Gender in Zambia

Last week began with a community review meeting on gender equality. Community review is the part of the DAPP Child Aid Project where area leaders collect reports from the voluntary community committees that train villagers. It’s also the time the community can discuss any ongoing challenges they’re having.

As a disclaimer, I’m just going to state now that my understanding of the community review is based on translation from Grace, the area leader I was with. Grace and I were in Kakwalesa, the village next to my own, Nsokoshi and we were headed to the oldest primary school in Mukonchi built in 1957—with no renovations since that time.

DAPP depends on coordination with local schools to organize the community so the first thing Grace and I did was greet the headmaster of the school. I learned that the school has a student teacher ratio of over 45 students per teacher. And it wasn’t surprised to learn there are more boys than girls enrolled. When I asked the headmaster what the reason for the discrepancy is—as I always do with all the headmasters I meet—he answered me the same way as other headmasters: early marriages, pregnancies and poor education of parents.

It is common to hear someone shout “gender, gender” in Zambia to elicit the participation of women in group settings since they are often quieter compared to the men. This overt attempt to include women alone shows that attitudes towards women are beginning to change. Still, the villagers at the community review, both men and women, agreed that women are oppressed.

One woman was clearly complaining that men don’t help women enough with housework since an elder man in the village replied that when men help women, the women get too excited, tell their friends whose husbands find out then shame the men. Attitudes may be changing, but very slowly. Even the Child Aid project which is supposed to promote gender equality has mostly male beneficiaries for larger pass-on loans with bee-keeping, piggery and fish farming.

When I shared with the community how we are striving towards gender equality and it’s very common for men to do chores and cook and for couples to decide formally on how to split housework, I thought about the contradictory rhetoric in development; community participation and community ownership are seen as desirable in development policy but so is gender equality.

Agricultural Committees select beneficiaries for pass on loans though they are selecting mostly men. Is it because more men are interested in benefiting from the loan program than women? I haven’t figured that out yet. Area leaders say the people who can best manage the loans are selected, but given the numbers I suspect committees are still privileging men.

Either way it seems the fieldworker is often in the position where they have to reconcile some contradictions since participation and community management are important in many successful development projects but so is gender equality. It definitely felt awkward even sharing how couples take turns cooking in Canada—it felt like I was trying to force change and not respecting tradition, but there comes a point when development workers have to make a choice about values to promote even when they contradict with other ones.

As the community review ended I approached one young lady who is a DAPP Out of School Youth Club leader. I asked her “Is there any man in your village that does any cooking?” “No, no madam. There is not. Maybe in Canada gender equality is easy, but in Zambia it is different.”

One of the key indicators of success for the Child Aid Project in Kapiri Mposhi is that 70% of women report men helping them more at home. DAPP might not be meeting that key indicator of success but as I sat beside Grace, women and men alike focused their attention on her as she spoke fluidly with authority to the community.