Although South Africa is a leader in gender equality, future plans for the promotion of women are uncertain, writes Ferial Haffajee
South Africa’s innovative plans to advance the nation’s women could be stymied by a budget too low for the newly formed Commission on Gender Equality to do its work.
The government has granted the commission a budget of only R2-million – much less than that granted to commissions like the youth and truth commissions.
This is the commission everybody has been waiting for to begin breathing life into the range of structures which has placed the country at the forefront of gender equality – on paper at least. South Africa is among the world leaders in the number of women in government: one in three MPs in Parliament is a woman.
This commission has many tasks: it must co-ordinate the web of gender policies of local, provincial and national governments and begin to weed out the myriad discriminatory laws and practices still on the statute books.
Although under-funded, the commission has set itself a work programme and helped complete the country’s first progress report on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw).
The report, released this week, is more sober than the upbeat optimism which greeted the adoption of the convention in 1995. In both the public and private sectors, women lag far behind and there are fears that Parliament could be denuded of the large quota of women who have been behind key advances like abortion rights as well as improvements in health and welfare benefits for women.
South Africa may drop the current proportional representation system in favour of a constituency-based election system, but, according to the report, the proportional system gets more women into the government.
A PhD study by a United States student has found many women MPs may not be available for re-election no matter which electoral system is chosen. She found that “marriages were breaking up, friends were abandoned and children were feeling neglected”. They also said the transition to the hard world of politics had not been an easy bridge to cross.
In a country where more than one million women were raped last year and only 4 100 rapists convicted, the need for political lobbying to tighten bail laws, educate magistrates and judges and secure better policing are essential. “Progress has been incredibly slow in the field of sexual violence,” says Lisa Vetten of the Sexual Harassment Education Project.
Changes to bail and sentencing necessary to beef up the conviction rate for rape has not happened, often with disastrous consequences, as the case of Mamokgethi Malebane has shown.
Vetten also says the setting up of special rape courts has been dismal; there is only one in Cape Town. But the justice department has promised more; they have also agreed to training which will enable them to prosecute rape cases more effectively and to stop the “second rape” many women say they suffer at court.
The courts are at the coalface of the fight against the rape epidemic, but the Cedaw report has found that there are only 56 women magistrates of a total of 1 175, and of the country’s 186 judges, only 10 are women.
Affirmative action for women in the rest of the public sector appears to have fared slightly better. Just less than half of all new appointments to the public service have been women and the government has set itself a quota where in four years’ time one in three middle and senior managers should be a woman.
In the private sector, women are climbing the corporate ladder faster than before. The number of directorships held by women has doubled in the past year, but 65% of these have gone to white women which could indicate that black women may have a longer wait.
Lawyer Christine Qunta who has written about affirmative action in South Africa says: “It is a matter of concern that appointments are still made along racial lines. There may be a pattern developing where white women may be used as a buffer against the progress of black women and men.”
Qunta says the barometer of progress should be to begin assessing the role that black appointees play on boards. It shouldn’t be a colour by numbers process, but “black women should be asking themselves what business skills and perspectives can they can bring to a board and why they are being appointed”.
Studies by the education department show that the numbers of boys and girls enrolling at the schools almost match. But the drop-out rate among young women is worryingly high and there are no plans to keep them in the system. And although more women have registered for matric since 1993, their pass rate is lower than that of their male counterparts.
The knock-on effect means the jobless queues are swelling with unemployed and unemployable women. The latest figures from the Central Statistical Service show that 38% of economically active women are unemployed.