Breaking through the gender blockades
Time to highlight challenges and successes as International Women’s Day is marked
Friday is International Women’s Day and it is important to take note of the contributions made by women leaders in today’s world that are an inspiration for their continued struggle for equality and social justice.
We should highlight the contributions of women leaders whose unique lives are still a source of inspiration for all mankind.
According to Forbes Magazine, Robyn Grew became the first woman to lead the Man Group, a hedge fund with $161bn (R3.05-trillion) in assets and whose name reflects the gender composition of its industry.
This is not an isolated incident. Many women across the world were able to shock mendominated, multiple spheres of the financial sector.
Forbes Magazine also identified Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman president of the European Commission as one of the most powerful women in the world in the past year.
As the head of a supranational political and economic union of 27 European countries, she managed to deal with a complex policy environment and positively influenced close to 450-million Europeans since being elected to that position.
These unusual changes are not confined to Europe, even in other parts of the world people started believing in the capacity of women to manage areas in the past that were believed to be a no-go area for them.
The first woman appointed as a full-time finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman in India, broke the conventional gender blockades in financial and economic fields, and successfully dealt with India’s hard issues of economics that cropped up in the past years.
Again, several women in sports have produced magical moments through their ability to perform well in different codes.
This is more apparent in SA, where women’s cricket and football matches were played in empty stadiums in previous years.
The unexpected successes of the Proteas women’s cricket team and Banyana B,anyana’s performances in the World Cup and CAF tournaments, respectively, changed that narrative and the whole nation was behind them during those tournaments.
The winds of change were not limited to a particular field or country, but the world including Africa was subjected to that progressive transformation.
It was a fact that African women had very minimal participation in the judicial system but Ethiopia showed courage to appoint Meaza Ashenafi Mengistu to become president of the Federal Supreme Court (chief justice) in 2018.
During her tenure, she established two critical organisations, the Ethiopian Women Lawyers’ Association (EWLA) and Women’s Bank (Enat Bank).
No one can miss the contribution of Sweden’s first woman prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, although there was political turmoil during her second-term election.
Without doubt, she proved herself to be politically astute while in office.
In SA, the rise of women leaders was visible even in unfamiliar territories.
When SA’S black executives and professionals were struggling to cope with the complexities of the corporate world, Wendy Luhabe, a pioneer in the economic empowerment of women, with her revolutionary ideas enabled them to find pragmatic solutions.
Her unparalleled efforts assisted South African women to be investors for the first time after SA became a democracy.
While we acknowledge and appreciate the gains made in establishing a society free from gender bias and patriarchy, the women of the world are still facing enormous challenges such as gender inequality, financial exclusion, sexual abuse and harassment.
According to the leadership of UN Women, the organisation dedicated to women empowerment and gender equality, women are still the minority of heads of state and government.
They are still deeply underrepresented in government leadership, at less than one in four cabinet ministers.
In the South African context, we can be proud that our cabinet representation is much higher than the world norm but still in other areas we need more improvement.
To fight the problems faced by women, society needs to be more cohesive.
Every person must accept that they have a responsibility to safeguard women from abuse and insecurity.
We can implement stricter penalties, but if society is not acting on its moral responsibility, the impact will be insignificant.
If we want to ensure women no longer experience prejudice based on gender, there should be mechanisms to strengthen their capacity in all spheres of life.
The conflicts across the world, especially in Africa, make life miserable for millions of people.
Close to 41-million Africans are displaced by force from their homes through war and turmoil.
The total number of displaced people is even more than the combined population of two or three countries such as Ghana.
This number is rapidly increasing over the years.
Unfortunately, women encounter more challenges than men in these situations.
Their security and privacy are compromised in unimaginable proportions.
In a country like Sudan, the state of affairs is heartbreaking.
Sudanese women are taking the burden of the brutal war that has been going on for decades.
The non-functioning healthcare system is taking a serious toll on pregnant women and mothers.
A World Health Organisation report indicates that more than four million women and girls are exposed to sexual violence in Sudan.
Rape and other forms of violence are largely used by the militants to settle political scores.
In many other African states such as Somalia and the DRC, the situation may be slightly better but the ongoing conflicts are resulting in food insecurity and famine.
Once again, women and children are disproportionately victims of all these problems.
In the past few decades, there has been a conscious effort to address women’s financial exclusion but with minimum success.
Women entrepreneurship in many developing countries including SA face numerous challenges.
In most cases, for a woman to start a new business is relatively more difficult than for a man.
Despite governments trying hard to promote economic expansion, social, cultural, financial and other factors remain serious obstacles in advancing women ’ s participation in economic development.
The lack of capacity-building programmes to extract the entrepreneurial potential of some women is adversely affecting the anticipated growth of their involvement in the sector.
Covid-19 manifestly revealed the magnitude of various aspects of roles and responsibilities women have been handling, unfortunately, unnoticed by the general population before that period.
Women were under serious pressure to manage their parents and spouses and other responsibilities as well as their employment-related tasks.
These family affiliations had a serious negative impact on their own lives.
There were very few systems in place to offer support to women who were dealing with the unusual challenges the coronavirus brought to the world.
Raising funds is a challenge for entrepreneurs, especially women who face even greater struggles in the male-dominated financial world when seeking to secure funding from the commercial sector.
Though the overall situation seems gloomy, there are encouraging developments occurring on the continent.
According to the 2021 Mastercard Index of women entrepreneurs, Botswana, Ghana and Uganda have been ranked as having the highest number of women business owners globally, with nearly 38% for the third consecutive year.
The other African countries can certainly emulate what these countries have managed to achieve.
Political parties and trade unions play a critical role in shaping the lives of people across the globe.
In recent times, there has been a surge in women assuming leadership positions in political parties and trade unions.
In 2021, Unison, the biggest trade union in the UK, elected a woman general secretary.
She achieved this by defeating three male candidates, making her election more significant.
In France and Germany, similar patterns emerged.
In SA, promising transformation is in progress in government structures and some political parties such as the ruling ANC.
Unfortunately, from the available statistics, the situation is different in most African nations.
From past experiences, the presence of women’s leadership can accelerate gender responsiveness and policies that assist women on various fronts.
This proves that when women are in decision-making positions, they can bring positive change to the lives of women.
To all of us, International Women’s Day is a timely reminder that we must be proactive in addressing the issues that women face at all levels.