International Women’s Day

Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow

If we are to win the war against climate change and ensure a sustainable and prosperous future for all, then women and their voices must take centre stage. This, according to United Nations Women, is why the 2022 International Women’s Day (IWD) theme of Gender Equality for a Sustainable Tomorrow is fitting. Celebrated annually on 8 March, the focus for 2022 is on recognising the contribution of women and girls around the world who are leading the charge on climate change adaptation, mitigation and response — and in doing so are building a more sustainable future for all.

The UN says advancing gender equality in the context of the climate crisis and disaster risk reduction is one of the greatest global challenges of the 21st century. With the latest data, they say, it becomes impossible to ignore the vital link between gender, social equity and climate change; without gender equality and the inclusion of half the world’s population today, a sustainable and equal future will remain out of reach. 

In a press release, the organisation said that the issues of climate change and sustainability have, and will continue to have, severe and lasting impacts on the environment, as well as on economic and social development. “Those who are amongst the most vulnerable and marginalised experience the deepest impacts,” the press release reads. “Women are increasingly being recognised as more vulnerable to climate change impacts than men, as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent on the natural resources most threatened by climate change.” 

The climate crisis has amplified existing gender inequalities and puts women’s lives and livelihoods at risk. Despite being more dependent on these resources, they have less access and often bear a disproportionate responsibility for securing food, water and fuel. 

Women and girls have proven to be effective and powerful leaders and change-makers for climate adaptation and mitigation, not only in South Africa and Africa, but globally. “They are involved in sustainability initiatives around the world, and their participation and leadership results in more effective climate action.” The roles of custodians of culture, community and cuisine have always fallen on the shoulders of the women. For this reason, it is important to continue examining the opportunities as well as the constraints that empower women and girls to amplify their voices and be equal players in decision-making, especially related to issues that affect them, such as climate change and sustainability. 

At the 2021 Generation Equality Forum, governments, private sector companies, the UN and civil society joined hands in launching the Action Coalition for Feminist Action for Climate Justice, a forum for concrete commitments toward climate justice. This International Women’s Day, the Action Coalition is helping drive global action and investment, with a specific focus on financing for gender-just climate solutions, increasing women’s leadership in the green economy, building women’s and girls resilience to climate impacts and disasters and increasing the use of data on gender equality and climate.

Collectively, the world can #BreakTheBias and celebrate the achievements of the diverse women who are stepping into their power to ensure a better, more sustainable future for all. Only then will all people live free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination in a world that is diverse, equitable and inclusive. — Jamaine Krige

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Science and academia: Attracting women is important; retaining them is vital 

Africa’s contribution toward global research and scientific output sits at around 1%, despite accounting for about 12.5% of the world’s population. Women researchers do contribute but more needs to be done; only three out of every 10 researchers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and female researchers in scientific fields remain vastly underrepresented. So why are there so few women, particularly black women, in science? And what impact does this have on society? 

Climate scientist and social entrepreneur Ndoni Mcunu has explored this extensively. As a PhD candidate at Wits University’s Global Change Institute, Mcunu is also the founder and CEO of Black Women in Science (BWIS), an organisation that delivers networking and capacity-development interventions targeting young black women scientists and researchers. 

Writing about her personal journey, she says that almost two decades into her academic career, one of the most common questions from family and friends was whether she would ever finish studying. 

 According to her, the major question still being asked is how to encourage more women, especially black women, to participate in science and innovation. “Few ask an equally important question, which is: how do we retain and sustain black women scientists in academia?” 

The latest university enrolment data shows that young black women in South Africa are increasingly attracted to STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) courses at an undergraduate level.   

“The percentage of women getting into the sciences is relatively high, but when you track these academic careers at a postgraduate level, from Honours all the way to PhDs and post-doctoral degrees, then the dropout rate is high,” she explains. 

“If we want equality and the diversity of knowledge and knowledge creation, then we need these women to be retained in the system and stay in academia and research.”

This has a knock-on effect: in South Africa, black women lecturers in science fields have the lowest representation, which ultimately means fewer senior academics and professors. In her 16 years of academia, Mcunu says she had never been supervised or lectured by a black woman. 

During the talk, she admitted that her journey was not an easy one.

Earlier in her career she often spoke about the isolation experienced as a black woman scientist; today, she says she realises that what she was feeling was not isolation, but rather a lack of representation. She had nobody who shared a similar context or lived reality to guide her. There was nobody to advise her on breaking into climate sciences or help her map the career she wanted as a black, female African researcher. 

Her challenges and triumphs, fears and insecurities all seemed novel because she did not see them represented in her environment -—despite the fact that she was not alone in feeling this. It was this personal experience, coupled with similar complaints from her peers, that led her to establish Black Women in Science (BWIS). 

Mcunu says it’s easier than ever before for black women to enter the sciences, but the truth is that it remains hard for them to stay in the sciences. 

For this to change, the system needs to change: “There is a need for a shift in attitude, as well as an awareness as to how we view and respect those who have chosen to pursue academia as a career; to make role models out of our academics. Maybe if education was respected, valued and representative then we would think twice before burning down our institutions, we would think twice before we choose a leader … There is a lack of strong intelligent academic women being represented [in our media], and when it comes to people of colour this is close to zero.” 

No single black woman can represent all women, she cautions, as doing so would further oversimplify the cause and further generalisations and stereotypes. There is, however, a need to draw women from different disciplines and walks of life together to amplify their voices and encourage their contributions. “There is a need to unify academics’ collective voices, especially those of women, but there’s also a need for us not only to research the obstacles, but also the opportunities.” 

She says it is important to emphasise that the problems faced today are not exclusive to women or black women; instead, these are human problems that impact everyone. Unless they are dealt with, she says everyone will suffer. 

The real question, she says, is this: “In this golden age of African Renaissance, are we going to continue to allow archaic mindsets to stunt futuristic evolution?” The answer should be no. — Jamaine Krige

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Lebo Ramafoko: A feminist in theory and in practice

A teenage Lebo Ramafoko walks into a shop in Munsieville, a township west of Johannesburg. She is visiting her former Sub A (grade one) teacher who left her teaching career to run this shop — her shop. 

But this time, she is preoccupied with something else. She is not as excited to see her teacher. She stands in front of the magazine rack, fixated on a specific one. The word “Agenda” is splashed upon its cover. This inconspicuous publication — the same size as a Readers Digest — intrigued the young girl. The book cost R10, a small fortune at the time. 

“When I opened the book and read, I felt like I had discovered something very, very evil. But here I am, reading. I was nervous about who was watching me read this and how it was infecting me with these ideas,” Ramafoko recalls. 

Despite feeling like she was breaking some rules, she continued paging through. 

“The ideas in the book resonated with me and somehow made sense. They gave me the language. And I think language is so important. They gave me the language of the things that I could not articulate.”

For instance, Ramafoko — for 30 years a prominent feminist thinker and activist — did not at the time understand why the girls at her school were tasked with sweeping, mopping and waxing their classroom floors with makeshift floor polish while their male peers played football in the afternoon. 

She would ask herself, why are the teachers allowing this to happen? But more importantly, why was she unable to question it herself. 

“Yes, I was very opinionated, but I also aspired to be seen as ‘good’, and it’s something I often still aspire to. It was very difficult to ask those questions until I read that publication.” 

Agenda is an African peer-reviewed academic journal of feminism, established in 1987 by a group of young feminists that “set out to bring the fight against women’s oppression into the political equation”. Until this day, it remains one of the most seminal academic feminist bodies of work to come out of South Africa. 

Caught between three waves 

“The question I get asked most often by young women and young activists is ‘How did you do it? Oh, you are so brave. Why are you so brave?’” 

Ramafoko laughs. 

“I don’t think different generations of black women actually pause to think about why they are brave or why they stand up for certain things or why they even hold positions that they hold — myself included.”

For as long as she can recall, Ramafoko has always wanted to take up space and for almost three decades, she has achieved much through her activism. “From the time I was seven years old, I had a deep desire to voice my opinion.” It was her father who nurtured that fiery spirit in her. “I have a very young memory of my father sitting with a group of men at a family function, with me on his lap. He allowed me to talk. I don’t know what I was saying.”

The memory is ingrained, she says. Her father imprinted in her head that she has an opinion that matters. Always. 

Ramafoko has lived through three of the four waves of feminism. When she was born, the second wave of feminism took place in the 1970s in countries such as the US.  This was a time when traditional gender and family roles were questioned, the development of queer theory, Roe vs Wade in 1973 [a landmark decision of the US supreme court in which it ruled that the US Constitution protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction] and other supreme court cases. Two years later in South Africa, a group of politically active women headed by Fatima Meer established the Black Women’s Federation. 

The patriarchal world is a world of survival, Ramafoko argues. Despite this, women from all over the world were resisting and confronting patriarchy despite the discipline meted out to women who colour  “outside  the line”. 

“The role that patriarchy gives women is to actually enforce patriarchy. The people who enforce the good girl code are not men. Because patriarchy is so harsh on women, it gives women that sense that it is their responsibility to discipline other women.

“This is why at family functions, when older women in our families speak about a woman who drinks, who is unmarried and or has a child out of wedlock, they speak with so much contempt. Before we even understand these notions, we already know that those are the kind of women we don’t want to be.  So, we toe the line and shrink ourselves to avoid feeling the wrath of patriarchy.”

As Western third-wave feminism also became more conscious of race and gender and critical-race scholar Kimberle Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” in 1989, there were major advancements for South African women. As apartheid ended the status of women was bolstered by changes to the country’s Constitution and progressive legislatures such as the Choice of Termination of Pregnancy Act.  Ramafoko joined the Soul City Institute in 1995, where she was integral in developing the institute’s diverse social and behaviour change TV programming. She also became a household name as the straight-talking agony aunt on Take 5, a daily youth magazine show that aired on SABC 1 in the early 2000s.

As the fourth wave of feminism hit and the internet became more widespread, feminists today are still unpacking intersectionality, while women’s sexual and reproductive rights have regressed in some instances. 

“When I look at where we are at right now in the world, I wonder if a lot has changed. I think it’s a mixed bag, but it has largely not changed. Because right now, young feminist activists are facing the same kind of challenges that we faced. 

I could feel very despondent and internalise it. But, if I measure the change that my generation has made on a daily basis through the consciousness of knowing how white supremacist, patriarchal capitalist systems operate, and my own conviction to carve a path that challenges the dominant systems, for me, is a success.”

Feminism as healing 

In her 1991 essay entitled Theory as Liberatory Practice, the late feminist icon bell hooks writes about theorising as a responding to our pain as black women. Lately, Ramafoko says been grappling with how hooks used theory “to comprehend, to grasp what was happening around and within her” and using it as a location for healing. “When we don’t understand the theory of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and the different waves of feminism that women have had to grapple with, we will struggle to find our healing and connect across generations,” she says.

 Ramafoko also agrees with hooks that while theory is important and allows many to find the words and name their pain — like she did when she read Agenda — it is not the only way. hooks argues that we can live and act in feminist resistance without ever using the word “feminism”. This is the feminism Ramafoko says she has witnessed when grandmothers become mothers because an entire generation — their children — died of HIV, or the small acts of resistance black women across South Africa make without ever reading bell hooks.  

She argues: “We need to be asking ourselves how have we changed, and not only through which feminist theory we know, but how we have made sense of our own feminist practice in the small ways that have inched us [forward] into a better world. That is my practice and my theory.”

Ramafoko says this approach has helped her move forward, even when it looks like nothing is changing. She says she does not imagine a gender-equal world but instead is to imagine herself acting and thinking differently because of her feminist convictions that tell her to make a difference wherever she is. 

“History tells us that those before us fought the same struggles that we are fighting. But through making my feminist mission a simple endeavour, and practising my life differently to what the world order asks me to do, that’s enough.” — Jamaine Krige

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Female leaders ensure better access to water for African women

Dr Nawa Mwale – GWP Zambia

In Zambia, as in most Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries, women are at the centre of challenges faced in accessing clean water, and yet the majority are left out of decision-making processes.

This is the problem Dr Nawa Mwale, Gender Advisor for GWP Zambia, has been working to help solve through the implementation of AIP WACDEP-G project.  “My focus is to ensure that the work being supported take a gender-transformative approach in order to address the root causes of gender inequalities,” says Mwale. In the course of her work, she has contributed to gender transformation through policy guidance in Zambia’s National Gender Policy, National Water Policy and the Gender Responsive Budgeting and Planning Guidelines. 

Annah Ndeketeya

The effects of climate change in the SADC region are all too visible. Floods due to recent tropical cyclone Ana in December and January, plus months of severe drought in Southern Madagascar has claimed lives, destroyed crops and infrastructure, and worsened the food security crisis.  

Through GWP’s SADC Nexus Dialogue Project, Fostering Water, Energy and Food Security Nexus Dialogue and Multi-Sector Investment in the SADC Region, Programme Officer Annah Ndeketeya supports planning and policymaking aimed at increased water, energy, and food security in the context of climate change. The European Union funded project aims to identify priority national projects that can be implemented to improve access to water, energy and food (WEF) resources.

These investments will address the social inequalities and burden inflicted on women. Reducing the time spent fetching water, collecting firewood and food production allows women to venture into other economic and educational activities to improve their livelihoods.

Asha Mercy Msoka

Societies in Southern Africa continue to be patriarchal, so women are rarely involved in decisions that will eventually impact on their lives. Asha Mercy Msoka is GWP Tanzania’s Coordinator for AIP; its scorecard to track the levels of investments in water infrastructure was recently adopted by African Union Heads of State. It says women bear the worst effects of lack of clean water, decent sanitation and hygiene in their communities, so it makes sense for them to be part of processes and interventions in the sector.

 “My work is contributing to the improvement of water and sanitation impacting directly on women’s livelihoods. Some of this work involves mobilising female engineers to participate in work and policies in the water sector. When they take up leading roles, they have a better impact on women at the local level because they understand critical issues that affect women and girls due to poor access to clean water and good sanitation,” says Msoka.

Deborah Muheka

Deborah Muheka is GWP Malawi Coordinator for the AIP.  She believes that being a woman leader in a male dominated career offers practical experience on the impact of water programmes on gender equity.  

“Our work is set to have a positive impact on women and girls because will promote practises that will reduce the time they spend walking long distances to collect water, allowing them more time to study, do home chores and run their businesses.

The AIP programme aims to transform and improve the investment outlook for water security and sustainable sanitation by mobilising $30-billion per year by 2030 to address among others the issues of gender transformation, women and youth empowerment and social inclusion. 

Shamiso Mlilwana

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for countries to invest in durable water and sanitation initiatives. During the pandemic, women, who are the traditional caregivers at home, have had to ensure the availability of clean water for handwashing and good sanitation in their home. In many instances, this essential commodity has been scarce. 

GWP’s SDG Investments Specialist, Shamiso Kumbirai-Mlilwana, believes that the challenges women face around water and sanitation can be resolved through improved financial and policy commitments. “As we celebrate International Women’s Day, governments and the private sector in Africa should reflect on their role in investing in the water and sanitation sector, which will in the long run contribute to poverty alleviation and uplift the lives of women and children,” says Kumbirai-Mlilwana.  

Litumelo Mate Sievers 

Litumelo Mate Sievers, Gender Specialist for the GWP Southern Africa believes water and climate change challenges are better resolved when there is social inclusion.  Mate Sievers supports the implementation of the AIP and WACDEP-G.

 “My work has involved advocating for gender equality and social inclusion integration in water and climate change interventions, at both policy and local implementation levels. Notably, the efforts have culminated in the recognition of the gender transformative approach by key water and related implementing institutions in Zambia. This will result in the development of guidelines and a gender transformative shared vision for the water sector in Zambia,” says Mate Sievers.  

Elouga Murielle Zoba 

About 500 000 Cameroonians are at risk of dental fluorosis, an oral health disease caused by drinking groundwater with a high fluoride concentration. A recent study by GWP Cameroon shows that the disease has a greater psycho-social impact on girls and women than on their male counterparts.

Elouga Murielle Zoba, Programme Coordinator of WACDEP-G programme in Cameroon, says her team has been carrying out gender sensitisation campaigns where communities are informed of the cause of dental fluorosis and the need not to stigmatise women and girls suffering from the disease. Previously, women and girls with dental fluorosis were considered witches and not fit for marriage, as it was thought that they would pass the condition on to their children. 

“As a result of our campaigns in the far North region of Cameroon, many young girls affected by dental fluorosis who were often timid have regained their confidence and now partake in social activities in their villages like reading Bible texts in church and singing in the choir,” says Zoba. 

The current water and sanitation sector investment in Africa stands between $10-billion and $19-billion per year. The African Development Bank estimates that $64-billion should be invested annually to meet the 2025 Africa Water Vision of Water Security for All. Urgent action is needed to close this gap. 

AIP Scorecard

On March 2 2022, Global Water Partnership Southern Africa (GWPSA), the African Union Development Agency and other development partners will officially launch the AIP Scorecard as part of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA). The goal of the AIP Scorecard is to leverage US$30-billion in climate resilient water investments for Africa by 2030.  Discussions will focus on how the scorecard will work as a key tool to track the transformation of investments for water security and sustainable sanitation in Africa. The objective is to enhance job creation through gender sensitive investments in water security and climate resilient development

About GWPSA:

The GWPSA is one of 13 regional networks that make up the Global Water Partnership, an international network that fosters implementation of integrated water resources management. GWPSA, which hosts the coordination unit for the wider Africa region, offers practical support for sustainably managing water to governments and stakeholder institutions working in the water and climate change sectors.

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Amplifying women’s voices to put gender on the agenda

To facilitate women’s participation in society and move towards gender equality, there must also be an intentional inclusion in news and news media. An equal society is not possible if half of the population is excluded from the conversation, and this is also true when it comes to conversations about climate action, the environment and sustainability. This was according to academics and media experts speaking at an International Women in Media Foundation (IWMF) webinar focusing on Putting Gender on the Media Agenda this week. The webinar was co-hosted by IWMF and fraycollege.

The webinar brought together journalists, media practitioners, experts, academics and gender activists to review how gender is covered in the media, and to work towards ensuring a greater diversity of voices in the media and news industry worldwide. 

According to South African media veteran and CEO of frayintermedia, Paula Fray, it is important to empower women to change narratives, and in doing so influence societal change. Fray was one of the coaches for the IWMF’s 2021 Gender Justice Reporting Initiative, a programme that offered training, mentorship and funding for women and non-binary journalists. The training, funding and personalised support ultimately sought to respond to critical information gaps and challenge well-established perceptions and stereotypes in the mainstream media. When women are excluded, key perspectives on current events often go missing.

Stereotypes, explained Fray, who was the first female editor of Saturday Star in 1999, are simply shortcuts in thought processing, and in newsrooms these shortcuts inform our beliefs about what makes for a good story, what makes for a better story, and what role women play in these stories. The Western media, she said, has been abuzz with shock and horror that a war is happening in the Ukraine, but barely bats an eyelid at similar events in Africa. “We must admit that we bring our biases to our stories, to our story ideas and to the angles we pursue, and to which stories we give space to and which ones get cut down,” she said. 

“We need to combat forces that oppose gender equity and equality by enhancing the coverage of gender equity issues and increasing the number of [articles] and the quality of reporting,” Fray explained. “It was designed to enable reporting that will empower the public with knowledge and information that challenges existing perceptions and stereotypes of historically marginalised communities, including girls and women, and to counter the misogynistic narrative dominating the news media.”  

Dr Emily Maractho is Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies in Uganda and Director of the African Policies Centre. Specialising in media development with a focus on media structures, policies and systems, her main advocacy area is in women and news media. She delivered the webinar’s keynote address. 

For women to fully participate in the media, she said they must be included on a number of levels. The first is representation, which entails visibility and voice. Next is interaction, which means women must be involved in consultation and conversation. Thirdly, women must be able to engage, which relates to involvement and influence. Together, these have an impact on policy relevance and women’s participation in public life. 

The focus is often on how the media negatively impacts on women, and while this is important, she says it is equally important to look at how the power of media can be harnessed for good. “We find that there are actually two categories – women in the media and also women on the media.” 

Women media practitioners such as journalists, photographers, editors, media managers and owners play an important role in shining a light on societal issues that disproportionately affect women and other marginalised groups. It goes without saying that more diverse newsrooms result in news coverage that is more representative of the society it operates in. The same is true for diversifying investigative teams to ensure more robust reporting on matters of national importance. By including women in the making of news, the way women are portrayed in the news shifts; stories are driven by the people who make them. 

According to Fray, even the most competent, self-aware and self-assured woman in the newsroom will come up against systemic issues, from the way stories are assigned to the way they are told, edited and presented. This is also why it is critical for women to be represented in media management. 

The fact that women’s issues are on the media agenda is not enough; it is necessary to critically evaluate who is being made visible in this coverage, whose voice is being accessed and whose narrative is in the spotlight. She says often women are not consulted, and instead the platform is given to men speaking about women’s issues or speaking about these issues “on behalf of” their female counterparts. 

This is where the second group mentioned by Maractho comes into play, which consists of women who are utilised as experts, sources and analysts in news and current affairs coverage. 

In South Africa, women make up half of the population but constitute less than 20% of sources quoted in news coverage. When women are accessed, it is usually a small group of women who are not necessarily representative of the diversity that exists within society. Fortunately, organisations like Quote This Woman+ are working to change that by building a body of women experts in traditionally male-dominated fields to appear on panels and in the news. The organisation links journalists and news producers to a database of qualified, accessible women experts and analysts to shed light on every topic from agriculture to xenophobia, and everything in between. This amplifies women’s voices to better correlate the South African demographics and broaden the news agenda, and in doing so contribute to the gender transformation of the media landscape in South Africa.  

There is a difference between invited spaces and claimed spaces. The former is more formal, where development agents create events for stakeholders to contribute; the latter involves the marginalised taking control of certain processes without being invited in. Women often wait to be invited, but need to move beyond this and claim spaces and platforms in a way that contributes towards equality and sustainability going forward.