Gave Davis reports at the struggle by woman MP’s to break down the old boy’s club mentality of parliament.
AFRICAN National Congress MP Jenny Schreiner leaves Parliament each day at 5 pm. If she’s in a meeting, she excuses herself. If the National Assembly is sitting late, it does so without her.
As a principle, it’s not a good one, Schreiner readily concedes. “It disempowers me,” she says. “I’m not seeing things through to their conclusion and it has an effect on the way I see my role and what I’m achieving.” But if she did not set these limits, she would never see her child, Nikita (3) — and he would never see his single parent.
Parliament, says Schreiner, functions on the assumption that those who work there all have someone at home — someone who will bear and rear their children, run the household, buy the groceries, even organise their social life. In other words, a wife. Parliament, says Schreiner, is a man’s world.
She is one of 117 women in Parliament who, last May, took up 101 of 400 National Assembly seats and 16 of 90 seats in the Senate. Their entry into Parliament catapulted South Africa to seventh position in the world in terms of women’s representation in legislatures — a goal women in other ranking countries fought for decades to reach.
Here, it was achieved by dint of the vision and determination of a small band of ANC women who, during negotiations, fought and won the battle for a 33,3 percent quota. Thanks largely to them, the Speaker in the National Assembly, Frene Ginwala, is a woman; there are three female ministers and three female deputy ministers.
But, as Schreiner points out, affirmative action is not the same thing as gender transformation, which means altering the sexual division of labour which lies at the heart of gender oppression. Getting a domestic worker would free her to work, but by simply shifting the burden on to another woman, it wouldn’t resolve the fundamental problem.
“The fact that you have a sizeable presence of women in Parliament doesn’t mean they are all committed to gender transformation,” she says. “Many are more interested in their own career paths.
“You’re talking about a small group of women who are over- extended, who need to be in every single arena of this institution, on every committee — and we don’t have that.”
In his State of the Nation address, President Nelson Mandela said: “It is vitally important that all structures of government, including the President himself, should understand this fully: that freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all forms of
Those driving the gender agenda interpret this to mean a lot more than casting an eye over committees to ensure women have token representation, or simply adding on to government white papers sections dealing with gender issues. But they’re operating in an arena that has always been exclusively male.
Schreiner jokes about arguments with male colleagues over air-conditioners set too cold. Women freeze, while men — in their suits — are fine. Former trade unionist Pregs Govender had her partner accompany her to Parliament’s first sitting, to be told by a clerk that “wives sit upstairs”. ANC MP Nomatyala Hangana recalls one of the first things female MPs had to do was “organise toilets — we had to walk flights of stairs to find a ‘Members’ Wives’
Talk to male MPs about how they experience the new presence of women in parliament and you get comments about the attractive outfits they wear and how they “brighten the place up”. So much for the level of gender discourse in our legislature — and little wonder, then, that for female ANC MPs, gender awareness training is a priority. For both men and women.
“Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you understand all the issues,” says ANC MP Mavivi Manzini. “A piece of legislation can look quite neutral until it’s implemented and you see the impact on women.”
Says Schreiner: “First, we have to convince people of the need to do it. But it is only when everyone understands that gender feeds into everything they deal with that we’ll be able to get anywhere.”
“The reality is that a lot of decisions affecting society as a whole get made over whiskies in a pub by members of the old-boys’ club,” says Govender. “Women lack the same networks and don’t operate like that.
“We’ve had to grapple with a totally new institution and culture. We’ve had to see how we can work the system and not be worked over by it.
“The definition of power is particularly hierarchical — and the Westminster system, with its system of whips like school prefects, feeds on it. It’s not a user-friendly political environment.
“In the movement, you did something because you felt strongly about it, not because you were going to be garlanded. You had people prepared to work for long hours with little pay.
“Coming here, a hierarchy’s imposed: people earn more as a whip or for chairing a committee. People came here from organisations with a collective spirit, where people could challenge each other. The way parliament works — it’s an institution for lawyers. Everyone has battled to find their feet, not just the women.”
Baleka Kgositsile, veteran women’s rights campaigner, describes subtle ways a woman can find herself undermined: “We’re socialised to believe women carry the major responsibility for children, so when something goes wrong at home you feel guilty — that you’ve made the wrong choice. When a man has family problems there’s more
“As a woman you’re pushing the fact that women can do things. It makes it look as if you have no problems. You also don’t want to speak about them because it supports the argument that women can’t cope.”
Women have had to strategise over raising gender issues: “Once you start talking about women, people tend to cut off — they stop listening,” says Kgositsile. Says Govender: “Men tend to make distinctions between women, especially where their styles differ. Maybe it’s unconscious, but the result is to divide women. You get men saying, ‘OK, we can take you seriously, but she is totally neurotic’. The only way to fight this is to have solidarity among women.”
Yet, while the ANC women’s caucus meets regularly, a multi- party women’s caucus is still embryonic. “Women in other parties felt they first wanted to form their own caucuses,” says Manzini. NP women had to wait for their caucus to give the okay, says Kgositsile.
South Africa’s female parliamentarians are a diverse group. They come from different political parties, cultures and backgrounds. Levels of education and experience vary — a woman with a master’s degree may sit alongside a woman who has difficulty reading, but who knows all there is to know about organising a rural constituency.
Is there a basis for sisterhood among the women in Parliament? “I’m not sure,” says Schreiner. “I’m not saying we can’t get together on issues. We can mobilise, but class, race and ideological divisions run far deeper than the unity provided by us all being women.”
Yes, there is, says women’s rights activist Brigitte Mabandla, now Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, Science and Technology. “We can’t pretend there aren’t differences — but there is a meeting place, and that’s gender. Women can bond on issues like violence against women, for example. As women, we have a basis for talking. We need a multi-party women’s caucus because there are experiences unique to women.”
Many black female MPs bring to Parliament a range of skills and understanding that are either ignored or under-valued by their white counterparts, says Govender. It leaves women feeling inadequate, alienated or both.
“It’s not enough just to open up opportunities and allow women in,” says Kgositsile. “It’s a question of creating an atmosphere that’s conducive to their feeling empowered and able to cope rather than just wanting to return home.”
Says Mabandla: “There’s an assumption the ANC women here are from an elite, which isn’t true. There are women here who cannot write, who want to return to their constituencies where they feel of more use.” And the contribution of women not proficient in English, who make their speeches in Sotho or Xhosa, often goes unnoticed, she
Yet, despite the challenges, women are making an impact on Parliament. Their influence has been especially noticeable in the various parliamentary committees. Says Mabandla: “Women (on committees) have played a very important role in terms of inputs, direction and the quality of their
The ANC’s Thenjiwe Mtintso, for example, serves on the defence committee. It was she who led a call for the defence budget to be slashed — during a briefing by Minister of Defence Joe Modise. Govender, on the finance committee, was instrumental in blocking a recommendation that the child rebate be abolished, arguing that this would hit single women who head households — an indicator of
“We’re beginning to grapple with being here. We’re working out our way around Parliament, our relationship to its processes, to each other and to civil society,” says
“I don’t think the time spent has been wasted. People have learned an incredible amount and are now in a far better position to define themselves and the issues.”
Attitudes are also changing. Says Mabandla: “I think when we came here there was a resentment, an unsureness on the part of men over how to treat us — as ladies or as mamas. But women have been complimented (in the House) on the contribution they have made. In the committees we’re taken seriously, they listen quite carefully and don’t shut off
Says Manzini: “I think people have now started to respect us on the basis of who and what we are. Just our presence here means you no longer find people expressing themselves in overtly sexist ways.”