South Africa was one of the countries lagging behind many others by not setting up a ministry specifically devoted to women’s rights and gender equality.
President Jacob Zuma has finally appointed a minister — but wait for it — the minister, former midwife Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, comes loaded with all sorts of agendas; youth, children, people with disabilities! Why oh why was this seen as necessary? Why not just call it a ministry of women — full stop?
Was that so hard? What have all these other things got to do with women? And on any good day which one is she supposed to prioritise?
A well-intentioned decision has been messed up from the start by this excess burdening of the minister. It is almost as if the president could not bring himself to accept the need for a ministry and that it could really have enough on its plate.
That would be the charitable view. Granted, with all the recent technical approaches to addressing gender inequality that we have seen all over the world, Zuma can be forgiven for thinking it is too simple; just organise the 16 days of activism and Women’s Day; increase numbers of women in decision-making positions, pass a few laws and you will be done. Right? What, then, does the minister do the rest of the year? Was it felt that women’s rights could not seriously occupy a whole ministry from January to December?
To be fair, there are few examples elsewhere to learn from. All over the world the ministries of “gender” (it is not about women and their rights these days) have all sorts of appendages; youth, social welfare, poverty reduction, community development.
And there are the more hilarious combos; sport, youth delinquents (seriously!). This has largely been the trend, particularly on the African continent, where the general wisdom seems to be you can’t just focus on women’s rights, there are many other et ceteras that we can’t fit anywhere else so let’s graft on to this (useless) one.
But really South Africa could have done better. There is enough literature by feminist activists who advocated for the establishement of ministries of women in the first place to show that this approach is not what we were asking for.
What women need are ministries that are strategically positioned to influence other ministries’ policies and programmes and have enough clout to hold others accountable. Clout emanates from clear, crisp, focused mandates. Just like defence. Finance.
But with women it’s as if the decision is: put everything that nobody else wants in their ministry. After all, women are here to mop up and carry everyone else’s monkeys in real life anyway. The proportion of the national budget that the ministry receives also determines its clout (keep your eyes on that one sisters).
The women’s ministry is immediately hobbled because it won’t be able to manage the competing constituents it is meant to serve. To go back to that question: who is the ministry primarily for? Women? Youth? People with disabilities? Not that these are mutually exclusive, but if each of these is so important why cobble them together? From day one even the media and other policy-makers will simply call and treat this ministry as “that one with a long name and too many things”.
South African women deserve better, and more.
Everjoice Win is s a Zimbabwean feminist activist