Women Present Report of Status of Gambian Women to President Jammeh
Friday 26th May 2006

As part of the activities marking the twenty five years of existence of the Women’s Bureau and Council, the bureau organised a national conference of women on the status report on the situation of Gambian women which they presented to the President at a gathering of one thousand women all over the country including women in the diaspora.

Delivering the Executive Summary of the report, the executive director of the Women’s bureau has said:

The population of The Gambia is about 1.3 million with 51% women. The life expectancy at birth is 51.1 years; 57 years for women and 55 years for men. Women undertake their reproductive and community roles (private and unpaid work) while men mostly engage in public roles (paid work).

In the early 1970s, Lady Augusta Jawara brought together women’s associations in the Greater Banjul Area to form the Women’s Federation, as a corporate framework for co-ordinating women’s activities and resource mobilization initiatives to enhance their own development. The Women’s Bureau was established in December 1980 amongst other things to oversee the formation of the Women’s Council and primarily implementing the National Women’s Council Act. It was to advise government on matters pertaining to women’s development, serve as the executive arm or Secretariat for managing the business of the new Women’s Council as well as facilitate the selection of its members by the Local government Authorities.

The Women’s Council was mandated by the Act to advise government on all matters affecting the development and welfare of women such as education and training of women, and mobilizing and integrating women as equal partners in the economic, social and cultural development of The Gambia. The Women’s Bureau and National Women’s Council (NWC) were established by an Act of Parliament in 1980 but a Department of State for Women’s Affairs was only created in 1996. The Department has the ultimate responsibility for providing policy guidance to Government and stakeholders on specific issues affecting Gambian women and gender.

The Bureau serves as the secretariat to the NWC, the national assembly for women, which advises government on all matters concerning women and gender. The Vice President, a National Assembly Select Committee on Women and Children, and a Gender Technical Committee were also constituted to further ensure effective mainstreaming of gender and women’s empowerment in all policies and programmes.

Traditionally, girls education was not valued much in the past, thus women’s access to education was hindered by socio-cultural and traditional believes regarding the education of women. Furthermore, discriminatory measures hamper women’s career advancement. Due to illiteracy and lack of adequate training, most women operating micro, small and medium scale businesses lack the necessary business skills. The majority of women run subsistence businesses, which are of low quality and produce little quantity of products. Women’s products are therefore usually of low quality and thus generate very little income, e.g. Women’s rights, peace and security.
CEDAW, the main International instrument promoting women’s rights, was signed and ratified by The Gambia in 1992. However, some of the current laws do not adequately address women issues and concerns, or have gaps that need to be addressed and to form the basis of the formulation of a women’s bill. The majority of women face gender-based violence both at the work place and in the house.

A Women’s Policy was formulated in 1999 and is currently being implemented. However, women’s lack of equal participation and access to resources and opportunities is as a result of the lack of effective implementation and monitoring of this and other related polices. Another contributing factor is the non-integration of policy issues, as they relate to women and gender, in other national policies. Another constraint to gender mainstreaming is the fact that most Gambians, especially women, are also not familiar with these policy objectives due to lack of awareness and illiteracy.

Apart from lack of effective implementation of the women’s policy, there are gaps in the policy, which need immediate attention. Also, even though the policy is related to gender equality, gender perspectives are insufficiently treated thus requiring strengthening at all levels. Capacity to integrate gender issues at all levels of planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment will need to be developed to ensure that the decentralization process is gender responsive.

The realization of gender equality requires sectors and actors in the development process to factor gender issues in their respective areas. The lack of effective implementation of gender mainstreaming is also partly caused by the absence of comprehensive gender analysis to inform planning and monitoring. Gender analysis will also help to describe the priorities of men and women as to guide effective gender mainstreaming, informed policy, programmes and interventions and to develop indicators and benchmarks.

The Women’s Council is unable to be in constant touch with the women they represent due to lack of mobility. Both a Gender Cabinet committee and a National Assembly committee on women and children exist, but they also lack the necessary capacity to ensure the promotion of gender issues and women’s empowerment at the highest level as required.

Some of the strategies that need to be pursued in order to address these constraints include strengthening the national machineries (National Women’s Council and Bureau) in addressing women’s needs, as well as capacity building for key stakeholders on gender mainstreaming with particular focus on education, health and agriculture, by piloting a gender mainstreaming project in the Education, Agriculture, Health, and Industry Sectors.