Rural Women Caught in Poverty Trap

from All Africa

Business Day (Johannesburg)

By Amy Musgrave
Johannesburg

DEPUTY President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has called for practical interventions to ease the plight of rural women. She said that negative conditions have a greater effect on them than on other people.

"Women are more affected by unrewarding seasonal wage work. As unskilled casual workers on large farms, their overall value is not recognised. And, coupled with the demands of the household, they suffer from double exploitation and patriarchy," she said yesterday.

Mlambo-Ngcuka addressed the 4th World Congress on Rural Women held in Durban. Items for the agenda included a range of issues affecting rural women, such as globalisation, the rural economy, health, social issues and access to resources.

She said the factors that perpetuated poverty and reproduced it for large masses needed to be dealt with and eradicated.

These included a lack of access to affordable basic infrastructure, poor health, not owning assets, poor or no skills, exposure to labour market risks, and no social security.

She said rural women remained in a poverty trap and it was not only up to civil society to help break that poverty cycle.

"The challenges associated with these poverty trap factors make it a macro challenge and it cannot be left only to civil society and isolated interventions.

"Dealing with women's poverty is the biggest and most urgent business of developing states. It has to be mainstreamed. It needs massive macro and micro targeted socioeconomic interventions," she said.

She said initiatives such as micro-credit, co-operatives, adult education and youth development could help turn the tide for poor rural women.

Countries need to make critical choices at policy level on how to respond to women's needs.