Barbara Ludman
They pour out of matric by the thousands: bright young women, a world of opportunity at their feet. At university, they can follow any course open to their male counterparts. But, invariably, most choose to train for the same low-paying, stress- inducing professions women have gone into for decades: education, social work, nursing – the caring professions.
The Human Sciences Research Council has looked at the percentage of women with postgraduate qualifications – achieving honours degrees, postgraduate diplomas or higher – in a range of fields over the decade ending in 1995.
Here’s what the Register of Graduates found: in economics, management, commerce and administration, female representation was 26%; in engineering, agriculture and architecture, it was 9%; and in law, 37%. In the medical field, women made up 51% of postgraduates over the decade. Not surprisingly, they constituted 57% of all postgraduates in education.
Perhaps it’s changing. At the University of Cape Town, the enrolment is more than 50% female in the faculties of arts, music and education – but also in law and social sciences. The faculties of engineering, science and commerce are still heavily male. Microbiology is one of the biological science occupations where women are more heavily represented than men, according to the Central Statistical Service’s Manpower Survey for 1994 (the most recent year available). Women have barely a look-in in such fields as marine biology or genetics.
And in medicine, where do they score? As medical assistants, inspectors, or researchers; as pharmacists or dieticians; as therapists of all kinds; and – unsurprisingly – at all levels of nursing. There are, of course, exceptions: but if you’re looking for a surgeon, a dentist, a veterinary surgeon, or any other medical specialist – even a gynaecologist – you’ll have to search very hard for a woman.
It’s a pattern repeated in other fields: men occupy the higher-paid, more glamorous posts; women go for the supportive roles.
“We can’t continue to be in denial; women are still opting for the traditional occupations,” says criminology professor Anshu Padayachee of the University of Durban-Westville.
But she’s optimistic. Although her course used to be male-dominated, more and more women are taking it – and other law courses, whereas “twenty years ago, you could count the number of women lawyers in private practice on both hands”, she says.
It’s a question of economic empowerment: “Most people go into a profession with this long-term view that there’s a market out there. You go into those professions where you can see there is going to be economic empowerment.” So they’re moving into pharmacy as they’re welcome there; they take arts and education as there may be jobs at the end of the line.
“When the country’s crying out for technologists and engineers, why do women not enter those professions? Women want a guarantee that they will be given a chance, and the guarantee can only come from the marketplace. We need to be more aggressive.”
It’s difficult when one is brought up to believe women’s work is different from men’s.
“It’s partly to do with the way in which women are encouraged to think when they’re at school: the socialisation process,” says Dr Sheila Meintjes, who teaches the politics of gender in the political studies department at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“But I think you’re going to see a change in the next decade or so. The constitutional message about equality will begin to have percolated through. And you’ve got changes emerging globally in terms of management structures from more hierarchical to flattened structures, a preferred modus operandi for women.”
But there will be little gain without pain, at least for some. “This doesn’t mean to say that the patriarchy is going simply to open its doors without some kind of a struggle. I think what we’re going to see are increasingly more publicised cases of sexual harassment. It goes together: an increasing incidence of woman abuse as opportunities open up for women.”
Moreover, because of social prejudices in South African society, “as professions become increasingly feminised, it is possible that their status may drop”. For example, a doctor’s status is quite high here, but that could change – “as it has in Russia, where women dominate the profession”.
But Meintjes is optimistic. “As we get the critical mass of women in real decision- making areas in the government, in the civil service, in Parliament and in the executive, so people will see an improvement in the whole way in which women are viewed. But it won’t be without that backlash.
“In a sense South Africa is having to deal with the backlash before we’ve even started.” By and large, however, “we’re at a wonderful moment of terrific opportunity – a process of transition which can really benefit women in South Africa, and I think many women are taking advantage of these opportunities”.