For decades, gender equality has been the subject of high-level policy discussions globally. In 2015, the United Nations in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, reiterated its goal to end gender-based discrimination (SDG5). Gender-based discrimination in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is often institutionalised through law, justice, and social-cultural norms which create disparity in women’s and men’s access to resources, status, and well-being, usually in favour of men. In turn, gender-based discrimination “deprives” SSA’s women participation in sustainable economic development. Moreover, measures taken to combat the global health emergency created by the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated some barriers to women’s participation in economic development in SSA. This paper discusses how COVID-19 affected the achievement of gender equality in SSA by examining the macroeconomic implications of the pandemic on women’s labour productivity, human capital, and income inequality and poverty. Secondly, the paper discusses expected medium-term effects of the pandemic which could further impact the achievement of gender equality in SSA in the long-term. Finally, the paper proposes policy recommendations that could be adopted to counteract the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equality in SSA.download full publication
“We can no longer continue to make policies for ourselves, our countries, our region and our continent on the basis of whatever the westerners will give us. It will not work, it has not worked...Our responsibility is to charter a path which is about how we can develop our nations ourselves.”
“only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
“The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.”
“Basic institutions that protect the liberty of individuals to pursue their own economic interests result in greater prosperity for the larger society.”
“...where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individualefforts than any other... regards competition as superior not only because it is in mostcircumstances the most efficient method known but even more because it is the only methodby which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitraryintervention of authority.”
"The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge."
"The end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom."