sent to over one thousand individuals and organisations across the country. Please take a few minutes to read through and share your thoughts using the online response form and submit this by Tuesday 19 July. All comments and contributions will be acknowledged in an annex to the submission. The final draft will be shared with all those who respond. Please send this on to any friends or colleagues who may be interested. In addition to the E Mail responses, a focus group discussion is being organised with informal traders.

Please help us make the voice of gender equality count in this important national blue print! If you are having trouble accessing or filling this form please send an E Mail to research@genderlinks.org.za.

Context
The South African Constitution provides for substantive equality between women and men. South Africa is a signatory to a wide range of international and regional commitments to achieve this including the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development that sets 28 targets to be achieved by 2015. In respect of economic empowerment, these include:

• Ensure equal participation by women and men in policy formulation and implementation of economic policies.
• Conduct time use studies and adopt policy measures to ease the burden of the multiple roles played by women.
• Adopt policies and enact laws which ensure equal access, benefits and opportunities for women and men in trade and entrepreneurship, taking into account the contribution of women in the formal and informal sectors.
• Review national trade and entrepreneurship policies, to make them gender responsive.
• With regard to the affirmative action provisions of Article 5, introduce measures to ensure that women benefit equally from economic opportunities, including those created through public procurement processes.
• Review all policies and laws that determine access to, control of, and benefit from, productive resources by women.
• Review, amend and enact laws and policies that ensure women and men have equal access to wage employment in all sectors of the economy.

A centre piece of the SADC Gender Protocol, and of all gender mainstreaming philosophies is that if gender is not made explicit in policies, the differential impact on women and men, and conversely the policies required to correct this, will be lost.  
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Implicit versus explicit references to gender
The New Growth Path document is almost completely gender-blind if one is looking for explicit references to gender or women. The words "gender" and "female" are absent from the document. The word "women" appears once in the description of the inequalities in the workplace, but only in highlighting the large number of domestic workers.

At the outset we should note that the NGP document promises many things, some of which might to some extent be contradictory or "fall off the table" during the trade-offs of implementation. The absence of gender in such a "promise-full" document is thus especially startling.

We therefore need to look for implicit references to gender, or areas where gender could and/or should have been highlighted. The following chronological extracts (in italics) from the New Growth Path document followed by comments
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Decent work and an inclusive economy
In his inaugural State of the Nation Address in June 2009, President Jacob Zuma stated:
"It is my pleasure and honour to highlight the key elements of our programme of action. The creation of decent work will be at the centre of our economic policies and will influence our investment attraction and job creation initiatives. In line with our undertakings, we have to forge ahead to promote a more inclusive economy."

One could argue that this, first, paragraph of the document opens the space - with the concept of "decent work" and the adjective "inclusive" - for consideration of gender.

There is growing consensus that creating decent work, reducing inequality and defeating poverty can only happen through a new growth path founded on a restructuring of the South African economy to improve its performance in terms of labour absorption as well as the composition and rate of growth.
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Social equity
This next paragraph, the first "real" paragraph of the NGP document, again opens space for consideration of gender with the mention of "decent work" and "inequality".

The Government is committed to forging such a consensus and leading the way by
1. Identifying areas where employment creation is possible on a large scale as a result of substantial changes in conditions in South Africa and globally.
2. Developing a policy package to facilitate employment creation in these areas, above all through:
a. A comprehensive drive to enhance both social equity and competitiveness;
b. Systemic changes to mobilise domestic investment around activities that can create sustainable employment; and
c. Strong social dialogue to focus all stakeholders on encouraging growth in employment-creating activities.

This paragraph, also near the beginning of the document, provides an opening with the words "social equity". However, as in the previous "openings", gender is not explicit, and the terms are far more likely, in the South African context, to be read in terms of race than gender. The rest of the document fails to take advantage of the "gender openings".
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Social development
The document knits together the Industrial Policy Acton Plan (IPAP) 2 as well as policies and programmes in rural development, agriculture, science and technology, education and skills development, labour, mining and beneficiation, tourism, social development and other areas.

This background statement is one of the few places where "social development" is mentioned. Yet this is one of the most female-dominated areas and one where earnings are extremely low or non-existent (in the case of "volunteers"). It is an area where government has real opportunities for reducing inequality given its role in "subsidising" (i.e. paying only part of the cost, and thus forcing low wages) the non-profit organisations (NPOs) that provide services, many of which government is legally obliged to provide. (When buying "goods", such as roads, government covers the full cost and profit i.e. it does not "subsidise".) Further, where these services are not provided, the care work burden is shifted even more heavily onto women's shoulders. The latter impact is very likely to be felt with PEPFAR's planned "exit" from funding the large number of organisations providing home-based care that it currently funds.
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Source of inequalities in the labour market
Despite improved growth, the economy remained one of the most inequitable in the world. In the mid-‘00s, some 40% of the national income went to the richest 10% of households. Deep inequalities were associated with extraordinarily high levels of joblessness. In the late ‘00s, less than half of all working-age South Africans had incomeearning employment, compared to an international norm of almost two thirds.

Inequalities and joblessness were also associated with the legacy of apartheid geography. In the mid-‘00s, around a third of the population lived in the former Bantustans. Fewer than one in three adults there was employed. Over half of all households in the former Bantustans depended mostly on remittances or grants, compared to under a quarter in the rest of the country.

The position was worst for young people, largely because too few jobs were created to absorb the large numbers of new entrants to the labour market. In the first quarter of 2010, the unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 30 was 40%, compared to 16% for those aged 30 to 65.

Amongst the employed, many workers had poorly paid, insecure and dead-end jobs. In the third quarter of 2008, half of all employed people earned less than R2500 a month and over a third earned under R1000 a month, according to Statistics South Africa. The informal sector, agriculture and domestic work contributed a third of all employment, but two thirds of working people earning under R1000 a month. Moreover, one in five employed African women was a domestic worker. The share of wages in the national income dropped from 50% in 1994 to just over 45% in 2009, while the share of profits climbed from 40% to 45%.

These paragraphs provide the core of the document's description of current inequalities in the labour market. It is the one place (see BOLD) where the word "women" is used in the document. However, this focuses only on domestic workers, and there is no reference to the inequalities that confront working women more generally. Government statistics consistently show that unemployment rates are higher for women than men, and especially high for African women. Recent analysis by Statistics South Africa of Quarterly Labour Force Survey earnings data also confirms the extent to which female employees tend to earn less than male employees across all occupational categories except paid domestic work. Overall, women's earnings are only 77% those of men. Analysis by Casale & Posel (2009) using slightly earlier survey data from Statistics South Africa confirms that women's lower earnings cannot be explained away by lesser education levels or skill, age or any other of the "objective" factors that could perhaps justify lower earnings.
Sources: Casale D & Posel D. 2009. "Unions and the gender wage gap in South Africa". ERSA Working Paper no.113; Statistics South Africa. 2010. Monthly earnings of South Africans, 2010. Statistical release P0211.2. Pretoria.
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Unfair discrimination
The ILO defines the decent work agenda in terms of four strategic objectives:
• Employment and income opportunities,
• Fundamental principles and rights at work and international labour standards (essentially organisational rights and freedom from coercion and discrimination),
• Social protection (which includes decent working conditions) and social security, and
• Social dialogue and tripartism.

In light of the South African Constitution's focus on substantive, rather than simply formal, equality, and prohibition of "unfair" discrimination, the highlight on discrimination in the second point would imply that decent work is work in which the female-male earnings inequalities highlighted above are absent. This is also required by South Africa's ratification of International Labour Convention 100 on Equal Remuneration, which provides for equal pay for work of equal value. Yet government has not yet released any report on income differentials as required under the Employment Equity Act.
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Defining equity
In essence, the aim is to target our limited capital and capacity at activities that maximise the creation of decent work opportunities. To that end, we must use both macro and micro economic policies to create a favourable overall environment and to support more labour-absorbing activities. The main indicators of success will be jobs (the number and quality of jobs created), growth (the rate, labour intensity and composition of economic growth), equity (lower income inequality and poverty) and environmental outcomes.

This paragraph places equity among the primary indicators. However, it is defined quite narrowly as income inequality, whereas there are forms of gender inequity related to employment that go beyond income inequality.
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Strategies
1. In the very short run, the state can accelerate employment creation primarily through direct employment schemes, targeted subsidies and/or a more expansionary macroeconomic package.
2. Over the short to medium term, it can support labour-absorbing activities, especially in the agricultural value chain, light manufacturing and services, to generate largescale employment. Government can provide effective inducements to private investment in targeted sectors principally by prioritising labour-absorbing activities for the provision of appropriate and cost-effective infrastructure, regulatory interventions that effectively address market and state failures, measures to improve skills systems, and in some cases subsidies to production and innovation.
3. In the longer run, as full employment is achieved, the state must increasingly support knowledge- and capital-intensive sectors in order to remain competitive.

In terms of 1, there has been "slippage" over the years from the requirement that at least 60% of the Expanded Public Works Programme jobs and earnings should go to women, to the Department of Public Works reporting as if the target is 45% women, and only in respect of number of jobs, rather than also in terms of earnings.

What is interesting in terms of 2 is Business Day's recent editorial (of 22 June 2011) which points to the enormous cost of creating a single job in some of the initiatives currently being touted as significant for the future of the economy. It is difficult to see where the examples below fit into either point 1 or 2 above:
• The plan of the China Motor Corporation to build a $1bn vehicle factory outside Harrismith in the Free State, which will reportedly result "ultimately" in 2500 permanent jobs. This equates to about R3m per job.
• The plan of Kalagadi Manganese to build a manganese smelter at the Coega Industrial Development Zone at a cost of about R4,2bn, resulting in a hoped-for 400 permanent jobs in addition to further jobs during construction. The permanent jobs come in at about R10,5m each. (To date, over its eight-year lifespan, Coega has helped create only 2,435 jobs.)
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Priority sectors identified
The jobs drivers we have identified are:
1. Substantial public investment in infrastructure both to create employment directly, in construction, operation and maintenance as well as the production of inputs, and indirectly by improving efficiency across the economy.
2. Targeting more labour-absorbing activities across the main economic sectors - the agricultural and mining value chains, manufacturing and services.
3. Taking advantage of new opportunities in the knowledge and green economies.
4. Leveraging social capital in the social economy and the public services.
5. Fostering rural development and regional integration....

As a first step, we will prioritise efforts to support employment creation in the following key sectors:
• infrastructure
• the agricultural value chain
• the mining value chain
• the green economy
• manufacturing sectors, which are included in IPAP2, and
• tourism and certain high-level services.

Comparison of these two paragraphs, which are close to each other in the document, shows the social economy and public services - both of which are especially important from a gender perspective - falling away in the first step. The services aspect of the second part is reduced to tourism and "certain high-level services", with the high-level seemingly not explained, but probably favouring "higher-level" workers.

The following table, based on Statistics South Africa's Quarterly Labour Force Survey of the fourth quarter of 2010, shows women as a percentage of all employed for each sector. It is useful when considering the sectors that are to be promoted in the New Growth Path. (Private households is primarily domestic work, but also includes gardeners)
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Employment by industry (1000s)

GREEN ones are about focus on the way men work with THINGS while women work with PEOPLE.

Jobs Driver 1: Infrastructure. Public investment can create 250 000 jobs a year in energy, transport, water and communications infrastructure and in housing, through to 2015. The provision of infrastructure also serves to enhance efficiency across the economy, laying the basis for stepped-up growth and employment creation in every industry and at the same time it can also significantly advance social equity goals and address inequalities in the society. It is critical for increasing opportunities in the former Bantustans, which still suffer the greatest backlogs in household services, transport and communications.

This jobs driver could be of benefit to many poor women if the focus includes serious attention to household services rather than concentrating primarily on business-oriented services. In particular, improved access to safe water and electricity can reduce the unpaid work burden currently carried by many rural women and children. It could help prevent children arriving late at school or not attending at all. It could free up time for women to do other things, including income-earning work.

The New Growth Path sets out a range of practical measures at sectoral level to achieve these employment targets, with the following core strategies:
•Restructuring land reform to support smallholder schemes with comprehensive support around infrastructure, marketing, finance, extension services, etc.; upgrading employment in commercial agriculture especially through improved worker voice; measures to support growth in commercial farming and to help address price fluctuations in maize and wheat while supporting national food security; acceleration of land claims processes and better support to new farmers following land-claims settlements; programmes to ensure competitive pricing of inputs, especially fertiliser; and support for fishing and aquaculture.

The concern here is that these promises have been heard previously in policy documents. Further - as noted elsewhere in the document - in some (many?) rural areas the amount and quality of land will limit the ability of interventions in respect of smallholder farming to help significant numbers of people.

•In tourism, strengthening measures to expand the tourism infrastructure and Services... In addition, the conditions of vulnerable workers in the services will be addressed.
The mention of vulnerable workers in tourism is welcome, especially given that many of them would be women. The lack of specificity as to what these measures are limits our ability to judge how effective they might be.

Jobs Driver 3: Seizing the potential of new economies. .. Additional jobs will be created by expanding the existing public employment schemes to protect the environment, as well as in production of biofuels.

Public employment schemes do not create "decent work". This is not to say that public employment schemes are not very necessary at this stage, but it is worrying if the green economy is seen as being built on cheap labour.

Jobs Driver 4: Investing in social capital and public services. The social economy includes myriad not-for-profit institutions that provide goods and services, including coops, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and stokvels. If the sector grew in South Africa closer to international norms, we can anticipate 260 000 new employment opportunities. The public service can also generate 100 000 jobs in health, education and policing by 2020 even if it grows by only 1% a year, as well as substantial opportunities through public employment schemes.

The issue of NPO jobs is discussed above. NPOs cannot provide decent jobs if they do not have the money to do so. Government's current policy in respect of subsidies for NPOs providing welfare services on its behalf prevents their creating decent jobs. The introduction of the occupation-specific dispensation for social workers (which is welcomed, as recognizing the value of this female-dominated occupation), because it is confined to government-employed social workers, has increased the size of an inexisting inequality in the labour market.

An effective rural development strategy geared to improving livelihoods and employment on a large scale must:
• Be rooted in a realistic understanding of the economic potential of different regions of the country, including the quality of land, water and proximity to markets; and
• Take into account long-term changes in settlement patterns with the end of apartheid residential laws.

This is the paragraph that suggests that smallholder schemes cannot be seen as the main solution for rural homeland areas. This is a gender issue given that the population of these areas is far more heavily female-dominated than other areas of the country. The child: adult population ratio in these areas is also higher than elsewhere, implying that each adult needs to support more than an average number of people with their earned income.

The proposals here focus on meeting shortfalls in the important economic skills
The skills named and briefly discussed are engineers, artisans, workplace skills, FET, ICT. All of these except the vague "workplace skills" are male-dominated.
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The informal sector
The New Growth Path will strengthen and consolidate initiatives to support small and micro enterprise, with a comprehensive strategy laid out by early 2011.

The measures listed after these paragraphs will not address the needs of informal women traders, yet women are heavily concentrated in this sector. If government wants to address the needs of these women, one of the most fruitful places to start would be improving the policies and practicies of local governments in relation to street traders.

The labour-market policies left by apartheid, which shaped racially based inequality and exploitation, could not provide the basis for a more equitable, inclusive and competitive economy. Government now regulates the labour market in order to protect vulnerable workers, support employment equity, ensure health and safety on the job and assist workers in finding employment and training opportunities. The New Growth Path can build on this foundation to find ways to raise multi-factor productivity on the basis of fair rewards to workers plus greater employment creation.

There is no mention of gender despite the fact that apartheid also shaped gender-based inequality and exploitation, and its legacy remains. Within employment equity, the focus has been primarily on getting women into managerial and top positions, ignoring issues of equity for the large numbers of women employed in lower status occupations.
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