By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched its annual Human Development Index Report (HDI Report) 2015 which exposes huge gender disparities in Sierra Leone.
The latest report which was launched on Thursday 10 March at the conference hall of the ministry of finance in Freetown showed huge gender inequality in the labor force globally, especially in terms of comparative earnings between men and women.
This year’s report focused on work and its relationship with human development, and the theme was “Work for Human Development.”
In explaining the theme of the report, UNDP Country Representative, SudiptoMukerjee, said work was very important in achieving global development and that that was why UNDP focused on it this year.
According to a presentation by Dr Moses Sichei, Economic Advisor to UNDP in Sierra Leone, women formed 52% of the global workforce, yet globally they earned 24% less than their male counterparts. DrSichei’s analysis painted a grim picture of the current inequality situation against women across the world.
With regards the importance of work in the context of human development, he told journalists that even though work contributed positively to human development, not all jobs were helping human development.
“Some work however destroys human development. Example child labor,” he stated.
His presentation further revealed that women spent a lot of time doing domestic chores and were not paid for those hours. These chores were factored in as work, in this year’s HDI Report.
UN Women Country Representative, Mary Okumu, remarked that women should be paid for all those hours they worked, no matter the nature of the job.
“UN Women have always suggested that these unpaid hours of women be calculated and brought to the GDP, women must be paid for them,” Okumu said at the ceremony.
In Sierra Leone, it is a common norm for women to do house chores; it is widely seen as their responsibility to take good care of the home.
The findings of this report come as the country prepares for a new constitution. And after the release of the first draft of the recommendations for the next constitution, many women groups have expressed unhappiness about how it reflects the views of women. Issues like land ownership and the partial free health care initiative are still seen by women as unsatisfactorily addressed in the new constitution.
However, DrSichei urged women not to relent and to take this opportunity to solve the gender inequality the HDI Report has highlighted.
“Women must not miss out on this constitutional review process,” he said.
The HDI Report is done every year in more than 180 countries. It is done to measure human development using indicators like knowledge, health and standard of living.
Sierra Leone was ranked 181 out of 188 countries, marking a movement of one step up the Human Development Index (HDI). The country has an HDI value of 0.413, which is still below the 0.518 average for Sub Saharan Africa. Sierra Leone’s neighbors Liberia and Guinea are positioned at 177, and 182, respectively. Elsewhere in West Africa, Ghana is at an impressive 140 out of 188 countries.
This means that Sierra Leone has overtaken its bigger neighbour Guinea for the first time while Liberia continues to lead its two bigger Mano River neighbours on the Human Development Index,” noted the UNDP country office in a press release copied to the media.
It noted that Sierra Leone continued to make steady progress in human development despite the recent devastating Ebola epidemic, but warned that deep poverty and various forms of inequality in the country were among the highest in Africa.
The report reveals that 77.5% of the population of Sierra Leone (about 4, 724,000 people) are multi-dimensionally poor even though income poverty (i.e. $1.2 per day) is 56.6%. Liberia’s multidimensional poverty is 70.1%, Guinea 73.8% and Ghana 30.5%.
The concept of multi-dimensional poverty was introduced in 2010 in the HDR and it identifies multiple deprivations in the poverty and not just income at house hold levels.
(C) Politico 15/03/16
