Gains of real equality for women still work in progress

INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8 in most members of the United Nations, needs to be far more than just a vague wish for equality and return to its roots as the focus of major reforms in societies.

It was first marked over a 100 years ago when very few women even had the vote, and none in what were then major countries, crippling discrimination in employment and education was standard and defended.

In many countries women were not even considered to have reached their majority when it came to family, financial, property and business matters, being under the control of a father, brother or husband.

So there has been a great deal of progress, with full legal equality now the norm in most countries after the radical reform across the world, in almost all countries and across all cultures, during the 20th century. But with a great deal more still to be accomplished, mainly in attitudes and in obtaining full cultural equality.

There are still many in Zimbabwe, for example, who see full equality in practice as well as constitutional theory for all citizens, regardless of gender, as something foreign and non-cultural. That is not correct: it might be new, but the legal revolution took place in the 20th century around the world.

To take just one marker, women voting. In 1900 there was just one country, New Zealand, where women had the vote, along with a couple of Australian colonies and one American state, but not in federal elections, plus a local government vote for a small group of Swedish property-owning women. But that was it.

In 2000 there were just five countries left where women did not vote, all on the southern shore of the Gulf, and those have seen significant progress in the present century.

In Zimbabwe, attitudes were well behind the times until after independence.

Even white women were strongly discriminated against, only obtaining the right to own and control property in their own name after marriage in the 1920s, and married women still formally and officially discriminated against in the civil service and in much of the private sector right up to the end of colonialism.

The vast majority of adult women only achieved full legal rights with the Legal Age of Majority Act after independence, the centre pin of a series of radical reforms the new Government pushed through during the 1980s, along with all the other reforms dismantling the colonial structures and rewriting the law books to give everyone full human rights.

But as we all know, and can all see, the legal reforms were just the starting point, necessary, but not themselves enough. There is also the requirement that attitudes in society change, and change not only among men and men in positions of power, but also among women, that they march through the doors that are legally now open and move away from some of the cultural norms hammered home perhaps while they were growing up.

In the field of employment, advancement and promotion the State has taken a leading role.

The old ideas in the uniformed services that women were in subsidiary roles with a separate and strictly limited promotion ladder have now all been abolished, as can be seen if you look at the top levels of the police and prisons and correctional service, and even the defence forces.

On the civilian side there is a far higher percentage of women in permanent secretary posts than might be seen in the equivalent ranks of executive directors in major private sector companies.

The private sector might be relatively equal at the entry levels these days, and that is a major advance, but as women climb the promotion ladders there is a tendency for those making the promotions to ask the question: “How few can we get away with?” There is also that tendency, seen in many countries, that male bosses tend to favour those they socialise with, usually other men.

The judiciary in some ways is the most advanced, with such a clear majority of women magistrates that there was some thankfulness recently when a batch of male magistrates were sworn in.

Women judges are still a minority, although a large one, but that tends to reflect the sex ratios in law schools a couple of decades and more ago since a judge needs some years of experience before being appointed to the bench.

But in many areas of society women still suffer far more than most. Anyone sitting in the civil magistrates courts will notice that women face far more family and other pressures than they should.

They frequently get the short end of the stick, and there appears to be attitudes, which magistrates have to overcome, that women should put up with appalling conditions and behaviour.

The campaigns against gender-based violence, while acknowledging that some of this is directed at men, quite correctly see the overwhelming majority of victims being women. One facet, where women need to take a lead, is the tendency for too many women to put up with violence, rather than start using the police and legal mechanisms now available. Women do not have to be doormats.

Women’s Day is just one day of the year. It can refocus the necessary changes we all need in society. But we have to be making the progress, and progress today not gradually “tomorrow”, every day throughout the year.

A lot has been made: but there is still so much to do until we reach in practical terms as well as in legal theory, the equality of all citizens regardless of gender.