Freedom Day should remember gender rights
All South Africans are entitled to live in equality, peace and be empowered
WHILE celebrating Human Rights Day and Freedom Day as holidays, we remember the country’s commitment to developing a new culture of human rights and freedom for all. We recall the sad moments – such as 1960’s Sharpeville Massacre, and the joyful ones – such as the formal end of apartheid.
Their observance is a reminder that all South Africans are entitled to live in equality, peace and fully empowered. However, the historical focus of these celebrations often tends to overlook continuing concerns over the present realisation – or the lack of it – of human rights in this country and, in particular, those relating to gender.
Women’s rights are some of the most severely violated. Testament to this are the highly-publicised rapes and murders of Sinoxolo Mafevuka in Khayelitsha, and of Franziska Blöchliger in Tokai last month. And most types of gender discrimination – whether physical violence, or more subtle forms like preferential treatment of men in the workplace – never receive media coverage, because those most affected are neither white nor privileged.
Human Rights Day is also about women’s rights, and Freedom Day is about freedom from all oppression including patriarchy, as well as apartheid.
Let us wake up from “gender fatigue” and keep in mind those whose rights and freedom are particularly violated.
In the celebratory spirit that these holidays encourage, let us also support the innovative, exciting, and high-impact initiatives that are improving lives.
Many of these initiatives exist on the margins of society. They are grass-roots, poorly-funded, lacking public support, and are even considered subversive by mainstream attitudes. And yet they are positively changing the lives of men and women, helping them experience their rights. Several draw on emerging technologies.
For example, a real-time chat line, produced by Joburg-based organisation MobieG, provides a free text-based counselling service using cellphones and Mxit.
It allows young women and men to receive support, anonymously, on difficult issues such as relationships, gangsterism, pornography or sex addiction, and unemployment.
Psychologists, doctors and lawyers offer free assistance through the platform to the youth, who otherwise could not afford help. A girl who experienced gang-rape tells Life Helpline: “U made me feel good about myself again and i realise tht wht happend to me wasnt my fault and for that im gratefull...I WISH THAT THERE WAS SOMETHNG I CN DO FOR U…”
A unique, much-needed initiative, Life Helpline should be celebrated by society, and better funded, but it struggles financially and is only accessible at certain times of the week.
Another technology-based initiative is Tears, also in Joburg, which uses GPS and USSD technology to create a system that allows anyone who experiences sexual violence to send an SMS to *134*7355#. The caller immediately receives details of the nearest care facility. Tears has developed the only comprehensive database of crisis facilities in South Africa. During last year’s 16 Days of Activism, they received 4 025 calls for assistance.
Other efforts breaking new ground in gender relations are innovative, not in terms of technology, but in their use of novel techniques of human communication. Gender Reconciliation, a transformative process run by Cape Town-based NGO GenderWorks, brings women and men together to hear one another’s gendered stories in an experiential forum.
Gender Reconciliation provides a rare space for the sexes to discuss challenging gender and sexuality issues, including the taboos.
As a result of this facilitated process involving listening to each other’s stories, women and men speak of profound healing and reconciliation. The genders describe how the approach has had healing effects within their families, including rebuilding trust and communication in challenging relationships.
Women, in particular, tell of experiencing release from gender-related trauma, while men often share that they have developed a new understanding of women’s pain. For example, after hearing a woman from Soweto tell her story of being raped, Tebogo said in sadness, “I don’t know how to be a man anymore.”
Through taking the pain of the woman into his heart, his identity as a man was compelled to transform. Such experiences can fundamentally change men’s behaviour towards women. For some men, this means stopping gender-based violence and that of those around them.
For others, it facilitates a more nuanced shift towards positive masculinity.
In terms of innovative means of boosting economic empowerment of women in South Africa, a technology-based platform with unexpected consequences is crowdfunding.
This social innovation enables women to participate in the economy in ways that are usually reserved for men. With the rate of women’s unemployment at 5.3 percent higher than men’s, and women bearing the brunt of poverty at a rate of 6.7 percent greater than men, women suffer greater barriers in the equal participation in the economy. But crowdfunding has helped local women entrepreneurs grow their businesses and market their products.
For example, Deidre Luzmore’s 2014 MzansiStore.com campaign on Cape Town-based crowdfunding company, Thundafund, raised funds a T-shirt printer needed in her supply chain. Ninety percent of the sellers at MzansiStore.com are women-owned small businesses, and crowdfunding has helped achieve many direct benefits to their businesses.
Thundafund and other crowdfunding platforms, like Backabuddy, help women to increase their participation in the economy by adding jobs, creativity, and innovation. Interestingly, foreign platforms cite a surge in female entrepreneurs because of crowdfunding, despite the bias that sees venture capital funds mostly going to maleled ventures.
Women have shown themselves to be adept at business at both grass-roots and high profile levels. For instance, women have been cited as the originators of the “stokvel” concept, which provides much-needed socio-economic support in South African communities.
Through stokvels and crowdfunding, funds are raised directly from many people pooling small amounts of money. In this way, women are able to access finance through avoiding much of the bias that has been directed at them.
Research also shows that women-led crowdfunding projects outperform men in reaching funding goals. Women’s participation in the economy comes with many positive benefits for society as a whole.
Much of the innovation that supports gender equality may intimidate existing formal structures. Its novelty and effectiveness can appear overwhelming to the culture of patriarchy which permeates most institutions. But we need existing institutions – from government departments, to corporations, to media houses, universities and more – to be courageous enough to participate in processes like gender reconciliation and technology-based innovation.
Any institution can participate in a three-day gender reconciliation process as a way of developing staff cohesion.
Although unconventional and often struggling for acceptance by mainstream society, let alone mainstream donors, small and innovative initiatives have the capacity to contribute significantly to human rights and the achievement of freedom for all.
As we commemorate the painful and the positive moments in this country’s history, and remember groups such as women that are disenfranchised, let us celebrate and take a chance on ground-up, out-of-the-box work that changes lives.