By Kumba Leigh
The president of The Gambia Women’s Chamber of Commerce (GWCC) has said that gender equality is both a moral and economic imperative and therefore public procurement can do a greater good to promoting gender equity in the country.
Mrs Naffie Barry made the remarks on Tuesday during an advocacy event on empowering women through public procurement in The Gambia held at Paradise Suites hotel.
She expounded on the enhancement of women empowerment noting that public procurement is a great potential to promote equity.
“Whenever possible, it is important to incorporate gender equality in the subject of contracts. This will allow the incorporation of gender equality clauses requiring gender technical competence to awarding entities through the inclusion of gender criteria for the evaluation of submitted proposals and implementation,” the GWCC president asserted.
She made reference to the September 2015 Global Community which was adopted as a set of 17 SDGs in an effort to end poverty and hunger, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all and foster peaceful inclusive societies. She added that one of the primary objectives of the SDGs is to achieve gender equality and empower women and girls noting this SDG are embedded in SDG 5.
She went on to say that gender equality and empowerment of women are a stand-alone goal and dispensable to achieving thus the other SDGs such as eliminating poverty and hunger, ensuring good health and education for all which are significant.
‘‘Achieving gender equality remains a big challenge notwithstanding important gains been made in women’s education and employment outcomes in the recent history. Women remain under-represented as entrepreneurs because their businesses are usually on a smaller scale and in a limited range of accessibility. The Gambia Public Procurement Authority (GPPA) needs to be structured in ways that would enable their own transformation towards gender sensitive practices, gender equality promotion in public procurement that should be clarified in national legislation and not left as a discretion, create synergy of interests between women as entrepreneurs or workers within the supply chain and women as consumers of public works, goods and services,’’ she adduced.
Deputy Permanent Secretary Abdoulie Jammeh at the Ministry of Trade acknowledged the significance of the event adding that it will help give opportunity to reflect, deepen understanding and share perspectives on how they can make a way forward and change the current state of low access of women businesses to public procurement.
He said enhancing opportunities for women entrepreneurs to do business with government through public procurement, an extremely useful policy tool for economic empowerment of women.
“If is successfully integrated into government policy, it can help in the development of many micro, small and medium enterprises to create more jobs and reduce poverty,” DPS Jammeh stated.
He adduced that government has recognised the key role women play in the economic development of the country. Thus, he went on, women make up 50.1% of the population and 38% of the labour force.
“In spite of women’s centrality in economic development in the country, government is also aware that gender equality and women empowerment remain major challenges particularly as it relates to public procurement. There is need for more improvement in women inclusion in economic activities,” he added.
The Director of Business and Export Development at Gambia Investment and Export Promotion Agency (GIEPA) Lamin Gaye highlighted that the theme ‘Gambia on the way to business transformation, improve access for business opportunities for women’ is well placed in the face of growing affirmative demands for gender parity in other development endeavours. He said these include equal opportunities, gender balance at work, work life balance to cater for working mothers just to mention a few.