Linking women with export markets

The EU also offered an alternative market for textile exports after difficulties in the regional market. Within ACP-EU development cooperation practice, women in Zimbabwe have largely been marginalized, while a relatively small group of men have been the decision-makers and main beneficiaries of ACP-EU Cooperation.
The gender experience accounts for a considerable gap between the professed intentions of the EU and the reality on the ground. The rates of women in poverty have been continuously growing especially on women in communal areas, since this is where the vast majority of poor women live.
The participation of women in the Zimbabwean economy shows that women play a pivotal role in different areas of the agricultural sector’s products and markets as producers, traders, employees and consumers.
For example, 80 percent of the rural population gains their livelihoods directly or indirectly through agriculture in communal or commercial farming Zimbabwe has an important cereals sector feeding into relatively sophisticated cereals based value added food products industry, and women form the majority (70 percent) of small-holder producers of grain. Maize is not only a basic crop for household security but also an important source for household cash income.
If women are to benefit and compete in the small-scale food-processing sector, it is of critical importance to address major stumbling blocks such as Access to funds and technical capacity gaps which may prevent women from the meeting market standards. It will be imperative that issues related to technical assistance to upgrade conformity procedures and standards are addressed, including appropriate technology transfer In conclusion will poor women and men be able to benefit from the EPAs. Such policies need to address the specific constraints women are facing.
If not, women are likely to continue to carry the burdens of adjustment associated with economic restructuring whilst gaining little or nothing from such adjustments. Careful consideration must be given to women in rural and communal areas and implications of moves towards free trade.
As a signatory to the Millennium Development Goals, the EU has committed itself to reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty in developing countries by half, in 2015. Future trade regimes and Aid to trade will have to be measured against this objective and thereby we find the need to ensure that this issue is made known to the policy makers.
Success of Aid for Trade initiatives need to go far beyond measuring women’s increased incomes from participation in export enterprises. Indicators also need to include whether women have been enabled to increase their bargaining power in the home, community and marketplace; and whether long-term structural changes at the policy/regulation, community, market place and household level have occurred as a result of the initiatives. In addition, there needs to be evidence that profits and export earnings are increasing and enterprises are growing at the same time as rural women produces/farmers/workers are benefiting from increased incomes, assets, independence and status.
In particular, it is important to monitor that women have control over the production and marketing process rather than being exploited by stronger actors further down the global value chains.
It is possible to have a “win-win” situation in which the country, the enterprise and the producers/workers all benefit through export earnings and profits expanding at the same time as rural women’s livelihoods are improved and the environment is conserved.
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