The Global Crisis and its Impact on Women and Girls

The global economic crisis, Ezekwesili explained, is likely to hit African women on two fronts. First, it will arrest capital accumulation by women, and second, it will drastically reduce women’s individual incomes as well as the budgets they manage on behalf of households. This would have damaging consequences notably on the girl child.

With the education of boys largely sheltered from shocks and parents often more likely to pull out a girl from school than a boy when tuition becomes hard to find, the World Bank Vice President cited research findings on household income declines in Uganda and a fall in income from agriculture in Madagascar where girls were first to be pulled out of schools.

The World Bank has warned that an additional 700,000 African infants are likely to die before their first birthday as a result of the crisis. The girl child will be hit hardest. Research has shown that “girls are five times more likely to be impacted by increases in infant mortality rate than boys.”

Unlike in rich countries such as the United States, where more men have tended to lose their jobs compared to women, the crisis in Africa is leaving women with ever fewer job choices. In many export-oriented industries – for example, the cut-flower industry in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda and the textile industry in Kenya and Lesotho – it is women, not men, across Africa who are bleeding jobs because of the crisis.

Declining remittances and a tightening of micro-finance lending would further restrict the funds available to women to run their households.