The challenge faced by women, especially in rural areas, is simply poverty and powerlessness, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told a women’s congress in Durban on Monday.
”It goes without saying that negative conditions in rural areas have a greater adverse effect on women than citizens working in the cities and elsewhere,” she said at the fourth World Congress on Rural Women.
”Women are more affected by unrewarding seasonal wage work … as unskilled casual workers on large-scale farms their overall value is not recognised.”
This, coupled with the demands of their households, caused them to suffer from ”double exploitation” and patriarchy.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said traditional views on women’s roles added to their plight and reinforced a ”vicious cycle of poverty”.
”In most developing nations women work well beyond the normal retirement age and they remain the poorest of the poor all their lives.
”… Many girl children in this situation are destined to carry the load and burden of family responsibility.”
She blamed the plight of rural women on lack of access to affordable basic infrastructure, poor health, and lack of skills or education
”Poor health reduces productivity, and this, coupled with other factors reproduces poverty traps.”
To deal with the problem, Mlambo-Ngcuka requested women attending the fourth World Congress to come up with ”practical interventions in order to establish cohesive social forces and empower women”.
”Dealing with women poverty is the biggest and urgent business of developing states. It has to be mainstreamed.
”It cannot be left to macro-economic plans only, it needs massive macro- and micro-targeted socio-economic interventions.”
Adult education and youth development were some of the interventions Mlambo-Ngcuka proposed at the conference.
”If we go a long way in dealing with these issues such as asset poverty, skills and education, access to infrastructure and ending prejudices against women … I put my neck on the block, most of the problems of humanity will be solved.” — Sapa