Open access peer-reviewed chapter
Descriptive statistics of the variables of access to land.
Abstract
The chapter examines gender equality in Namibian enterprises. Using the secondary data of the World Bank Namibia Enterprise Data Survey of 2014/2015, the study measures equality due to women empowerment initiatives in access to land and finances, ICT use, and corruption exposure. With the chi-square test of independence, the findings reveal that of the 24 variables examined, only three show significant differences between female and male-led business organizations, leading to a conclusion that there is equality in the business organizations. Nonetheless, with the contestation of the gender equality concept, the study proposes the decoloniality of the women empowerment idea to get to gender empowerment based on Ubuntu thinking (the African concept of humanness or what it means to be human).
Keywords
- empowerment
- equality
- land
- finance
- ICT
- corruption
- coloniality
- decoloniality
- women empowerment
- gender empowerment
- Ubuntu
1. Introduction
This chapter is about the examination of gender equality in Namibian enterprises. The examination is based on two premises. The first premise is that due to the women empowerment efforts that began before Namibia’s independence in 1990, there should already be elements of equality in the society. The second premise is that due to the decoloniality perspective in knowledge generation,
The study is in Namibia, a country in the Southwest of Africa. It has a population of about 2.6 million people. In 2021, Namibia’s GDP was N$181.9 billion, and the GDP per capita was N$71,341. In the December 2022 economic outlook, however, the GDP was foreseen to grow by 3.9% in 2022, 2.7% in 2023, and 2.4% in 2024 [1]. Namibia is a lower-middle-income country, and yet one with the most unequal income distributions with a Gini coefficient of 0.63. The Namibian economy comprises a modern market sector based on capital-intensive industry and farming and a traditional subsistence farming sector. Exports and imports equate to more than 90% of GDP, with most raw material commodities exported unprocessed or semi-processed form and many consumer goods imported. Agriculture, which contributes around 5% to the GDP, employs about 30% of the total labor force, with the most significant contribution from large commercial farms; traditional subsistence farming supports about 70% of the population [2]. Business development is one of Namibia’s pillars of the Strategic Plan (2017-2022) of the Ministry of Industrialization, Trade, and SME Development [3]. One of the missions of this strategic plan is business development: “to create and sustain a conducive business environment through value addition, market access, enterprise development, and investment promotion for the benefit of all.” Vision 2030, Namibia’s major development plan argues that “the government regards the development of small businesses as holding the key to employment and the economic empowerment of a large section of the population” [4]. An estimated 33,700 SMEs provide some form of employment and income to 160,000 Namibian citizens, about one-third of the nation’s labor force [5].
This chapter is organized in the following way. Section 2 presents gender equality and women empowerment in Namibia, and Section 3 is a literature review on the issues of access to land and finances, use of ICT, and exposure to corruption in the businesses of Namibia. Section 4 presents the central issue to be addressed in this chapter and the methodological underpinnings. Section 5 presents the empirical findings, Section 6 deals with the discussion, and Section 7 presents the conclusion and proposition.
2. Gender equality and women empowerment in Namibia
Gender equality is kaleidoscopic because of its many dimensions linked to the many causes and manifestations of inequality, which arise from interactions between values, actions, and circumstances at individual, family, workplace, and societal scales [6] and also because of the shrinking and bending of it for policy purposes [7]. A much more comprehensive definition, whose operationalization is socially popular, refers to gender equality as a social condition, whereby women and men share equal rights and a balance of power, status, opportunities, and rewards; it means men and women have (a) equitable access and use of resources, (b) equitable participation in relationships, the household, the community, and political arenas, and (c) safety or freedom from violence [8].
Nonetheless, the concept of equality is not without contestation. In contesting this concept, it is shown how gender equality has a diversity of meanings across Europe not only based on the existence of different visions of gender equality (such as the visions of inclusion, reversal, and displacement) but also based on the geographical contexts in which the visions are located [9]. In a critique of Western norm entrepreneurs in constructing and promoting new norms to passive, generally non-western, norm takers, the contestation of the gender equality concept is shown by revealing the crucial role of women’s organizations in subverting global gender equality norms and in promoting a local norm of gender justice as an alternative [10].
The contestation of gender equality in Africa is built upon the decoloniality ethos to deconstruct Western feminism. Decoloniality has to do with the practice of resistance and the intentional undoing of particularly Western-centric knowledge and persistent positive action to create and build alternative spaces, networks, and ways of knowing [11] based on local practices and contextual epistemologies [12]; it is about deprovincializing Africa and provincializing Europe to gain epistemic freedom by reversing Africa’s underrepresentation and Europe’s dominance in knowledge production [13]. To decolonialize means rethinking thinking and unlearning learning, a struggle to reach epistemic freedom, dismantling power hierarchies in knowledge production, unlearning the colonial designs, and relearning by learning from those excluded [14]. With feminism, the decoloniality ethos deconstructs Western feminism and constructs African feminisms, including
Gender equality has guided Namibian policies; the Constitution articles 10 and 23 ensure that “…all the people shall be equal before the law, and no persons may be discriminated against on the grounds of sex, race, color, ethnic group, creed, and social or economic status.” Overall, there has been greater attention towards achieving “formal” gender equality, as also indicated by the implementation of the 50/50 gender representation and zebra-style project leading to an increase in the number of women occupying strategic positions in parliament, ministries, and other leadership positions in the country. As a result of the apparent attention to gender equality, Namibia’s Global Gender Gap Index in 2018 was equal to 0.789, ranking Namibia 10th in the world [23]. However, the index does not focus on women’s empowerment since it looks more at reducing gender-based gaps in access to resources and opportunities rather than the actual levels of the available resources and opportunities in the country, and hence at women’s empowerment. Gender equality in Namibia is a function of the empowerment initiatives over time.
From the 1990s onwards, power became a key analytical concept to explain the socioeconomic development dynamics in developing countries. The thrust was to address the power asymmetrical positions in society, particularly empowering the powerless beneficiaries of development. Powerlessness meant lack of power with, power within, and the power to, as a result of the dominant categories of people having the power over to use Rowland’s [24] facets of power. Empowerment meant, and it still means, a process of challenging existing power relations and gaining greater control over the sources of power [25], people becoming conscious of their situation, and organizing themselves collectively to gain greater access to public services or the benefits of economic growth [26]. According to the Powercube [27], empowerment is about people participating in their development trajectories at all levels (local, national, and global), moving through the different spaces (closed, invited, and claimed), with all the forms of power (hidden, invisible, and visible). From the gender perspective, empowerment initiatives aimed at striking equality between men and women through the conscientization of women in the aspects of their self-worth and agency.
The empowerment efforts in Namibia are formidably enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Namibia. The Constitution explicitly forbids discrimination on the grounds of sex. It authorizes the establishment of affirmative action “with regard to the fact that women in Namibia have traditionally suffered special discrimination and that they need to be encouraged and enabled to play a full, equal and effective role in the political, social, economic, and cultural life of the nation.” Additionally, the Constitution guarantees that men and women of full age “shall be entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage, and at its dissolution.” It is also important to note that much as the customary law continues to be recognized it is only to the extent to which it does not violate the Constitution.
The Government of the Republic of Namibia has been doing much to empower women. A Department of Women’s Affairs (DWA) was established in the President’s Office to facilitate liaison between women and the government and help identify action priorities. The DWA is essential as the government’s commitment to gender issues. The DWA and the government’s National Planning Commission also established an intermenstrual gender network to monitor gender issues in government policy. There have been efforts for affirmative action to improve women’s presence in government, political positions, and education.
3. Namibian businesses and (in)equalities
There are two types of landholdings in Namibia: freehold and communal land. There is 42% commercial freehold tenure, 35% communal land, and 23% state-owned land [28]. Much as there has been the adoption of institutional frameworks that aim to promote gender equality [29], most women in Namibia have been disadvantaged in terms of land ownership and use, even if they make up slightly more than half of the country’s population, with over 40% of rural households being headed by women [30]. Few women own farms, as such [31]. Women being in a more disadvantaged position compared to men in land access can be accounted for by the history of customary discriminatory practices against women in accessing land, rights over land, and security of land tenure [32]. The question is the extent to which this inequality is institutionalized in the businesses in Namibia.
The financial system of Namibia rotates around five leading commercial banks, three of which are South African, one is Namibian, and one is a majority government-owned SME Bank. These commercial banks hold more than 95% of assets and deposits. To address the financial gaps in consumer financial literacy and protection and access to financial services and products by SMEs, the government adopted a “Namibia Financial Sector Strategy 2011-2021: Toward Achieving Vision 2030”. In 2014, 58% of Namibians had bank accounts, with 57% of women having one. Much as most loans come from Namibian commercial banks, most Namibians (57%) prefer to borrow from family and friends (57%) or someone in the community (10%) rather than banks (4%) because of lack of skills and systems to generate appropriate data and business plans, along with the lack of collateral and credit history [33]. There is almost no literature on gender and financial inclusion concerning male and female-led business organizations. Literature commonly states that women-owned enterprises suffer from inadequate access to financial services. For example, it is said that over 70% of female-owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have inadequate or no access to financial services [34]. Literature also asserts that equality in financial inclusion in enterprises leads to unlocking the potential for enterprises to grow, reducing exposure to income shocks, dynamizing growth, and promoting sustainable and equitable development [35]. So, if Namibia’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have high business discontinuation of four times higher than the rate of established business activity [36], could it be because of the financial exclusion issues? Namibia has 38% female-led business organizations [37].
Gender-equitable access to ICTs is central to sustainable development goal 4 (SDG4) by 2030 and Namibia’s Vision 2030. In Namibia, 59% of the population has access to the Internet and mostly in urban areas, with rural communities left mainly behind [38]. Only 47% of Namibian women have access to the Internet. It is known that digital services have the potential to improve businesses’ access to broader markets and increase their competitiveness; nonetheless, many businesses are not able to use digital services due to a lack of awareness of digital services, electricity, skills to navigate smart devices, high cost of both devices and mobile Internet and cybercrime [39]. Furthermore, when it comes to ICT education, there needs to be more training in ICT pedagogy, technical know-how in ICT applications, technical support, time to learn and incorporate ICT skills and tools into lessons, and insufficient budget allocation [40]. Not only is the literature on gender and ICT for Namibia very scarce but also there is a paucity of data on the question of the gender digital divide, making it difficult and impossible to make a case for the inclusion of gender issues in ICT policies, plans, and strategies to policymakers [41]. So, is there a significant difference between female and male-led business organizations using ICTs?
The definition of corruption is an illegal activity in terms of bribery, fraud, financial crimes, abuse, falsification, favoritism, nepotism, manipulation, and misrepresentation by public or private officials, domestically or internationally, in a social, business, or governmental context conducted through misuse of authority or power by government or firms officeholders for personal gain and benefit, financial or otherwise [42], seems to be comprehensive, touching upon the three characteristics of illegal activity, misuse of power or authority, and personal benefits, which most definitions refer to. Corruption happens in enterprises, but enterprises also play a crucial role in much of the corruption that occurs in society, and they are also essential contexts for corruption themselves [43]. Some studies have linked gender and corruption, for instance, the perceptions about corruption by the female managers and owners of firms [44], the impact of corruption on applying for credit between female and male entrepreneurs [45], gender differences in enterprise-level bribery [46], women’s moral standards and bribing [47], corruption in family SMEs and non-family SMEs [48], corrupt institutional environment and public subsidies for credit access by SMEs helmed by female entrepreneurs [49], the gendered effects of corruption on credit access and credit constraints [47], and gender and bribe paying [50]. As women form a considerable proportion of the informal sector, which is highly contaminated by corruption, there is a greater likelihood that they are under constant pressure to yield to corruption [51]. To what extent is it true that women are more exposed to corruption than men, particularly if female-led business organizations are more exposed to corruption than those led by males?
4. The issue and methodology
4.1 The issue
Joan [52, 53] argued for the gendered organizations in favor of men despite the closing gender gaps in educational attainment and workplace seniority; the persistence is built upon the preference to hire people with few distractions outside work, and hence excluding many women because of the likelihood that they hold primary care responsibilities for family members, and incidentally having a man as an ideal worker. Much as workplaces are still gendered in favor of men, do we still have pronounced inequalities despite the empowerment efforts and the women themselves who are an expression of empowered women in management and leadership positions? There is reason to doubt the presence of pronounced inequalities at this moment, even in masculinized entities, such as businesses.
In its examination of inequality, the study deals with the aspects of access to resources (land and finances), use of ICT, and exposure to corruption. Access refers to having or getting the opportunity to use the resource [54]. In the access model [55], every social entity and every member has a specific access profile to resources and tangible assets, depending on one’s rights by tradition or law. The access profile differs per individual and entity and may also change over time. Women’s access profile has been undermined because they are depicted as unable to manage property adequately, supposedly frail and weak, more vulnerable to the environment, and easily duped in transactions involving land [56].
On the other hand, it has been argued that due to the unequal gender relations in society, women are more exposed to corruption and its consequences [51]. Hence, there is a greater likelihood that they are under constant pressure to yield to corruption. So, is there still inequality in access and use of resources and the exposure to corruption in businesses?
4.2 Methodology
In order to test if there are still inequalities, a study was conducted on the business organizations in Namibia using the Namibian enterprise dataset. The World Bank collected this dataset between 2014 and 2015.1 The Namibia enterprise survey is a firm-level survey of a representative sample of Namibia’s private sector. Like other such surveys elsewhere, the survey aims to obtain feedback from enterprises on the state of the private sector, as well as to help in building a panel of enterprise data that makes it possible to track changes in the business environment over time, thus allowing, for example, impact assessments of reforms. The survey assesses the constraints to private sector growth and creates statistically significant business environment indicators.
The study population comprised businesses in the nonagricultural private economy, namely the manufacturing, construction, services, transport, storage, and communications sectors. The financial intermediation, real estate and renting activities, IT, the public or utilities sectors, and companies with 100% government ownership were excluded. The sample of the respondents was selected using stratified random sampling. Two levels of stratification were used, namely industry and region. The industry was stratified into manufacturing and two services sectors (retail and other services). Regional stratification was defined in the three regions of Windhoek\Okahandja, Walvis Bay\Swakopmund, and Oshakati\Ongwediva. A sample frame was built using data compiled from local and municipal business registries. The target sample size was 600 establishments, and 580 were reached.
The data were collected using face-to-face interviews. The World Bank used their manufacturing and services module questionnaires to gather data regarding the firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs and labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, capacity utilization, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, performance measures, and opinions on the obstacles to the business growth and performance.
The variables of interest concerning access to land and finance, use of ICTs, and exposure to corruption were identified. A comparison was made between female-led and male-led business organizations, with a null hypothesis that there is no difference between the female and male-led business organizations in the access to resources’ use of ICTs and exposure to corruption. The chi-square test is performed, and the results are presented by reading the p-value at an alpha level of 0.05. A p-value smaller or equal to 0.05 leads to the rejection of the null hypothesis and acceptance of the alternative hypothesis [57].
5. Findings
5.1 Gender equality and access to land
Concerning the extent to which inequality is institutionalized in the businesses in Namibia, testing the hypothesis that there are no differences between female and male-led business organizations in accessing land yields the following results, as summarized in Table 1.
| Variable | Observations | Mean |
|---|---|---|
| Percent of land owned | 359 | 58.00836 |
| Percent of land rented | 359 | 41.43454 |
| How much of an obstacle is access to land? | 359 | 2.005571 |
| Total annual expenditure to purchase land | 131 | 124,000,000.00 N$ |
| Value of land and buildings | 148 | 19,400,000.00 N$ |
| Cost to repurchase all the land and buildings | 148 | 3,140,000,000.00 N$ |
Table 1.
Table 1 shows the means of the different variables of access to land. Expenditure, the value of land and buildings, and the cost to repurchase the land and buildings are in Namibian Dollars (N$). Table 2 presents the results of the chi-square test to see if there is a significant difference between female and male-led business organizations in the different aspects of access to land.
| H0: There is no difference between female and male-led business organizations on ... | Observations | P-value | Reject/Accept H0 |
|---|---|---|---|
| The per cent of land owned | 359 | 0.267 | Accept |
| The per cent of land rented | 359 | 0.355 | Accept |
| How much of an obstacle access to land is | 359 | 0.185 | Accept |
| The total annual expenditure to purchase land | 131 | 0.431 | Accept |
| The value of land and buildings | 148 | 0.948 | Accept |
| The cost to repurchase all the land and buildings | 148 | 0.493 | Accept |
Table 2.
Results of the chi-square test on access to land.
From the results of the chi-square test, as presented in Table 2, it is concluded that there is no significant difference between female and male-led business organizations in accessing land.
5.2 Gender equality and access to finance
Testing the hypothesis that there are no differences between female and male-led business organizations in accessing finances yields the results summarized in Table 3.
| N | Mean | |
|---|---|---|
| How much of an obstacle is access to finance? | 255 | 2.168627 |
| % of working capital financed from internal funds | 255 | 71.4902 |
| % of working capital financed from external sources | 255 | 4.729412 |
| Have a line of credit or loan | 255 | 1.733333 |
| % of working capital borrowed from banks | 255 | 4.647059 |
| % of working capital borrowed from nonbanks | 255 | 1.811765 |
| Have a checking and/or saving account | 255 | 1.231373 |
Table 3.
Descriptive statistics of the variables of access to finance.
Table 4 reports the results of the chi-square test. For all the variables, except the percentage of working capital financed from external sources, no significant difference exists in the access to finances.
| H0: There is no difference between female and male-led business organizations on . | Observation | P-value | Reject/Accept H0 |
|---|---|---|---|
| How much of an obstacle access to finance is | 255 | 0.227 | Accept |
| The % of working capital financed from internal funds | 255 | 0.202 | Accept |
| The % of working capital financed from external sources | 255 | 0.05 | Reject |
| Having a line of credit or loan | 255 | 0.751 | Accept |
| The % of working capital borrowed from banks | 255 | 0.858 | Accept |
| The % of working capital borrowed from nonbanks | 255 | 0.77 | Accept |
| Having a checking or saving account | 255 | 0.373 | Accept |
Table 4.
Results of a chi-square test on access to finance.
5.3 Gender equality and use of ICTs
Table 5 shows the descriptive statistics of the variables of the use of ICTs by business organizations.
| Observations | Mean | |
|---|---|---|
| Communicate with emails | 251 | 1.59761 |
| How much of an obstacle is telecommunication? | 251 | 1.76494 |
| Have website | 251 | 1.645418 |
Table 5.
Descriptive statistics on the variables of the use of ICTs.
Table 6 presents the chi-square test results to see if there is a significant difference between female and male-led business organizations using ICTs.
| H0: There is no difference between female and male-led business organizations on . | Observations | P-value | Reject/Accept H0 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Communication with emails | 254 | 0.686 | Accept |
| How much of an obstacle telecommunication is | 251 | 0.000 | Reject |
| Having websites | 251 | 0.498 | Accept |
Table 6.
Results of a chi-square test on the use of ICTs.
Female and male-led business organizations are the same in communicating with emails and use of websites. However, there is a significant difference between female and male-led business organizations on how much telecommunications are an obstacle.
5.4 Gender equality and exposure to corruption
To what extent is it true that women are more exposed to corruption than men, mainly if female-led business organizations are more exposed to corruption than those led by males? Table 7 presents the descriptive statistics of the variables used for exposure to corruption.
| Variables | Observations | Mean |
|---|---|---|
| How much is corruption an obstacle? | 238 | 2.042017 |
| Bribe expected or requested for electrical connection | 15 | 1.666667 |
| Bribe expected or requested for inspections | 169 | 1.745562 |
| Bribe expected or requested to secure a contract | 9 | 0.444444 |
| Bribe expected or requested when applied for import license | 48 | 1.958333 |
| Bribe expected or requested when applying for an operating license | 22 | 1.909091 |
| Bribe expected or requested for a construction-related permit | 13 | 1.692308 |
Table 7.
Descriptive statistics of the variables used for exposure to corruption.
As per the results in Table 7, it is essential to note that corruption is not an obstacle, with a mean of 2.04. Table 8 shows the results after the chi-square test. As seen in Table 8, there is no significant difference between the female and male-led business organizations on all the aspects of exposure to corruption, except a bribe being expected or requested when applying for an import license.
| H0: There is no difference between female and male-led business organizations on ... | Df. | P-value | Reject/Accept H0 |
|---|---|---|---|
| How much corruption is an obstacle | 238 | 0.121 | Accept |
| The bribe expected or requested for electrical connection | 17 | 0.938 | Accept |
| The bribe expected or requested for inspections | 171 | 0.831 | Accept |
| The bribe expected or requested to secure a contract | 9 | 0.140 | Accept |
| The bribe expected or requested when applying for an import license | 48 | 0.009 | Reject |
| The bribe expected or requested when applying for an operating license | 22 | 0.639 | Accept |
| The bribe expected or requested for a construction-related permit | 13 | 0.109 | Accept |
Table 8.
Chi-square test results on exposure to corruption.
6. Discussion of the findings
The empowerment initiatives are at the core of the equality achieved, built on the prototype of a
The women empowerment initiatives in Namibia are a function of coloniality, that is, the “long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations” [61] by purpose, motivation, leadership, and idealized woman. The initiatives aimed to insert a woman in modern society as viewed from a Western episteme; they enrolled women into the modern sociopolitical and economic women’s rights regime. The initiatives were motivated by the Beijing Conference of 1985 and intensified with the armed struggle for liberation through the independence to the postindependence period [62]. The empowerment initiatives were and still are spearheaded by the elite who belonged to the national organizations, such as the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) Women’s Council and the South West Africa National Union (SWANU) aimed at primarily mobilizing the women to support the armed struggle, and the local organizations, such as the Women’s desk of the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN), Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), and the Namibia Women’s Voice (NWV). In this promotion of an empowered woman, there was no theorization for knowledge generation whatsoever regarding the African gender dynamics, characterized by the complex processes towards marriage, in marriage itself, and after marriage. All that was done was value judgment of the existing gender dynamics, branding them as traditional or primitive and hence deserving abandonment.
7. Conclusion and proposition
The chapter aimed to examine gender equality in Namibian enterprises. The findings reveal that there is more equality in the business organizations regarding access to land and finances, use of ICTs, and exposure to corruption. Of the 24 variables that were examined, there are only three variables that show significant differences between female and male-led business organizations. The equality seen in this sector is a general reflection of the gains in equality elsewhere in the promotion of the livelihoods of the African people. Nonetheless, the gender equality achieved is a point of contestation because of the coloniality embedded in the competition-based idea of women’s empowerment that was a frame to promote it.
We propose decoloniality of the women empowerment idea based on
There has been an attempt to give steps to decolonialize. In a paper that suggested decolonializing livelihood research, three steps are suggested. The first step is a personal engagement to decolonialize knowledge; the personal engagement unleashes personal efforts to move towards encountering others’ knowledge. The second step concerns the participatory engagements with the communities to generate decolonialized knowledge. The last step is to practice decolonialized knowledge by engaging in actions of resistance, intentional undoing, and positive action to create and build alternative spaces and ways of knowing [14]. This is a three-step itinerary engagement with the self, community, and making use of decolonialized knowledge. We suggest following these steps.
In the first step, which is about a personal engagement to decolonialize knowledge, we suggest changing the wording from women empowerment to gender empowerment. This step uses the
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the instrumental and valuable inputs from Professor Leo de Haan (International Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands), Professor Robert Esuruku (Makerere University of Kampala, Uganda), Professor Emmanuel Nyankweli (Open University of Tanzania, Tanzania), and Dr. Josua Matati (UNAM, Namibia).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Notes
- Dataset downloaded from https://login.enterprisesurveys.org/content/sites/financeandprivatesector/en/library/library-detail.html/content/dam/wbgassetshare/enterprisesurveys/economy/namibia/Namibia-2014-full-data.dta [29th July 2021].