International Women’s Day
Timor Leste © CARE 2009
Graciana, Timor Leste
Zimbabwe - © Tafadzwa Choto 2009
Chengeto, Zimbabwe
CARE's CEO, Dr Julia Newton-Howes, spoke at the WOMADelaide Music Festival on International Women's Day, Sunday 8 March. Below is her speech.
ONE JUST WORLD
Women of the World: Feeding Families, Sustaining Communities
It is wonderful to be here at WOMADelaide in the beautiful Botanic Park to celebrate International Women's Day as part of the One Just World series of forums on global issues.
The Global Financial crisis is reminding us of how important it is to take a global perspective.
About 4 weeks ago I was in Zimbabwe, and I left Australia on the 7 February, which I am sure is seared into all our memories as Black Saturday. Having been on planes for about 24 hours, I arrived unaware of what was unfolding at home. When I called back to Australia and picked up the news, it was devastating. But as I traveled round Zimbabwe, so many people asked me about the fires. In a country which is struggling with inflation of millions of percent, where the currency has become unusable, where 1 in 3 people have HIV where half the population requires food aid, people I spoke to were very genuinely expressing their concern and sympathy for Australians caught up in our tragic bushfires.
For me, this really demonstrates that we are a global village, and lives across the world are increasing interconnected.
This summer has been a really tough one for Australia - So I really appreciate being here in a beautiful garden, particularly as my own garden in Canberra is in rather a sad state with some of my favourite plants dying over this long, hot summer. I am sure many of you are also struggling to keep gardens alive.
Fortunately, most of us are not dependant on our gardens for food, our livelihoods and indeed our survival and that of our families. Yet in developing countries around the world women so often rely on their small gardens to sustain their families. In doing so, women contribute nearly two-thirds of the hours worked and produce half of the world's food just to survive ~ but women only own one percent of its farmland.
While I was in Zimbabwe I met many women who are surviving from their gardens. One is Chengeto, she is a widow who has 6 children living with her, some her own and some orphaned nieces and nephews.
Chengeto is a member of a conservation farming group set up by CARE to help farmers improve their yields in ways which are good for the environment and also very efficient because it is so difficult to buy anything when inflation is millions of percent.
For two years running, Chengeto has been voted the number one conservation farmer by the 450 farmers in her group. The majority of these farmers are women and they play a vital role in the health and welfare of their communities.
Not surprisingly, when I met Chengeto she was bent over hoeing her lands. Her corn was as high as my shoulders and dark green, it was free from weeds and she happily posed for a photo showing us how she spends much of her day.
The community had also built a seed store, a simple brick building with a door and a large padlock. "This is so we lock away the seed and don't eat it when we are hungry", I was told.
Later that day, I chatted to a group of women farmers a few kilometers away from where Chengeto lives. I asked them what they hoped their children would do. They all wanted their children, both boys and girls, to go to school. ‘I hope my daughter will be a nurse', one woman said, ‘I hope mine will be a teacher', said another. Children are more likely to go to school when there is enough food for the family.
This is a simple story, by providing Chengeto with seeds, fertilizer, basic training and some simple materials, CARE has helped her to feed her whole family and help them survive. On a deeper level, she's been given a voice within her community and has been empowered to look beyond her small garden to think about her future and the future of her children. Her skills are admired by other people in the community.
These are incredible milestones.
This is the beginning of change, change that will help overcome poverty. Change that will see women improve their communities and the lives of generations to follow. Change that is well overdue.
To the other side of the world and a little closer to home, I'd like to tell you about Graciana. Graciana is from a small village in Timor-Leste, she is a mother of 7. CARE started a project to upgrade the small rural roads close to her village. In Timor-Leste there are many more women than men without paid employment and in Graciana's village, a significant number of female-headed households. We asked these women, as well as men, whether they would like to work on the road project as day labourers. The initial reaction from the men was interesting, they said women didn't do this sort of work, and we should recruit only men. But, the women said they provided most of the labour for the farms and really wanted an opportunity to earn a predictable income. As a result, we were thrilled to begin this project with a number of enthusiastic women partnering with us to build roads.
Together, they all learnt new skills. At the end of the project, the foreman, who at first had been very skeptical about the participation of women, admitted that many of them had been his best workers. They were more conscientious in how they mixed the cement, they took greater care in shaping the culverts, and, despite his early reservations, had the strength needed for this fairly tough manual labour.
Although the road building is finished, those skills are allowing the women and men to be hired from time to time in maintenance. But also, with the agreement of the people involved, one quarter of their wages were paid into an interest bearing saving account managed by a community savings and loan group, with some basic support from CARE.
Now, many of the women have become entrepreneurs. Graciana is doing well buying and selling farm animals such as pigs and chickens.
Although these stories focus on how simple support for women can make them more economically secure, it also brings about a big change in these women's confidence. When I meet women who have tackled the enormous challenge of making their families more economically secure, so many of them will say to me "I never thought I could do this." They are more confident, their willingness to participate in leadership roles in their communities grows, and their contribution to those communities grows.
Women have the power to help their communities become more prosperous and stable; we all have the power to help them do this.
Like our work with Chengeto in Zimbabwe and Graciana in Timor-Leste, women throughout the world are changing their lives and the future of their communities. Women are powerful catalysts for change for their families, their communities, and their countries. This is critical to progress in overcoming poverty.
But too many women and girls miss the opportunity to begin that journey of change.
Tragically, over 500,000 women die every year due to child birth and complications in pregnancy. Women make up 75% of the HIV positive population aged 15-25 in sub-Saharan Africa. In a recent survey in Zimbabwe 32% of women said they had no say in their own healthcare, their husbands alone decided if they would go to a doctor or not.
As I speak, there are 5 million fewer girls in primary school than boys. Two thirds of illiterate people in the world today are women and girls
A statistic that sticks in my mind is that while women do most of the unpaid work in the world, in sub-Saharan Africa, women carry more goods than trucks do. Yes, that's right, women carry more goods than trucks do across that continent, yet globally only receive 10% of the world's income.
The statistics are a constant reminder as to why we must stand together to fight injustice, inequality and discrimination.
Now, let's look as the other side of the coin, the side that shows the value of working with women and girls. Studies have shown that girls' education gives one of the highest returns on investment of anything we might fund. Women, more than men, tend to parlay improvements in their own lives into the lives of their children and communities. When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90% of it into their families, as compared to 30 to 40% on average for a man.
As my story about Graciana shows, unless we are persistent, women are often excluded from decision making, from opportunities to learn new skills and as a result, the opportunity to change their future.
If women are to fulfill their potential, they must also be given a chance to lead. Between 1945 and 1995 the percentage of women MPs worldwide increased fourfold, but they are still a clear minority. Even in Australia we only need to look at the low numbers of women on boards, in senior positions in companies and community organizations. Around the world, women are under-represented in leadership roles in almost every sphere of life. This is a waste of enormous talent and potential. By giving women a voice, we have the power to change the future of humanity.
When I think back to meeting Chengeto in her garden in Zimbabwe, I am inspired, that in the most difficult circumstances, with a modest amount of support, her hard work, determination and skills have given her and her family a measure of economic security.
The whole world gains when girls go to school, when mothers survive child birth, when women have access to credit and economic opportunity, and when their voices are heard in families and communities and national parliaments.
I am so pleased to be here to celebrate the hugely creative force of women around the world. I feel sure that Chengeto and Graciana are celebrating with us in their own way.
I encourage you to honour their effort with your own, think outside the square, empower yourselves, your children and help break down the inequality that exists globally. With our support, Chengeto and Graciana had the power the change their world, and as I close, I want you to think about the power you have to help other women like them change the future.