Women making their mark, but more needs to be done

March 8 2024 marked International Women’s Day which was celebrated under the theme “Invest in women, accelerate progress.”

The UN argues that the challenges that the world is facing can be addressed by solutions that empower women.

Investing in women can spark change and speed up the transition towards a healthier, safer and more equal world for all.

The UN identified the following key areas that require collective action:

● Investing in women, a human rights issue;

● Ending poverty;

● Implementing gender responsive financing;

● Shifting to a green economy and care society, and;

● Supporting feminist changemakers.

International Women ’ s Day started as National Women’s Day in the US in February 1909.

Women’s rights activist Clara Zetkin called for an international women’s day at the second International Conference of Working Women in 1910 held in Denmark. The day was first marked in 1911 and was fixed as March 8 in 1913.

This day is devoted to celebrating the achievements of women and seeking gender equality.

However, there is still a lot of work to be done for this to be achieved.

The Global Gender Gap report says we are 131 years away from gender parity. Gender parity shows the proportionate representation of men and women in specific sectors.

The gender pay gap and equal gender representation in senior positions remain a challenge in SA.

Men are still paid more than women and more men are in executive positions than women. This is even though the makeup of the workforce is about 60% women.

Both the private and public sector fail to reform the executive.

The evil apartheid state reserved jobs and participation in the economy only for white males in the main and was discriminatory.

Women experienced alienation from formal sector employment. Black women were only seen to be good for domestic and unskilled work.

The democratic breakthrough brought about hope to end discrimination.

The constitution of the Republic of SA promotes nondiscrimination, including on the basis of gender.

The Anc-led government has introduced legislation and policies that promote gender equity in the workplace.

The legislations include the Employment Equity Act 55 of 1998 which is aimed at redressing the effects of discrimination, creating equal employment opportunity and creating a workforce that is a broad representation of our society.

The act seeks to achieve equity in the workplace, eliminate unfair discrimination, promote equal opportunity and fair treatment in employment, and achieve equitable representation in all occupational categories and levels in the workplace through the implementation of affirmative measures by employers.

These laws are challenged by anti-transformation forces who seek to perpetuate the white male supremacy that the apartheid state advocated for.

It must be appreciated that the agenda is to defeat patriarchy and toxic masculinity.

However, the ANC is committed to ensuring women representation in the executive and leadership positions.

The 2019 manifesto committed to promote mainstream gender equality and the needs of people with disability into all facets of planning, budgeting, monitoring and accounting, including performance indicators and targets in government programmes.

The sixth administration made a large improvement on women representation in parliament.

Before 1994, parliament had a mere 2.7% women representation. The sixth administration started with a whopping 44.5% in both the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces.

For the first time in history, women made up half of the cabinet under President Cyril Ramaphosa.

In the Eastern Cape, 60% of the members of the executive committee are women.

Ramaphosa nominated justice Mandisa Maya as the chief justice when Raymond Zondo retires from the bench.

When appointed, she will be the first woman to hold this position in our country.

There are other extraordinary women who are leading institutions of government that make democracy work.

All these women do phenomenal work in their areas of responsibility against the stereotype that women are not capacitated.

National director of public prosecutions Shamila Batohi, auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke and public protector Koleka Gcaleka are just some of the extraordinary women who hold executive positions.

The Eastern Cape provincial legislature has also tampered with the stereotype that it is only men who are capable of leading government programmes of transformation.

For the first time in the history of the legislature, women are ones steering the ship.

Helen Sauls-august is leading as political head (speaker) and, for the first time, the secretary to the legislature is a woman, the executive manager responsible for corporate service, the executive manager responsible for parliamentary service and the chief financial officer are also all women.

Women also have to battle with household responsibilities and all the unpaid work associated with it.

In the morning, they have to prepare their children to go to school and their husbands to go to work, while they themselves have to go to work.

After lunch, they have to start thinking about fetching children from school and what they will cook for super.

With all of this, they also have to deal with working during their menstrual periods.

They have to deal with clients and colleagues while experiencing uncontrollable mood swings caused by nature.

They also have to deal with men who offer them positions in exchange for sleeping with them.

Sex workers, meanwhile, are not free to perform their trade. We must legalise sex work because it is a job.

The workplace needs to take care of women’s needs.

They should introduce menstrual leave of at least one day a month.

Remote work, where possible, must be regulated in workplaces for women to strike the work-life balance. Despite the progress made, more needs to be done to transform women in the workplace.