Gender Inequality and Women's Empowerment - UNFPA Ethiopia

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In-depth Analysis of the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2005
The measures that are included in the BPA are ensuring women’s equal rights and access to economic resources;
elimination of occupational segregation and all forms of employment discrimination and promoting women’s access
to employment, appropriate working conditions and control over resources; facilitating women’s equal access to
markets, trade, information, and technology; promotion of harmonization of work and family responsibilities for
women and men; and conducting gender-based research and dissemination of its results for planning and evaluation.
The key commitments of governments and other development partners set in the MDGs include gender
equality and women’s empowerment. The commitments include ensuring universal primary education for
both boys and girls by 2015; elimination of gender disparity at all levels of education by 2015; and reducing
maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015. Ethiopia adopted these agreements to
promote gender equality and improve the lives of women. As a means to implement these global agreements,
different policies and legislations have also been enacted. These are the National Policy on Women, National
Population Policy, Education Policy, Cultural Policy, and other legal documents.
The National Policy on Women, introduced in 1993, was the first policy that is specifically related to the affairs
of women (Jelaludin et al., 2001). The objectives of the policy include facilitating conditions conducive to the
speeding up of equality between men and women so that women can participate in the political, economic
and social life of their country on equal terms with men; ensuring that their right to own property as well as
their other human rights are respected and that they are not excluded from both the enjoyment of the fruits of
their labour or performing public functions and participating in decision making.
Cognizant of the adverse impact of low status of women on the overall economic development in general
and on reproductive health issues in particular, the National Population Policy of the country, which was also
endorsed in 1993, included in its objectives women’s status and health issues such as reduction of incidence
of maternal mortality, improvement of females’ participation at all levels of education and enhancement of the
contraceptive prevalence rate (TGE, 1993).
The 1994 Education and Training Policy affirmed the importance of girls’ education. It focused on the
reorientation of the attitude and values of the society towards recognizing the roles and contributions of
women in development. The policy included gender equality issues such as increasing girls’ school enrolment
ratio, preparing a gender sensitive curriculum, and reducing girls’ dropout and repetition rates (FDRE, 1994).
In an attempt to address customary practices and backward traditions that undermine the roles of women in
society, the National Cultural Policy was enacted in 1997. The main objectives of this policy are to ensure equal