Local action to end violence and empower women in Southern Africa

Result statement

Under the banner “End Violence: Empower Women,”102 Centres of Excellence for Gender in Local Government (COEs) in ten Southern African countries have developed local action plans to end gender violenceand are supporting 1557 women survivors trained in life skills and entrepreneurship by Gender Links (GL) with the support of FLOW. The programme is breaking new ground in establishing the link between economic empowerment and ending gender violence. GL is re-administering the Gender Empowerment Index (GEI) in the second half of 2015 to measure the improvement in income and agency in the lives of participants. Their presentations at district, national and regional summits show that hundreds of women have reclaimed their lives with the support of councils to access finance, know-how, markets and infrastructure. The Gender Progress Score (GPS), being re-administered to all councils in the second half of 2015 showed an overall increase of seven percentage points in 22 councils where preliminary follow up surveys have been conducted.This case study should be read together with the six minute video that can be accessed at:

Context and theory of change

GL’s Theory of Change (ToC)posits that the vicious negative cycle of Gender Based Violence (GBV) can be turned into a virtuous positive cyclethrough a simple slogan that has been translated into dozens of local languages: “peace begins at home”.

At the individual and intimate relations level, the life skills and enterprise development programme stems from the recognition that the majority of women remain in abusive relationships because they lack economic choices.

At the community level, GL works through local government to ensure institutional support and grounding for the programme. At national, regional and global level, the programme is aligned to the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development that is being updated in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end gender violence by 2030.

Approaches, methods and tools

Objectives / Key activities
1)To enhance gender responsive local governance through flagship programmes for ending gender violence aligned to the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. / Revisit the gender action plans of Centres of Excellence for Gender in Local Government and develop action plans to end gender violence.
In the six SADC countries that have undertaken the GBV Baseline Study, use the results to strengthen and target local action plans more effectively.
2)To provide women alternatives to persevering in situations where they experience GBV / Identify survivors of gender violence through working with Council Gender Focal Persons on the collection of “I” Stories or first- hand accounts of gender violence.
Use skilled facilitators to provide training in two parts: life skills and agency; market surveys and development of business plans, including IT training.
3)To connect women survivors of GBV to easily accessible information, services and resources to enhance their ability to succeed. / Backstop the emerging entrepreneurs and assist them in accessing support from the councils and related support structures such as market stands, micro-finance, mentorship, sun-contracting and outsourcing, jobs and procurement.
4)To contribute to the body of knowledge on economic empowerment and ending gender violence through Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning, documentingand good practices / Administer the GEI and GPS at the beginning and end of the process, and analyse the quantitative findings. Gather “I” stories or first-hand accounts before and after the training and assess progress. Gather and share case studies through annual district, national and regional summits.

Alignment to GL’s Theory of Change

Individual/Intimate realm: It is well documented that entrepreneurship development for women, especially women in under resourced environments, is exacerbated by gender related challenges. Whilst men and women both experience difficulties when wanting to start or run a business, women face additional challenges which are gender specific. These include issues such as lack of mobility, lack of experience, poor skills base, a lack of assets and resources and multiple roles associated with patriarchal relationships. These obstacles are further exacerbated by exposure to GBV which undermines their self-esteem and confidence in taking charge of their own lives as illustrated in the excerpt that follows:

How GBV undermines agency:

“In 2002, I met a guy and I fell in love with him. Our relationship started on a high note. He told me that he wanted us to have a child together and I agreed. When I told him I was pregnant he did not believe me and told me to go for a pregnancy test. I did this and got my results, and he asked me to fax the results to him. Later that day, he called me on the phone using vulgar language. He told me he was not the one who made me pregnant and accused me of hiring a doctor to fake my results. He told me there is no way I could live in another town without being with another man and he hung up the phone on me. I sat down crying, asking myself where this man got all this false information. He called me 10 minutes later telling me the same thing he told me earlier.

He would chase me away of the house in the middle of the night to go find some food for him. He would send me to beg around in the neighbours for food. I would the run away and ask for shelter from neighbours because I was scared of going back to him in case he beat me again. All this used to happen in front of my two sons who are grown up now. He would beat me and my elder son and chase us away from the house. I tried reporting him to my in-laws but my mother in-law was too soft for him.

He sold our property which included a house and several cars and we were left with only one house that I am currently living in with my children. He was in the habit of physically abusing me and always threatens to sell the house we are living in. Fortunately, I managed to stop him from selling the house or even threaten to do so through the courts. Although I often reported him to the police I failed to get the help I wanted because he always bribed the police to brush the case aside.”Excerpt from an “I” story

The programme recognises that enterprise skills alone do not imply change in and of itself in terms of GBV and has therefore included life skills as a key component of the project in the following ways:

  • The writing and sharing of I Stories provides a platform for survivors to explore their own feelings and experiences of GBV. Sharing with other women in workshops creates a supportive environment which has in fact resulted in committees being formed in some communities to support other women.
  • The initial introduction of life skills training in the first workshop helps women to understand better issues of gender inequality, power dynamics in relationships and how the experience has affected them. This provides context to the experience of GBV and provides a broader framework for their growth in personal agency.
  • Participation in Gender Summits at District, national and Regional Gender Summits greatly enhances their confidence in themselves in relation to public speaking, computer usage and networking.
  • Women create life trees for themselves which demonstrate where they want to be in terms of their own lives. This has been a very successful and well liked part of the first workshop in the series.

Close relationships/private realm: The introduction of an understanding of financial control as a form of abuse and the impact this has on their disempowerment,has helped survivors to understand the implications of financial abuse in relationships and the impact it has in terms of their ability to make other life choices. The course links positive messages about building confidence to make it their own and to see that breaking such dependence might be achieved if they develop economic independence and break the abuse cycle. Many women have identified with the idea of growing their economic options but the full impact will only be known once the follow up research has been collected and analysed.

Community realm of power:Key to the success of the project is the integration of economic justice into the Centres of Excellence in Local Government (COEs) programme at GL. The COE relationship has contributed in the following ways:

  • The COE Gender Champions (GMs) and Gender Focal Persons (GFPs) have played a key role in identifying survivors for the programme, participating in workshops, encouraging the women, training or mentorship, assisting them with business plans and presentations. In addition the majority of councils have also provided venues at no charge. They have also involved other local government departments in the project to inform women of local support available through the council such as finance, training and mentorship offered by public entities. In turn the councillors and GCs and GFPs have gained insights and knowledge of GBV, the economic aspects of GBV and entrepreneurship. I addition they have had guidance in terms of mainstreaming women into local economic development and the integration of poorly resourced women into COE programmes that enhance their ability to develop economically.
  • The communitiesthat are aligned to the COEdistricts are integrated into many of the activities with the council around the programme. They participate in 16 Day events, action planning, cyber dialogues and participate in the last session of the training programme; as demonstrated by these examples:
  • Invitations have been extended to the private sectoras members of the community (banks, MFIs, corporates, donors and others) to meet and support the women, resulting in offers of additional training, mentorship and support to open and manage banking accounts.
  • CSOs and NGOs are also invited and to explore the possibility of proving ongoing support such as further training.
  • Local stakeholders such as local small business owners are invited to district and national summits to participate as judges for the emerging enterprises and present best practises.

Society/the public realm: The public realm is integrated in the following ways:

  • Government departments and Ministries are made aware of the economic, business and GBV challenges faced by women through interactions with GL country staff and participation at national Summits where they are exposed to the best practises shared by other COEs, efforts to end GBV and entrepreneurship successes.
  • National government organisationsrun by governments such as the Citizen Entrepreneurship Development Agency (CEDA) Botswana, the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority(SMEDA) in Mauritius are approached for support and discussions held on the availability of services such as business finance for women; especially vulnerable women.

The experience of implementation

This project, essentially taking the form of pilot to test new methodology that could be leveraged to many other councils and countries, has been rolled out to 102 councils in 10 SADC countries since 2013: Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This has been the first programme that we know of that has introduced a nexus of GBV, economic justice and entrepreneurship as a tool for addressing GBV; aligned with rigorous monitoring and evaluation to test an hypothesis that economic independence can reduce GBV.

GL has used the well-established COE platform as the basis for introducing life skills and entrepreneurship development to survivors of GBV. The entrepreneurship project is an extension of the work done with the COEs, providing a framework through which the COE’s can contribute to the economic development and mainstreaming of women who have experienced GBV in their areas. The enterprise development project links with the work already achieved in the individual countries through these councils.

All of the councils are Centres of Excellence in Local government and have adopted the enterprise programme as an extension of the gender mainstreaming process. This commitment has been criticalin the roll out of the 102 councils. GL rolled out the programme to groups of five councils at a time which became known as “old” and “new” councils to differentiate them. The majority of training workshops were completed in country by the end of 2014. The two exceptions were South Africa and Swaziland, where some were carried over to 2015.To date 1557 women have benefited from the programme in 102 councils; 10 per country.

One of the implementation experiences has been the exploring the levels of capacity of the target market; women over 18 who have experienced GBV and sought support from the local council. Levels of functionalliteracy and numeracy tended to be low for many of the women which has hampered the training in areas where this was particularly prevalent and probably added to the drop out numbers in some cases. Whilst the training itself has been designed to be accessible and uncomplicated as possible, the concepts of financial management in particular can be difficult to grasp if educational levels are low. This would account for the fact that the financial management sections of the training were the most difficult. This was brought to our attention by the facilitators in May 2015 and an additional two days was added to the second workshop to accommodate this. This allowed for more time for the women to spend on grasping concepts such as pricing. The women responded very well though and for the first time were able to link pricing, costs and income as applied skills.

The data collected as baseline information has provided some important insights. The baseline GEI reflects the fact that the largest number of women come from low incomes in the R1-1000 per annum bracket. The information has been disaggregated by country and by council and therefore offers insights of similarities and differences at a regional, country and local level. Regional income levels are demonstrated in the graph below.

The graph shows that 56% of participants come fom the R1-1000 per month income bracket; 22% from the R1001 to R3001 bracket; 9% from the R3001 to R5000 bracket; 8% from the R5001 to R10,000 bracket and only 4% from the bracket higher than R10,000 per month.

Comparing the variations in income values per country, appears to show that the ability for women to work their way out of the lowest level of income, is more likely in some than others. Lesotho demonstrates the highest levels of low income and Mauritius the most even spread (this is consistent with socio-economic conditions in these countries). Only four countries (Zimbabwe, Mozamique, South Africa, Mauritius and Madagascar) had participants with income over R10,000 per month.

The data also shows that they the majority of women particpants are over the age of 40 with some 12% over the age of 60. The educational levels show that 33% of the women have secondary education, 29% primary and 4% tertiary education. This is fairly consistent with the target group of women who have sought support for GBV through social and welfare facilities in local government.

The programme has successfully run 303 workshops in the region. Since 2014, two participants from each council participated in the GL National SADC Gender Protocol @Work Summits in 2014 and 2015. The participants presented their business plans, in a new award category called Emerging Entrepreneurs, to a panel of experts who provided feedback. Two winners from each council attended the SADC Gender Protocol@Work regional summit from 25 to 28 May in Johannesburg 2014 and August 2015.

The regional summit featured a side meeting on possible economic opportunities linked to cell phone companies and a visit to a shopping Mall in Soweto, the Maponya Mall, where the women met several Soweto based business women and were treated to lunch in one of the restaurants. The emerging entrepreneurs again participated in district andnational summits in 2015. The Regional Summit in Gaborone, Botswana, hosted 20 entrepreneurs who presented their businesses, visited the council of Lobatse and visited several businesses in Botswana.

During the Sixteen Days of Activism on Violence against Women held under the banner, “End Violence, Empower Women” GL held breakfast events in three countries to highlight the link between GBV and economic dependence.

In Botswana key organisations such as the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) which was established by the government to provide financial and technical support for business development and the Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) attended. The organisation of women business owners, the Women in Business Association, BancABC and the largest supermarket chain in Botswana, Choppies (a large retailer in Botswana), also lent their support to the occasion. Pledges for support included mentorship, free business accounts, technical training on chicken farming and possible funding opportunities.

In Zimbabwe, representatives of Goromonzi Rural District Council, Chitungwiza Municipality and Manyame Rural District Council attended the event. Emerging entrepreneurs shared their own personal accounts of the GBV experiences and the programme offered by GL and how this has impacted on their lives.