Viewers of last Sunday’s SABC phone-in television show Asikhulume recently voted overwhelmingly in favour of the idea that black economic empowerment (BEE) had not benefited women. Some of the callers even seemed to think BEE irrelevant.
It is hard to dispute the view that BEE has not advanced women. Figures for 2002 produced by the Commission for Employment Equity show white women had 17% of top jobs — legislators, senior officials and managers. The figure for black women was 4%.
In the professional category, the picture is much better. Who knows what devils lurk in the detail, but personal experience seems to support this. Women started to enter law in numbers in the 1970s, for instance. Looked at another way, women accounted for 26% of the legislators, 21% of senior management positions and 14% of top management positions.
True, women ”have come a long way” in the corporate world, but memories of dreadful, all-male (and all-white) corporate affairs in the 1980s underline the zero base. South Africa wasted talent for decades.
Why has the public sector advanced women in a way that the private sector has not? Maria Ramos heads Transnet, which also has Sindi Mabaso as finance director, and Dolly Mokgatle is CEO of subsidiary Spoornet. These are just three examples of women in top parastatal jobs.
The main action in our economy remains in the private sector, however, and 10 years after the advent of democracy, gender equality in the workplace remains a distant prospect.
A few black women have risen to positions of prominence. Think not only of the obvious, such as the women at Wiphold, Mmakau’s Bridgette Radebe or Hixonia Nyasulu (she of the many directorships) but also of women like Savannah Maziya, CEO of little-known mining company Lidonga Holdings. A glance at the JSE Securities Exchange shows they don’t feature in the corporate world. Not a single woman, black or white, is at the helm of any of the Top 40 — and the only black CEOs on the JSE are those in BEE companies.
Heady ”rainbowism” after 1994 included a belief that women would make great strides in South Africa. Women’s empowerment groups, such as Wiphold and Nozala, blossomed. The focus was mainly on black women, but white women featured among the shareholders of Wiphold and in the management of Nozala, for instance. This was reinforced by the Employment Equity Act, which includes white women.
Now white women are not considered beneficiaries of empowerment. The broad-based BEE Act clearly defines the targets of empowerment as African, Indian and coloured men and women. The phrases ”historically disadvantaged South Africans” (HDSAs), or ”historically disadvantaged persons”, appear in previous charters and legislation, but no longer apply.
The term ”HDSA” was politically correct in the true sense. It underscored the need to insert a clause allowing for discrimination in our Constitution, which in other respects is anti-discrimination.
The figures show that white women have not reached equality with men in the workplace as a result of past definitions of empowerment.
According to a member of the South African Chamber of Business, redefined BEE threatens some small businesses wholly owned and run by white women. Big corporate firms that previously used their services are now targeting only African-owned businesses.
What can women in general do about their marginal status in the economy?
One suggestion is that they use their buying power to force change. They could rally to force the remaining two big banking groups that have not done banking deals that include substantive women empowerment (rather than the few crumbs that are usually thrown in with BEE deals). This would entail women having greater economic power in the first place — and the political will.
It has also been suggested that women should help each other. But as one of the female panellists on Asikhulume explained, women have it hard enough surviving in business. They don’t have much time to think about other women.
And I’m guessing that women who have fought their way to the top want to be accepted as businesspeople who happen to be women, rather than women in business.