By Sharon Atieno
For women to access public procurement opportunities, measures to foster gender responsive procurement are necessary.
Prof. Sope Williams, Professor of Public procurement law, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, said virtually during the Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women East Africa (GrOW-EA) end-of-project workshop in Nairobi, Kenya.
She observed that public procurement systems limit women’s participation in several ways, including the kind of businesses that receive public contract awards, women’s voices in procurement decision-making, and how public services may be designed or delivered.
“Gender responsive procurement recognizes structural barriers that prevent women entrepreneurs from accessing public contracts at the same rate as men. It also recognizes that public services may be designed and delivered in a way that adversely affects women,” Prof. Williams said.
Therefore, gender-responsive procurement, she said, could mean awarding public contracts in a way that impacts gender equality, either through the award of contracts to women-owned businesses or businesses that have mainstreamed gender equality in their policies and practices, even if they are not women-owned.
“Procurement systems can have inordinate impact on women businesses because of the complexity and higher costs of participating in procurement, demand aggregation which is designed for economies of scale and neutral evaluation criteria such as requiring businesses to have past procurement experience, prejudice small businesses which are often women owned,” she said.
Other barriers that prevent women from obtaining public contracts are financial, cultural, corruption, biases in favour of men and discrimination.
Prof. Williams gave a synthesis report on the GrOW-EA project where three organizations were commissioned to do an evidence review analyzing the integration of gender in the public procurement systems and processes of five countries – Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia.
The review examined the measures taken by each country to achieve that gender integration and the challenges of adopting gender-responsive procurement approaches. It also proposed recommendations to overcome these barriers.
The organizations include the African Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) working in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda; Strathmore University (Kenya) and the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF) in Tanzania.
Several constraints to women’s participation in procurement stood out across the region. These are: favoritism for men, entrenched bidder bias, financial and sexual bribery, societal gender dynamics and the burden of care, and small business challenges such as informality, funding and scaling.
One of the proposed solutions to these constraints is a gendered approach to anti-corruption, particularly ensuring that women exploited for sexual corruption are not penalized, Prof. Williams said.
Others include addressing unequal societal gender dynamics and the burden of unpaid care, the government to invest in small business ecosystem and addressing procurement changes from legal and policy perspective as well as instilling institutional and operational changes.
Prof. Williams noted that the organizations implemented several interventions, including data-driven research, awareness and advocacy with different stakeholders, training of women entrepreneurs on navigating procurement portal, submitting procurement documents and business management, and policy dialogues with regulators, among others.
Some of the outcomes of these interventions include fast-tracking of procurement legislations and regulations in Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Rwanda and the creation of gender committees to address barriers to women’s participation in procurement in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda.
Other results are: addressing delayed contractual payment in Kenya and Tanzania, addressing language barrier and consortium sizes in Tanzania, creating awareness of sexual corruption in public procurement, deeper collaboration between regulators and anti-corruption bureau in Tanzania and women entrepreneurs bidding for and obtaining public contracts.
Additionally, there were commitments by governments in the region to collect disaggregated data on procurement and the continuation of training of women business owners by Strathmore University.
