Since 2009, the OECD Development Centre ’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) has shed light on structural and multiple barriers affecting women’s and girls’ lives in developing and developed countries. The SIGI measures discrimination against women in social institutions across 180 countries. The Index evaluates the impacts of laws, social norms and practices, in order to capture the underlying drivers of gender inequality, with the aim of promoting transformative policies built on data and evidence. The SIGI is also one of the official data sources for monitoring Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 5.1.1.
The SIGI 2021 Regional Report for Africa provides an evidence-based analysis of setbacks and progress towards gender equality across the region since 2014. It assesses the ways in which discriminatory social institutions – including formal and informal laws, social norms and practices – continue to constrain women’s empowerment and restrict their access to opportunities and rights. The report’s analysis includes the results of a series of policy workshops and high-level dialogues conducted in 2021 in three African sub-regions: West, Southern and East Africa. These dialogues were organised by the OECD Development Centre in partnership with the OECD’s Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat (SWAC), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and in collaboration with the Austrian Development Agency (ADA). These policy fora led to the creation of sub-regional roadmaps with concrete policy actions. In particular, the report considers the impact of discriminatory social institutions on three key dimensions of women’s empowerment: health, economic situation, and political voice, leadership and agency. The report also provides policy recommendations that aim to reshape gender norms, promote women’s empowerment and build a truly inclusive society, especially in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This edition of the SIGI 2021 Regional Report for Africa contains five chapters. The first of these presents the results of the SIGI at the continental and sub-regional levels, summarising main areas of progress and challenges facing African countries in terms of social institutions, and providing a set of tailored policy recommendations to help African governments deliver on their gender equality commitments. The second chapter looks more closely at legal frameworks governing six SIGI indicators, highlighting relevant legal reforms and the current landscape. The last three chapters explore the links between sex-based discriminations in health, economic and political voice outcomes, and the underlying and deeply entrenched discriminatory social institutions that explain them.