How women in Africa are perceived and treated

• Only about 50% of women in Kenya and 52% in Uganda feel that they are treated with respect and dignity.
• In Zimbabwe, 60% of women feel that they are treated with respect and dignity. This is a sharp drop from an estimated 71% of women who reported being treated with respect in 2013.
• The percentage of people in South Africa who feel this way was even worse at 27% among men and 28% among women.

In Africa’s most advanced economy South Africa, the percentage of people in South Africa who felt this way was even worse at 27 percent among men and 28 percent among women.

The push for equality across Africa appears far from yielding good results with a new report showing that the perceptions that women are treated with respect and dignity have dropped sharply in recent years in Kenya, Uganda South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

According to Gallup World Poll data, only about half of women in Kenya and Uganda (52 percent) felt that women in their country were treated with respect and dignity. Further south in Zimbabwe 60 percent of women responded this way but this was a sharp drop from an estimated 71 percent of women who reported being treated with respect in 2013.

In Africa’s most advanced economy South Africa, the percentage of people in South Africa who felt this way was even worse at 27 percent among men and 28 percent among women.

Women in Africa struggle with rape and femicide

It is worth noting that women in South Africa have been struggling for years with data showing the country has one of the highest rates of rape and femicide cases in the world.

Of the countries surveyed in the continent, Tanzania came out as the only nation where the perception that women are treated with respect and dignity has edged upward in recent years. The poll shows 74 percent of women in Tanzania felt this way in 2021. So far, there have been at least 22 women heads of state in Africa with Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan being the first to hold such position in East Africa.

Across the continent, the poll noted that women were generally seen to access fewer educational and employment opportunities than men and enjoy lesser freedom in their ability to make decisions, including about their lives.

“Even when the wife tells the husband she wants a job to start working rather than staying at home, the husband can’t allow her. He doesn’t give her freedom because she is the wife, and he married her. In my society, as a woman, they despise you and think you can’t do a thing,” said a 23-year-old woman in rural Uganda.

“Women have to fight for their worth, not only in the society, not only in the workplace but also in the family. We still find women being treated as assets, as things that can be discarded, as things to be owned, not as human beings with a mind, with intelligence, with emotions,” noted a 45-year-old woman from South Africa.

Read also: Women’s health, determinant to Africa’s economic development

Gender-based violence remains a major issue in families

Additionally, the poll established that gender-based violence remains a major issue in families. Gallup says that some women said they had experienced Gender-Based Violence directly from their husbands or fathers, while others reported seeing their fathers beat or abuse their mothers.

A 58-year-old woman in rural Kenya stated, “[My father beating my mother] happened many times because my father was a drunkard… It was war when he was drunk. Even we children, he would beat us… It happened to me when I was married. I used to be beaten, and that’s why I left my marriage.”

Other women expressed concern about potential violence outside the home with many noting that it remains a huge risk to walk at night in many communities across Africa.

For instance, a woman, 30, in rural South Africa voiced concerns about violence, stating: “[Walking at night is] not safe at all. I don’t feel safe as a woman. I make sure I am nowhere near outside by nighttime.”

Similar concerns were raised in Gallup’s 2021 World Poll, showing that just 27 percent of women in South Africa said they felt safe walking alone at night in the city or area where they live, and less than half reported feeling safe alone at night in Zimbabwe (35 percent), Kenya (40 percent) and Uganda (45 percent).

“Only in Tanzania (61 percent) did the figure come close to the global average for women of 64 percent,” Gallup report added.

The scourge of child marriage in Africa

Despite substantive efforts and measures deployed by many countries to fight child marriage, the practice remains prevalent in all countries under focus.

“Child brides often drop out of school and become pregnant, and these early pregnancies have a greater risk of ending in maternal or infant death. Child brides are also at greater risk of sexual violence, abuse, social isolation and exploitation.”

For instance, the poll indicates that about 4 percent of young women are married before age 15 in Kenya, East Africa’s biggest economy where 18 percent of young women get married before age 18.

In 2020, evidence emerged that even in African countries implementing the Global Programme to End Child Marriage such as Uganda, young girls were experiencing increases in violence, child marriage, and teenage pregnancies.

In addition, there are reports that across countries in the Horn of Africa, including Kenya, growing numbers of parents are marrying off girls — some as young as 12.

On political representation, many African countries have deployed quota systems to drive up the number of women in legislative assemblies. Among the five countries studied, all except South Africa have legislated quotas for their unicameral parliamentary house (Tanzania and Uganda), both bicameral houses (Kenya) or for their lower bicameral house (Zimbabwe).

Despite these changes,  a 2020 USAID report on Kenya states that “Women who do accede to elected and appointed office face limits on their ability to influence decisions and often are subject to harassment and gender-based political violence.”

Gallup data show women are less likely than men to voice their opinions to officials. Results from the 2021 World Poll reveal that men were about twice as likely as women to say they had voiced such opinions in Kenya (33 percent vs. 18 percent, respectively) and Tanzania (20 percent vs. 10 percent), with notable gaps also in South Africa (33 percent vs. 25 percent), Zimbabwe (26 percent vs. 20 percent) and Uganda (42 percent vs. 37 percent).

“In some societies, women don’t even know their basic rights as far as being protected by the rights. Sometimes their rights are being infringed right before their eyes without them realising [it],” a Tanzania woman, 28 noted.

Similar observations were recorded in Kenya with a 56-year-old woman noting, “Women don’t know their rights and the ability to achieve equality. Lack of awareness often is due to the prevailing culture and social norms that dictate what women should do; they are submissive to men. That is, we need to break the barriers, break down the barriers, and help women become more aware of their rights so that they can demand equality.”

Economic justice for women in Africa

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, there are significant gender gaps in jobs and access to financial resources for children. For instance, in 2021, women aged 15 to 50 in each of the five countries studied were less likely than men to say they worked full-time for an employer — jobs most likely to be in the formal sector.

In the poll, the largest gender gap was found in Kenya, where 29 percent of men vs. 17 percent of women said they worked full-time for an employer. According to USAID’s 2020 gender analysis of Kenya, “Almost 50 percent of men and 30 percent of women are paid or waged employees. Women are paid just more than half of what men receive for similar jobs.”

Except in South Africa, women have fewer opportunities to access financial resources and less internet access than men across the countries studied.  Findings from the World Bank’s 2021 Findex database show that a majority of women in each country except Tanzania said they had an account at a financial institution or a mobile money service provider. While these gaps have largely closed in Uganda and South Africa, significant gender gaps in account ownership remain in Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.