"I was never your typical African girl," says Izendu Emenike A Aghachi with an engaging grin. She liked to challenge the boys and always came top of her class, even in traditionally male-dominated subjects such as science and maths. Born in eastern Nigeria during the civil war, Aghachi knows what it means to fight for survival.
At the relatively tender age of 32, Dr Marieka Gryzenhout has completed a PhD, won a string of prestigious science awards, bursaries and grants and is in the process of publishing a book on her research. She is also mother to one-year-old daughter Sietske. Gryzenhout’s formidable international reputation in mycology began growing while she was a student.
Leaving aside the fortunes of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, another battle is brewing. This is the battle of the BEE baseline studies. Now that the legislation and its codes have been finalised, the emphasis is shifting to monitoring and implementation.
In a special address delivered at the Women in Science 2007 Awards, Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena paid tribute to the role played by women in science through the ages. Since the beginning of time, he said, women and men, together and independently, have researched and unravelled our greatest contemporary scientific discoveries. In so doing they have contributed jointly to the wellbeing of humanity.
Type 1 diabetes is threatening the lives of about 17-million people worldwide, and this number is increasing. The financial burden associated with the treatment of this serious, debilitating disease is enormous. Early diagnosis and intervention are vital in the fight against the life-threatening complications of the disease.
Carren Ginsburg’s research ventures into areas where few women scientists have gone before. Not only is she combining two divergent disciplines of research, but her PhD study also has a strong emphasis on innovative statistical modelling techniques that have not yet been applied to longitudinal data analysis in the South African context.
The earliest examples of women scientists come from Africa — in the persons of the Egyptian physician Merit Ptah, who practised medicine around 2700BC, and Zipporah, a physician who lived around 1500BC. Ancient Egyptian women were free to attend medical school with men or attend one exclusively for them at Sais.
Employment equity, skills development and management control are vital indicators of broad-based empowerment, but they are also areas of low BEE progress. Equity transfer is still king, though this must change if BEE is going to be broad-based. This has emerged from the two baseline studies into BEE.
In South Africa, Women’s Month is celebrated as a reminder of the contributions made by women to society, the achievements towards women’s rights and an acknowledgement of the difficulties and prejudices many women still face. Women have come a long way from those early days when a woman’s place was in the kitchen. They have become a force to be reckoned with — even in former male strongholds.
Two recently released reports on BEE are typically South African and expose a racial gulf. The one commissioned by the Presidential Black Business Working Group (PBBWG) spoke of 75% non-compliance. The survey released by a white-owned auditing firm, KPMG, spoke of a success rate of well over 75%.