• by Ignatius Banda (zimbabwe)
• Wednesday, December 15, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Bulawayo, 16 Dec (IPS) -- Unskilled female workers employed in Zimbabwe’s struggling textile, security and other industries say they are increasingly finding themselves at the front of the redundancy line in cases that the affected women say reek of gender discrimination.

Employers are being accused of targeting women over men for retrenchment. This is despite the louder calls and demands that emerged after the formation of the unity government to economically empower women as part of efforts to meet millennium development goals.

Zimbabwe’s textile industry is one of many that have suffered in the past two decades. Despite clothes retailer Edgars posting profits for the first time this year, this apparent resurgence in the sector has still seen massive lay-offs from the factory floors.

Cheaper clothing imports have a ready market among cash-strapped consumers, forcing many textile industries to downsize or shut down. The recent 2011 national budget statement includes a reduction of duty on imported clothing from the current 40 percent plus US$2,50 per kilogram to 40 percent plus US$1,50 per kilogram. Acknowledging that this would place greater pressure on local clothing and textile manufacturers, the finance minister justified the reduction as a way of curtailing smuggling by informal traders.

For Theodora Ndlovu, this has been a particularly bad year as she was laid off, along with hundreds of other female colleagues, from one of the few remaining textile firms in Bulawayo’s Belmont industries.

She is still puzzled why the majority of those laid off were female, but remains convinced this was deliberate.

'Everyone talked about it but then even the workers’ council could do nothing about it as they were also busy worrying about being retrenched,' Ndlovu said.

Her colleague Thembi Nqukula concurs: 'It’s been tough for us [women] but we are not in a position to bargain as we were promised we would reclaim our posts as soon as business picked up'.

Queries to company management about the criteria for retrenchments were largely ignored. One official told IPS it was company policy not to discuss how they hired and fired employees.

'This is a dent for a country that has made multilateral commitments to increase female participation in the economy', says Susan Mbewe of the Indigenous Businesswomen’s Association of Zimbabwe (IBWAZ).

'For years we have pushed for the empowerment of women even with our own [IBWAZ] companies making deliberate decisions to employ women. But is it difficult to tell private individuals to do the same, especially concerning women without any skills?' Mbewe asked.

Efforts towards increasing female representation in industry and commerce in Zimbabwe have largely focused on corporate positions, while unskilled women labourers are yet to make their mark.

According to the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies ‘Decisions for life MDG3 Project Country Report’, about 60 percent of women in Zimbabwe’s current labour force are unskilled.

'Unskilled women still need employment contracts that respect their rights but this has proven to be difficult to enforce as companies that make arbitrary retrenchments claim this is their own response to hostile economic factors that threaten their survival,' said Zuzile Nyoni, a labour consultant who has worked with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.

Families that previously relied on two incomes from husband and wife in the formal employment sector are back to having only one breadwinner.

'What can we do but cross [the borders] to look for jobs outside the country? You cannot just sit when you were used to earning a living working in the factory,' said Ndlovu, a single mother of two. 'But then you still have to think about the children and worry about who will look after them,' she said.

The ILO notes that retrenchments have meant extended hours for women who enter the informal sector.

'It has become a vicious cycle for women and it’s either they are homemakers or have to live with the threat of retrenchment each day,' said Nyoni.

Meanwhile for retrenchees like Theodora Ndlovu, the wait is on for a job — any job — amidst obvious signs that employment creation will be a long- term struggle for the Zimbabwean economy.

'Maybe I will look for work as a security guard, it looks like it’s the only job that is there these days,' Ndlovu said.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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