Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya Minister of Women, Youth and People With Disabilities of the Republic of South Africa discusses International Women's Day in light of the struggle for gender equality.
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Let us work together for equal opportunities and progress for all women
On Monday August 09, South Africans will convene in various parts of the country to celebrate National Women's Day with the main event being addressed by President Jacob Zuma at Buffalo City Stadium in East London.
We remember this historic day in 1956 when 20 000 women marched to the Union Buildings led by great heroines of our struggle against apartheid, such as Lillian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn. We have used their picture in all our communication material and the Department of Arts and Culture will launch an exhibition to honor these pioneers of the struggle for gender equality.
Coincidentally, the ANC recently released discussion documents in preparation for the National General Council which provide an analysis on a number of issues including the efforts to build a non-sexist South Africa (part of the Strategy and Tactic document).
The document acknowledges various areas of progress including the establishment of the Ministry for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities which is an important political vehicle to promote the rights and interest of the three groups - women, children and persons with disabilities - within government and broader society.
The Strategy and Tactic document notes that except for a few areas such as the Premiers, the ANC has not yet reached 50% in a number of areas, including in the NEC, in the ANC Cabinet, Provincial Executives Councils and in ANC PECs. The NGC will guide on what further actions need to be taken to achieve the 50% gender quota in structures controlled by the ANC and the NEC sub-committee on gender will be a critical platform for engagement on this matter.
The issue of representation of women extends beyond the entities that are in direct or indirect control of the ANC. We have a duty to improve the gender demographics of all entities in our society including public service, private sector and civil society.
Most of the reports released to coincide with the Women's Month indicate varying level of progress toward 50/50 gender parity in our society. Public service seems to be making a steady progress compared to other sectors.
However, it still requires a sustained focus to ensure that we achieve 50% women representation at senior levels - from directors up to directors general. Our target will not be achieved by chance, but requires integration of strong equity measures into our monitoring and evaluation tools for every government department. Each department has to be assessed individually to avoid blaring of results by higher progress happening in other departments.
Both gender and race representation figures in the private sector remain very disturbing and they are a major setback to our overall effort to transform our economy. There is still under-representation of women as paid employees in general, and the challenge worsens at top management level of the private sector. 16 years into our democracy, we still have white men holding 63% of top management positions in the private sector while African women are at less than 3% and coloured and Indian women at 1% each.
Our analysis of various studies available indicates that if we continue at the current pace of transformation, it will take us up to 40 years to attain 50/50 gender parity. We cannot allow that. Measures have to be taken to hasten the process of gender and racial transformation in our country.
In this regard the Ministry for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities is developing the Gender Equality Bill which should enforce gender parity measures across all sectors of society. We will be able to discuss this bill in detail in the near future, as there is some more work that needs to be done to shape our discussion.
Suffice to say that this will be an overarching bill that will ensure gender equity throughout our society. We have to ensure full participation of women in all spheres of life, not only at the workplace. The bill should address a number of issues including the challenges of unequal pay for equal work between men and women. It should encourage the culture of gender equality throughout our society and respond to sexist stereotypes still prevailing in our society.
The NGC discussion document correctly warns of a potential "backlash against progress made in building a non-sexist South Africa. It states that: "This backlash is represented by the persistence of gender-based violence, the continual inequality of women in the labour markets, the feminisation of poverty, and the persistence and in some instances worsening of sexist attitudes and beliefs."
The programme for Women's Month this year seeks to respond to at least three of the challenges raised by the document, that is:
•Gender based violence
•Labour market inequalities
•And feminization of poverty
The programme for the month (available on www.gov.za) includes a variety of activities aimed at addressing various aspects of challenges facing women today within the context of the five national priorities and 12 critical outcomes of Government and against global and regional milestones.
With the celebration of the Pan African Women's Day on July 30, we acknowledged that this year marks the commencement of the Decade of African Women (2010-2020) as adopted by the African Union. The objectives of the Decade are to preserve and build on the African women's strength and to leverage on global and regional political goodwill for the advancement of African women with a focus on youth and grassroots women.
August Month programme focuses on poverty reduction with Departments like Water Affairs recognizing and supporting women's groups that have participated in its programmes. There are number of activities planned by the Rural Development Department to empower women in rural areas. We have taken a number of steps to mainstream gender perspectives in the developmental initiative of government. These interventions have led to implementation of programmes like Women in housing, Women in Mining and Energy, Women in subsistence farming and other programmes for development of rural women.
There is progress in increasing access to education for girls and there are skills development programmes aimed at increasing the number of women in areas such as science and technology and other sectors where there is still severe under-representation of women. To encourage mentoring of girls into various careers, on August 19, we will all be supporting the Take a Girl Child to Work campaign.
The greatest area of concern is the persistent challenge of rape, murder and other forms of violence against women and children. The experience of the 2010 Soccer World Cup indicates that it is possible to minimize incidents of abuse through a combination of high community awareness, social cohesion and effective social and law enforcement services.
Information available suggests that the predicted upsurge in human trafficking and other forms of abuse never materialized. To the contrary, the reports arising from the contingency measures put in place in all host provinces indicate that children who went missing during the World Cup were reconnected with their families.
Gauteng reported about 35 people, mostly children, who went missing including a Mexican and Taiwanese nationals. All of them were reconnected with their families with the help of social workers and interpreters deployed in the host cities. North West reported 24 and Eastern Cape 2 and all were reconnected. There were no incidents reported in Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Western Cape.
Mpumalanga reported that there were a total of 203 separate cases of children who wanted to cross from both sides of the Lubombo Border without proper documentation or parent's approval. Through collaboration with authorities in Mozambique, all children were linked with their families.
We need to retain the same high level of law enforcement, solidarity and the spirit of Ubuntu demonstrated by our people during the World Cup. During this month, programmes such as Thuthuzela, Victim Empowerment Shelters and Imbeleko Project focusing on mothers in correctional service centres will receive greater focus.
As part of the 365 Days Plan of Action, we will be building up to the 16 Days of Activism Campaign on No Violence against Women and Children with the aim of taking this already successful campaign to even greater heights. It should begin to tackle the very sexist attitudes and beliefs raised by the NGC document that are some of the underlying factors behind our high level of gender based violence.
On the Ministry for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities itself, we can say with confidence that much progress has been made in establishing all the infrastructure and systems needed for the functioning of the Department. Budget constraints remain our major challenge as we work on an average annual budget of R52 million. We are engaging within government on this matter, as it is central to our endeavour to upscale our programmes.
We are also building our human resource capacity with Cabinet expected to consider our full selection of executive management for the Department within the next weeks.
Despite all the capacity limitations, we organized a successful August Women's Month celebration last year and we had an effective 16 Days of Activism Campaign on No Violence against Women and Children in November to December 2009.
We acted directly to deal with ukuthwala (forced marriage of girls to old men) in Eastern Cape and we can say that the cases have subsided. We responded to raise awareness around the problem of ritual killings and mobilized traditional healers to oppose these crimes. They committed at the Indaba we convened this year, to assist the police as much as possible to resolve these cases.
Earlier this year, we led a successful participation of South Africa in the UN Session on the Status of Women. Arising from this role, we were assigned the responsibility to lead the debate on gender responsive budgeting at the Commonwealth Meeting of Minister for Gender Affairs. We also facilitated the compilation of country reports for various regional and international obligations such as:
•Convention on the Rights of the Child
•Beijing Declaration
•And Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
In the build up to the Soccer World Cup, we had an effective campaign to respond to fears of an upsurge in human trafficking and other forms of abuse against women and children. As reported above, those fears did not become a reality because of the effort we put into increasing awareness complemented by an effective provision of social and law enforcement services.
After the World Cup, we went on to launch a project to assist unaccompanied migrant children in Musina. That project, supported financially by Italy and implemented through Save the Children South Africa, is critical in protecting the well being of children, providing services and reconnecting the children with their families especially within the context of rumours of xenophobia.
A lot of effort has gone into ensuring full participation by all sectors in the Women's Month celebration this year. We are indeed confident that this month is going be a period when all of us as South Africans can reflect on the advances and recommit ourselves to address the many challenges on our path to creating a truly non-sexist and democratic society. We will make the assessment of this month's programme at a closing ceremony that is being organized to take place in Limpopo on August 31.
Let us work together for equal opportunities and progress for all women.
Forward to the Decade of African Women!
Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya is an ANC NEC member and Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities
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