Prior to the 2005 elections, a number of women?s organizations rallied to contest for more ?female space? in the polity, not only because they consider women?s representation in the legislature as numerically unfair and inequitable, but also because of women?s potential to transform the deeply entrenched patriarchal structures of Mauritian society. There is perhaps an even greater and more urgent need for this transformation now since the country is facing major economic difficulties, which impact on women in a disproportionate manner. Economic disempowerment is known to lead to various forms of gender oppression and subordination.

This situation calls for some kind of effective gendered governance. The country?s fiscal policy is bent on reforms, liberalization and openness. Our policy makers are desperately struggling to poise and position our small island state as an important investment destination for economic survival but there is at the same time a risk that women?s issues become further sidelined. The emphasis is on ?tightening the belts? but is the State in the name of fiscal responsibility and discipline, wanting to tighten the belts of those whose belts are already tightened. There are hundreds of people out there, especially women, who are suffering the humiliation of homelessness, the indignity of joblessness and ?voicelessness? making it impossible to denounce the largesse of some members of our political elite who would do well to tighten their own belts and that of their sycophants and cronies.

Age of apprenticeship

The growing feminization of poverty is pushing women to engage in diverse survival strategies such as prostitution, begging, joining the informal sector and facing the insecurities that it entails in the absence of a highly recommended ILO ?Decent Work Agenda?, child labour. Children are made to drop out of school despite free transport and free education. The latter is not really ?free? and I am sure one can relate to this. The previous government deemed it appropriate to make education compulsory up till the age of 16 but did not think it necessary to revisit the legislation governing the age of apprenticeship.

Education is supposed to get people out of poverty but with this government?s accentuated elitist reform, coupled with a new ?development model? often reflected in our national budgets, such as the one which sold the idea of the duty-free island and the Integrated Resorts Scheme not too long ago, are bound to create greater chasms, bring more fracture and polarize further. Whether these policies will simply be packaged in a new language or have we done away with them are questions to which we do not have an answer yet.

If policy-making and implementation is done with gender lenses and the application of gender analysis, a more equitable, efficient use and distribution of resources will be achieved. The defeminisation of labour, especially pronounced in the EPZ, is exacerbating the poverty problem but there is unfortunately no clear and coherent policy emerging as to how to address this problem.

This brings us to the question of governance. Governance and government are not one and the same thing. It is important to distinguish between the two since some people sometimes use the concepts interchangeably. Governance in fact implies institutional arrangements, systemic framework, political regimes and policy machinery of a given country that ensures that a responsible and responsive authority is in place for running a nation?s affairs on behalf of the concerned population at all layers of social formation. It implies the exercise of political power to manage a nation?s affairs. It encompasses the State?s institutional and structural arrangements, decision-making processes and implementation capacity and the relationship between government officials and the public. Needless to say that the public is made up of citizens, both men and women and that budgets are central to the citizens? daily living existence as well as to the management of a nation?s affairs.

The importance of budgets in the economics of a nation goes without saying. Politics and economics are inextricably linked but if politics is really about improving the human condition, may that politics ensure that the economics of the day be driven with gender lenses. Feminist economists have not stopped drawing the attention of relevant stakeholders to the fact that macro economic policy-making is male biased, it does not take into account the care economy - the unpaid reproductive and productive work that women engage in. There is enough research available in some parts of the developing world to show us that the structural adjustment programmes and the accompanying rolling back of the States (the highly recommended cuts in government expenditure) took its toll on women in a disproportionate manner and now that we are talking about ?opening up?, liberalising further and reforms, we are not sure whether the decisions taken by those who are governing our lives have been informed by a profound gendered philosophy/orientation which could help to understand and appreciate women?s life worlds and its complexities in a more detailed manner, we are perhaps still suffering from the gendered impact of SAPS and cross generational poverty which make betaking a disproportionately ethnic form only emphasises the crosscutting and overlapping nature of gender and how it therefore permeates every layer of our lives.

Back-street abortions

It is rather worrying for example to hear that ?SOS femmes?, an NGO which has been looking after battered women and children, may be closing its doors because of lack of resources. This is just one example. We are certainly not suggesting that we need more violence or school dropouts to justify the existence of some NGOs, but the system being so pernicious, we will need those NGOs for quite some time. That being said, the NGO world also needs to be audited. We cannot afford to have some individuals running briefcase NGOs and fattening themselves in the name of poverty, gender and development.

There are a number of other issues, such as back-street abortions, the feminisation of HIV/Aids on the island, the under representation of women in science and technology, unequal pay for equal work, rampant domestic violence and prostitution which are affecting womens? lives. The linkage between these and the growing poverty problem is not difficult to establish. Some people may ask what has all this got to do with budgets and fiscal policy, well it has a lot to do.

It is often believed that budget lines are neutral but the reality is that they are not. It is therefore important to disaggregate data along gender lines on issues such as access to credit, loans, vocational and technical training, science and technology, etc so as to obtain a more accurate picture and allow us to know where the distortions lie. Economists such as Diane Elson, Rhonda Sharpe, Gita Sen and Lourdes Beneria (to mention just a few) have highlighted the extent to which economics have failed to understand and interpret the life worlds of women and the ramifications that such a failure has had on wider society, especially amongst the already marginalised and poverty stricken groups. Poverty is rearing its ugly head in Mauritius as well. It is important to keep reminding ourselves of the UNDP dictum ?Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere.? The State is supposed to look after and protect its citizens but when the discontents of democracy start manifesting themselves in various forms, one may encounter a situation where the ruled may have to protect the rulers, where ?subjects? protect the ?citizens?. Citizenship has to be equitable and fair, otherwise chaos will be the order of the day.

?Equality? is enshrined in our Constitution but translating it into reality and making citizenship meaningful is not always an easy task. Although promoting and ensuring equality is the State?s responsibility, it is important to note that it is also part of our collective responsibility. The corporate /business world, the NGO world and the larger civil society as well as the State should work together to address the inequities of the system and to transform this gender blind society into a gender sensitive one where the distribution of entitlements become less asymmetrical. The Ministry of women?s rights is very often the least resourced, or next to the least resourced, ministry in the country. It will be sheer gullibility if one were to believe that only a greater allocation of resources will solve the problem. It will not be enough. We need the necessary ?gender analysis? capacity, a holistic/integrated approach to development. Policy makers, planners and researchers should work together for the betterment of society. Our universities are lagging behind in terms of mainstreaming gender. ?Malestream? and mainstream economics still dominate.

It does not suffice to have one or two modules on gender and development taught in a haphazard manner to believe that we are equipping our youth with the necessary gender analysis skills to challenge male biased policies and a set of other conventional wisdom. To obtain a more just society, we need to constantly interrogate the system, contribute to a paradigm shift and translate discourses into action.

Whilst it is true that we have, in the present legislature, a greater number of women, it does not necessarily guarantee a more gendered governance. It may be true that those who have invested themselves in politics have done so to represent the nation, not women only and rightly so. But they may wish, together with the male parliamentarians, to be reminded of another UN dictum, which states that ?if development is not engendered, development itself is endangered.? It does not take much to endanger development.

The nexus between democracy and development is intricate and complex. We are lucky and privileged to have a number of leaders who are fully cognizant of the fact that development is not only about economic growth per se. It is also about pro poor social investment and social development. Benefits of growth do not always trickle down to the bottom layers of society. There is therefore an urgent need not only for the long promised democratisation of the economy, but the need for a gendered democratisation of the economy.

The latter and the deepening of democracy go hand in hand but for this to happen, electoral reforms are required, amongst many other things. The government?s electoral manifesto suggested that a referendum will be held on the issue. It may be easier to show and lead by a genuine political will rather than a referendum in this age of increasingly scarce resources.

Electoral reforms with a good dose of gender friendly and gender sensitive PR will help to address the under representation of women, referred to as the ?the country?s gravest democratic deficit? by Judge Albie Sachs. Let us therefore advocate and lobby for electoral reforms, a more gendered governance and a pro poor fiscal policy. The country cannot afford to hide behind the argument that there are other priorities; electoral reform is perhaps the priority of priorities. Reforming the electoral system will testify to the fact that Mauritian leadership is visionary and not only motivated by short terms gains. Meanwhile, let us hope that the budget to be presented very soon is a gendered one.

Sheila BUNWAREE