J.11 Attachment_ Gender Analysis REGO PAD.pdf

CONTENTS

Southern Africa’s Gender Challenges and Private Sector Empowerment Opportunities 2

Gender-Empowering Recommendations for REGO’s PAD and Activities 5

Gender-Specific MEL Frameworks to Apply across the Project and Activities 6

Integrating Gender into REGO’s Activity Planning Cycle 7

REGO PAD 2020-2025: Gender Analysis Annex

Southern Africa’s Gender Challenges and Private Sector Empowerment Opportunities

Gender inequality in Southern Africa limits women’s equal participation in economic growth and production and systematically reduces their benefits from increased trade, investment, and private sector activity. Labor force participation rates across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) remain lower for women than men at 51% and 64% respectively.

Women continue to earn less income than men in SADC countries and are more often affected by long-term unemployment. Women also undertake most of the unpaid care work in the region which increases their time poverty and reduces their chances of gaining other/additional employment opportunities. Formal-sector unemployment for women stands at 29% across SADC, which is 4%1 higher than men. Even in sectors where women have higher levels of employment, their roles are often2 unequal. Women are a driving force of SADC’s agricultural sector—more than half of all women in SADC rely on agriculture as their main source of income and food security and women account for 60-80% of smallholder farmers. Yet, like other parts of the developing world, these women are often3 employed in lower-income, lower-skill, and more time-consuming tasks along the agricultural value chain such as planting, weeding and harvesting. Collectively, this means that women are systematically less4 likely to benefit from the job creation and diversification opportunities brought in by increased trade, investment, and private sector activity.

This inequality is driven by systemic barriers and lack of representation that make it disproportionally harder for women to take part in, and benefit from, private sector growth. Female entrepreneurs state limited access to finance and unequal social norms as some of the most pressing challenges affecting their businesses. Access to finance is difficult for women due to the lack of assets and the inability to provide collateral for loans and credit services. This results in female-run businesses having harder, and less, access to investment finance than their male-run counterparts. Women also have less access to land, credit, and skills development opportunities than5 men. These challenges are further aggravated by inadequate legal standards and enforcement and cultural views that inadvertently marginalize women. Traditional and customary laws for instance give women6 access to land but rarely grant them control over it. Women only make up about 15–20% of landholders in sub-Saharan Africa, and have greatly-reduced opportunities to activate this land as an economic

6 SADC, “SADC Gender and Development Monitor”, 2016 5 Shava H., “Impact of gender on small and medium-sized entities’ access to venture capital in South Africa”, 2018 4 AfDB, “Gender equality in agriculture: What are really the benefits for sub-Saharan Africa?”, 2016 3 USAID, “Southern Africa Gender Analysis”, 2019

2 ILOSTAT

1 SADC, “SADC Gender and Development Monitor”, 2016 resource: Women receive less than 10% of available credit and 7% of credit extension services. As a7 result of these and other barriers, productivity of female farmers is 20-30% lower. Limited8 representation further perpetuates gender inequality: Globally, women in general and Black African women in particular hold few positions of political and economic power or decision-making, which means that gender-blind trade policies and patriarchal perspectives continue to dominate national policies. Across SADC, only 29% of senior business leadership roles are held by women, which9 minimizes the growth of future female business leaders and reduces gender equality at top-management levels in Southern Africa’s private sector. 10

Trade activity between SADC countries demonstrates just how challenging it is for women to gain economic inclusion in Southern Africa. Informal trade accounts for between 30-40% of all trade between SADC nations. Women make up 70% of all informal traders taking part in informal cross-border trade in SADC. The economic activity of these women accounted for over USD 17.6B11 and enabled important regional linkages that promote economic interdependence and regional food security. However, the disproportionately high role that women play in informal trade means that they are disproportionately impacted by the challenges that the sector faces overall. Informal traders can end up paying more in border fees to clear goods compared to larger traders which reduces their profitability, potential for scale and economic growth. Between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for instance, a study found that small-scale traders often paid up to 193% more than larger traders to clear a ton of maize across the border through the formal channels, a financial inequality that hit women particularly hard. In trade, women are also more susceptible to sexual or12 financial extortion from officials. This compromises their safety and ease of doing business. These challenges arise from not only a largely male dominated customs and border system but in the general lack of awareness from female traders of the policies and rights that they should be guaranteed.

Despite these barriers, the private sector can be activated as a catalyst for women’s equality through a deliberate focus on gender empowerment. The private sector is an essential partner in advancing the process of women’s economic empowerment. Strengthened by greater trade and investment and gender-empowerment support, greater private sector engagement can result in step-change for women by adopting business practices that include and support women as workers, consumers, producers and suppliers. This is most notably true when the private sector directs its many assets, such as in-house expertise and financial resources, into sectors that disproportionately employ and empower women. Doing so will directly increase women’s employment opportunities and will indirectly increase opportunities for women to strengthen and diversify their presence along critical commodity value chains—particularly through female-owned Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Building stronger and more patient and long-term partnerships with governments, civil society, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and international institutions will further extend the scale and

12 tralac, “Small-Scale Cross-Border Trade in Africa: Why it matters and how it should be supported”, 2018

11 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), “Borderline: Women in informal cross-border trade in Malawi, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Zambia”, 2019

10 Businesswomen’s Association of South Africa, 2017 9 SADC, “SADC Gender and Development Monitor”, 2016 8 AfDB, “Gender equality in agriculture: What are really the benefits for sub-Saharan Africa?”, 2016 7 USAID, “Southern Africa Gender Analysis”, 2019 impact of gender-forward investment and will deepen levels of trust between the private sector and women across Southern Africa.

Leveraging the private sector for gender-inclusive and empowering growth will require clear identification and support of the systemic opportunities (e.g., value chains, market-product combinations) that are best-positioned to support women. Identifying gender-empowering growth sectors and opportunities (e.g., trade corridors) should include a prioritization based on the direct and indirect empowerment for women. Directly, opportunities for women should prioritize both increases and diversification of jobs, along with data and evidence on what sectors may inherently further aggravate gender inequalities. This should start with a clear identification and prioritization of female dominant sectors or value chains. This will allow activities to direct resources and growth to existing opportunities where women currently capture the greatest value.

Supporting and growing these opportunities will increase women’s direct participation, expertise, and agency in the given sector. Opportunity prioritization should also identify and support sectors that stand to benefit women equally, if not greater. Some sectors inherently favor men over women, and vice versa, which can lead to greater gender disparities as investment and growth occur. In addition to this, some women don’t necessarily benefit from sector diversification For instance, investing in agricultural processing may greatly help regional economic growth, but could do so through the disproportionate exclusion of women, who often do not take part in businesses or production at the higher end of the agricultural value chains. Indirect benefits for women from sector growth—such as increased access to nutrition, health, financial independence, and others, should also be examined and supported.

Clarifying the structure of the business cases behind gender-prioritized opportunities will identify the best ways for private sector to increase empowerment—and the additional support needed to make it happen. Some sector-wide opportunities may already be well-positioned to yield both positive gender inclusion and a positive business case—or even better, supporting stronger growth because women are more included. In these cases, identification of the opportunity and initial support in shaping it may be enough to generate the momentum needed for success, particularly given an existing (yet previously unidentified) opportunity for investors to earn a return within the scope of what they may be targeting. However, in sectors where the business case of gender inclusion is either neutral or net-negative, the private sector may need more targeted assistance from USAID and other partners to explore and pursue these opportunities. Helping private sector partners overcome initial additional challenges associated with investing in gender-empowering sectors through support such as transaction facilitation, de-risking tools, and overall opportunity structuring, will further open up better opportunities for gender empowerment through private sector investment in Southern Africa.

Beyond identifying the best opportunities and support needed, extended facilitation around partnerships and community engagement will be needed to make gender-empowering investment impactful and sustainable. Directing the private sector to the best and most viable opportunities for gender empowerment, and enabling it to increase its trade and investment in these opportunities through partnerships and extended coordination and facilitation, will allow for inclusive transformation both economically and socially, and help reduce the 95-year prediction by the World

Economic Forum (WEF) to close the economic participation and opportunity gap in sub-Saharan Africa.

Gender-Empowering Recommendations for REGO’s PAD and Activities

REGO’s five-year approach to implementing this PAD positions it well to drive the identification and facilitation of gender-empowering trade and investment opportunities and private sector growth. It can do so by applying a gender-empowerment lens across each of its four implementation areas to ensure that REGO’s activities improve the following outcomes for women:

1. Increased and improved economic opportunities: A woman’s ability to earn an income from work that she wants to do.

2. Better resources: Increased resources that empower women and the activities they pursue.

Resources should be seen holistically to include financial, health, education, physical assets, social networks along with non-tangible resources such as time.

3. Strengthened agency: A woman’s autonomy to make decisions, express voice and pursue goals independently, free from negative consequence.

REGO is well-placed to lead the identification of viable sectors and opportunities for scalable growth through the systemic approach to trade and investment growth opportunities outlined in this PAD. To build out the business cases for these opportunities, REGO should work with the individual investors and trade partners that are engaged in individual support to a) understand the need for gender-empowering investment and b) develop gender-specific aspects of their investments that support women’s empowerment without additional risk needed. REGO can also provide the support needed to help investors and trade partners overcome business case neutral or net-loss opportunities, particularly through de-risking mechanisms and transaction support. REGO is also well-placed to ensure that its ecosystem support work strengthens long-term gender partnerships and prioritizes gender-specific enabling environment support and implementation in both the formal ecosystem (e.g., policies, laws, and regulations) and informal ecosystem (e.g., social norms). As an example, increasing the number of, and support for, women-led funds could help ensure that the women who best understand these challenges are a core part of creating and delivering gender solutions through investment. Through this PAD, REGO can ensure that these opportunities are driven at scale which can help more women have greater access to higher-value economic opportunities across a larger region and for longer, more sustainable, time periods.

13 WEF, “Global Gender Gap Report”, 2020

In taking a gender-empowering approach, REGO is well-positioned to play a pivotal role in increasing women’s decision-making power and representation in trade, investment, and private sector growth. Doing so will ensure women are not just the recipients of programs and services, but agents of design, delivery, and accountability in Southern Africa’s economic growth.

REGO can achieve this by creating specific activities that apply clear gender inclusive design principles. It is important to include a gender lens from the onset of activity design and this can be ensured by using the following design principles:14

1. Be intentional: Irrespective of whether a program has specific gender objectives and targets, aligning upfront on integrating a gender lens will provide the basis for tracking and learning about possible gender differences in project uptake and outcomes.

2. Identify relevant data points and indicators: Understand how the project may differentially impact different genders and use these hypotheses to inform the identification of indicators at each level of the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) frameworks, e.g., at input level, at output level and at outcome level.

3. Ensure assumptions are gender nuanced: When calling out assumptions being made by the program, it is important to consider possible gender differences, e.g., do expectations around program participation assume that women have the same amount of time as men?

Gender-Specific MEL Frameworks to Apply across the Project and Activities

REGO should also ensure that the MEL strategy that supports this PAD is gender-empowering by including gender-inclusive data collection and analysis systems. The following data collection and analysis guidelines highlight gender nuanced MEL methodologies that can be applied within the Monitoring and Evaluation cycle of this PAD at large along with the activities that support it.

1. Data Collection

● Sampling: Ensure appropriate levels of representation across genders and engage gender experts as relevant.

● Questioning: Use questions to uncover how and why gender differences exist.

● Collecting: Consider the gender composition of data collection teams for each activity and observe whether the respondents can answer independently; collect primary data in a way that allows the participant to self-select their gender identification.

14 Dalberg Analysis

2. Data Analysis

● Sex-disaggregated analyses: Disaggregate primary project and activity data based on gender and seek out secondary data sources that use sex-disaggregated data sets to explore how outcomes differ between men and women.

● Complement quantitative findings with qualitative insights: Use qualitative data collected from focus group discussions and/or interviews to enhance quantitative findings with the voices of those consulted, including perspectives on potential unintended consequences of project programming.

● Use an intersectional lens: Assess qualitative data as well as other data collected on other identifiers such as income, race and ethnicity can highlight differences in gender groups.

Lessons from REGO’s most recent Trade and Food Security Project (TFSP) mid-term review reflect the importance of a holistic approach to gender empowerment. This analysis identified that using a piece-meal approach to gender empowerment will not produce systemic and sustainable change. The review highlighted the need for a clear gender strategy as a non-deliberate approach to gender inclusion only leads to individual pockets of gender-focused activities without systematic change of underlying issues. Policy related activities are also highly imbalanced in favor of men and therefore there should be greater intentionality in this regard, through advocacy for instance, to ensure that there is equal representation.

Integrating Gender into REGO’s Activity Planning Cycle

By applying these principles and insights, REGO is well-positioned to leverage this PAD and the activities within it to build up women as change agents in Southern Africa. This will grant REGO better understanding of root causes of inequality and not just proximate causes; areas where women can gain greater economic control and not just economic access; and an MEL policy that values women’s economic inclusion and empowerment and not just counts their participation. Through this process, the unintended consequences of economic and policy decisions that can negatively affect women, will also be unearthed and addressed.

While this analysis provides high-level insights and recommendations on including gender empowerment principles, it is recommended that this project, and each activity within it, undertake additional planning and design processes to expand and target deliberate gender-empowerment efforts. USAID’s Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG), for instance, provides a Gender Integration Continuum framework that categorizes approaches by how they treat gender norms and inequality in the planning, design, implementation, and MEL cycle of any program or activity. Using this framework, REGO can easily determine whether its programs and activities are reinforcing inequitable gender norms, working around them, or critically examining and changing these inequitable practices. Additionally, REGO could start to include a deliberate gender lens in all Request For Proposals (RFPs) and explicitly state that all respondents much account for gender considerations.

This should also be the case for activities that are not primarily gender focused.15

15 FHI 360, “Gender Integration Framework”, 2012