African Tax Body to Launch Women Platform
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday March 1, 2021 14:47
Senior Advisor at ATAF and Women in Tax Project Coordinator, Varsha Singh said the ATAF Women in Tax Network aims to represent and connect African women working in the area of taxation.
“The network will look at tax and gender from different perspectives, including, but not exclusively, implicit bias in tax structures, differing experiences of women in relation to tax officials, whether men and women react to compliance measures differently, the role of women in the tax administration, the informal economy, etc,” she said.
Overall, the platform will given African an opportunity to network and share experiences and will introduce programmes such as mentorship, research and workshops on key topics impacting on women on the continent.
The overarching goal of the Network is to increase the role of women in tax in Africa by building an African network of women in taxation, Singh said. In addition they seek to increase the partcipation of women speakers on tax on panels in Africa by hosting regular events both non-members and members, facilitating forums to discuss the most pressing and current tax issues; and establishing a mentorship programme. “The Network is open to all women in the field of tax in Africa - so at this point these are the only two criteria (be woman and operate in the field of tax). However, we will develop more extensive criteria and announce them at a later stage,” she added. ATAF, which Botswana Unified Revenue Service is a member, is an African network that aims at improving tax systems in Africa through exchanges, knowledge dissemination, capacity development and active contribution to the regional and global tax agenda.
The body recently hosted the first research webinar of the year on contemporary research topics and the launch of the ATAF Databank.
The objective of the webinar touched on two key research publications to be presented to emphasise the prominence of accessible quality cross-country tax and revenue data translated into scientific, evidence-based, and policy-relevant research results to assist decisionmakers in strengthening African tax systems and maximizing domestic revenue mobilisation in Africa.
The ATAF Databank is a synopsis of the ATAF’s African Tax Outlook (ATO) online data portal which displays tax, customs, and macroeconomic data of its 35 participating member countries covering the period 2010-2019.