Barry Streek
A high-powered gender unit, with an annual budget of R6-million, has been established in the Department of Communications to promote gender equity both in the department and the parastatals it is responsible for, such as the Post Office, Telkom and Satra.
The approach has been mainstream gender planning, the head of the department’s gender desk, Mathapelo Lengoesane, told MPs this week.
And this is just the beginning, she added. The aim of her unit is the development of guiding principles to achieve good standards of a gender equitable department, assist in providing gender training programmes and monitor production of gender desegregated data for the department.
It also reviews all policies, projects and programmes for their gender implications, monitors the department in terms of South Africa’s international agreements and develops gender sensitive indicators.
A gender task team has been established nationally, a gender committee representative of every unit in the department appointed and gender committees have been started in all portfolio organisations.
The unit has already initiated a gender audit in all the portfolio organisations to determine what they had done on gender programming since 1994 and to assess the capacity and potential of portfolio organisations in undertaking approaches to engendering policies and programmes.
Lengoesane said the key areas are corporate governance profiles, institutional framework mandates, policies, procurement, corporate social responsibility programmes, funding and capacity to carry out gender work.
She hopes this will result in the status of women being changed, action being taken to promote a gender mainstreaming strategies and people in authority becoming more aware of what institutionalising gender involves.
It is clear that with the forceful Lengoesane in charge of the gender unit and a R6-million budget, the department means business when it comes to gender issues. The Post Office and Telkom should take note.