allAfrica.com: Southern Africa: What Will SADC Free Trade Mean for Women? (Page 1 of 1)

One of the highlights of the recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit 2008 was the launch of the SADC Free Trade Area (FTA).

Increased integration could bring a wealth of opportunities for the region, yet for the most vulnerable, especially women, these benefits will largely depend on their access to finance, training, and productive resources needed to participate fully in the regional economy.

Another highlight of the Summit was the signing of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development.

Among the 23 targets, which address such issues as HIV-AIDS, gender violence, women in decision-making and economic justice, the Protocol commits states to adopting policies and enacting laws ensuring equal access, benefit and opportunities for women and men in trade and entrepreneurship by 2015.

Ratification and implementation of the Protocol could offer women such as Florence Mutale, a Zambian trader who sells kapenta and buys shoes for resale from those who go outside the country, opportunities to grow their businesses and move beyond subsistence.

"I would very much want to move to a higher level in my business but cannot due to financial constraints," Mutale said.

She added that her capital is not enough for her to go out of the country to buy commodities.

"I depend on my business friends to loan me money.

I cannot approach any financial lending institutions because I do not have assets or any valuables to use as collateral," said Mutale.

If women are to benefit from increased opportunities through the production and marketing of goods and provision of services, they need capital and technical skills.

Yet throughout the region, countries continue to have policies and practices that make access to finance and control of productive resources a challenge for women.

The FTA means that producers and consumers no longer pay import tariffs on about 85 per cent of all trade in Community goods within the initial 12 countries.

The other two SADC members, Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo, would join the SADC FTA at a later stage.

Yet, regional integration will not end with the FTA, SADC plans a customs union in 2010, a common market in 2015, a monetary union in 2016, and a single currency in 2018.

This regional integration follows a global trend in which the integration of economies through trade, financial flows, the exchange of technology and information and the movement of people has changed the way that economies and people function.

Proponents of globalisation and freer trade argue that economic development will occur by exploiting comparative advantages and having greater access to markets.

Yet some evidence suggests that trade liberalisation has contradictory impacts, which affect communities differently, and to understand the true impact of trade, one must look at how it affects men and women in their positions as workers, consumers, producers, and caregivers, as well as how it affects urban and rural people differently.

The picture of globalisation is often complex and contradictory.

For example, women have benefited from trade liberalisation by increasing employment in such areas as the Economic Processing Zones .

It is true that women are entering the workforce more and more, forever changing the world of work.

Yet, price adjustments disproportionately affect women.

For example, trade liberalisation is characterised by increased casualisation of work, making today's employment less secure and more likely to be under vulnerable or hazardous conditions.

Trade liberalisation also ushered in agricultural policies that promote cash crops for export over that of farming food staples, which has jeopardised the supply of basic foods and affected small-scale farming, mostly involving women.

Moreover, import liberalisation also means decreasing tariffs, and so revenues, for national governments.

This consequently leads to cuts in government spending.

Such cuts disproportionately affect women as caregivers, particularly cuts in social services such as health care, provision of water and electricity.

Globalisation increases flows of trade, capital, and information but mobility of individuals across borders who travel from countries with limited opportunities to fill gaps in nations with a dwindling labour supply.

Southern Africa has a history of male migrant labour, but women are becoming part of the migrant labour force.

For women migrants, migration can open opportunities for greater independence, self-confidence and status.

Yet it can also lead to vulnerable working conditions, and few opportunities to access the needed resources to move to more secure types of employment.

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