Date: 12/10/2005
Source: Ministry of Social Development
Title: Benjamin: Launch of World Population Report
Speech by Deputy Minister of Social Development, Dr Jean Benjamin, at the launch of the World Population Report
Programme director
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative
Colleagues from international organisations,
diplomatic corps, government departments,
The media and other organisations,
Ladies and gentlemen
This year’s report on the state of the world’s population focuses our attention on the advancement of women and gender equality. The tone for the release of this report in South Africa was set by the numerous World Population Day activities that were undertaken countrywide in July and the many Women’s Month activities that took place in August.
As you are aware, progress on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, was reviewed by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, earlier this year in New York. South Africa’s delegation to the review session included ministers, deputy ministers, members of parliament, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and national and provincial government departments.
At that session, South Africa together with all governments adopted the outcome declaration of the 49th session. The most important outcome of the session was the reaffirming of the Beijing declaration and the Platform for Action by world governments, as well as, the link that was made between the MDGs (millennium development goals) and the instruments for advancement of women including CEDAW.
Dr Nkosazana-Zuma said in her presentation at the session that without women’s empowerment and gender equality the world community will not be able to achieve the MDGs and its full development potential. The minister also stressed the importance of mainstreaming gender priorities in the budgetary process as this is still an important challenge in addressing women’s empowerment and attaining gender equality. Therefore, the implementation and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals is about the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.
Colleagues,
In the South African context, our commitment to address gender inequality cannot be discussed separately from the eradication of poverty. The government remains committed to the fight to address poverty, inequality and to restore human dignity. These goals were expressed in the objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme and resonate in the policies and strategies of the South African government.
We all have a very important role to play in the endeavour to meet people’s basic needs and to develop our human resources. These areas of development are particularly characterised by the inequality that was created by apartheid.
South Africa also remains committed to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, particularly by contributing to realise the objectives of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Programmes of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the World Summit on Social Development.
On the African continent our President is tasked with the eradication of poverty and the facilitation of peace processes hence the country’s commitment to the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa and the Africa Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.
Chairperson and colleagues, the most fundamental principle in South Africa’s constitution is equality between all our people, regardless of gender, race, language or religion. Specifically, our Constitution entrenches the right of couples to, freely and equally, decide on the number of children they wish to have and when to have them. The significant strides achieved by our country include the facts that:
* Our Constitution reaffirms the creation of equality and equity, founded on the principles of the Freedom Charter, which promotes harmonious partnership between men and women, boys and girls, young and old.
* South Africa has a woman at the helm of the second most powerful political office on the land,
* Over 43% of our Cabinet Ministers are women and the majority of our Deputy Ministers are women.
Our population policy, which was adopted in 1998, promotes measures that will enable women and children to achieve their full potential by eliminating discrimination, protecting women’s rights and increasing the participation of women in decision-making.
This was confirmed by the adoption of the National Policy Framework for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality in 2000, which further advocates for the gender institutional and co-ordination framework, equal access to and control over resources and services and special focus to the girl-child. We believe that men and women should participate equally in all areas of family and household responsibilities, including responsible parenthood, reproductive health, child-rearing, household and community work (or in their reproductive, productive and community work)
Significant progress has been made in promoting equal rights for all South Africans. Given that apartheid not only entrenched racial inequality, but also excluded African women more than anybody else from public and economic life, we also had to and must continue to address the gender dimension of inequality in South Africa. Numerous acts and policies are in place to ensure equality in marriage, to protect women and girls against abuse and violence and to give women the freedom to make decisions on matters affecting their own lives and bodies.
Affirmative action programmes have ensured that more women participate in decision-making in all spheres of government. Today, South Africa is one of the countries in the world with the highest proportion of women in parliament.
We reported to the Commission on the Status of Women that the participation of women ensured that the Beijing Platform for Action is mainstreamed in the government’s policies and programmes. For example, we have done well towards achieving almost universal access to primary education for girls and boys.
Whilst we are fighting the scourge of HIV and AIDS, research now shows that we have managed to arrest the resultant rise in maternal and child mortality. Good progress has also been made in women’s access to reproductive health care. Almost all pregnant women now receive care and over 80% of babies are born in health facilities. The number of women who die during childbirth is declining, as are the number of infants that die.
The government’s education, service delivery, poverty relief and social development programmes have contributed to reducing the gap between men and women and sometimes even closing it. For example, boys and girls attend schools across the country in equal numbers and generally women have become more literate than men.
Chairperson, social grants have become one of our most effective tools to fight poverty and inequality. The Ten Year Review found that almost all older persons and children in South Africa would be free of ultra-poverty when a hundred percent take-up rate is achieved amongst those eligible.
The poorest households in the country are the major recipients of these grants, and the study showed that these and other social transfers contributed to reducing inequality in our society by one third. Women are the largest group of grant recipients.
Having said this, poverty remains rampant, especially amongst black South Africans and particularly amongst women. Whilst the country has experienced impressive economic growth over recent years, this growth has yet to impact significantly on job creation and poverty reduction. One reason for this is that the number of young men and women who become economically active annually is at its highest ever.
The largest age cohorts in our society are those between 10 and 20 years of age, namely children who are at school, completing their education and entering the labour market. The growth rate amongst entrants to the labour market is much faster than the country’s overall population growth. Although economic growth outstrips population growth, its translation into jobs to meet the huge demand that exists, remains a challenge.
Therefore, youth development must remain a priority for all sectors of society. The meaningful social and economic integration of young people into our society is one of the most important vehicles towards sustainable development, the eradication of poverty and addressing inequality.
Some progress has been registered in youth development during the past decade. Today, fewer teenage girls become pregnant than ever before. The new HIV infection rate amongst young girls also stabilised over recent years. This is indicative of the fact that young men and women are becoming sexually more responsible. Many have chosen education and employment, to enable them to be able to better care for their children, when they choose to have them later in their lives.
Chairperson, four out of 10 households in South Africa are headed by women. Historically those were the poorest households. Whilst many female-headed households remain poor, progress has been made to close the gap between them and male-headed households.
For example:
* About half of the housing subsidies that were paid since 1994 went to female-headed households;
* The gap in access to decent sanitation and electricity between households headed by men and those headed by women reduced by more than 50% during the past decade.
My expectation is that, when we read the World Population Report, we should not only reflect on progress, but that we use the reflection as a basis for interrogating our own contributions and progress and to identify challenges that relate to us directly in South Africa and in Africa. We have to remain cognisant of the fact that challenges abound.
We will, however, not rest on our laurels until there is equality in our land regardless of gender, age, race and ability. This will require that we accelerate our pace in meeting key targets such as ensuring that women constitute at least 50% of all political decision making bodies, including local authorities.
In our current, second, decade of freedom we have to ensure that women and men, and households that are headed by women and men, receive the same levels of social services. We have to elect and appoint even more women to positions of decision-making and support them. Especially in the coming local government elections, we have to increase the proportion of women who are councillors beyond the current 28%.
Gender issues cannot be discussed without talking about the roles of and relationships between men and women. The achievement of gender equality has to be understood as the responsibility of both men and women. It does not mean we have to become the same, but it does mean that our rights, our options and our opportunities have to be recognised equally – and in reality have to be equal.
Chairperson, as I said, many challenges remain. Allow me to mention a few that we identified during our preparations for the UN Commission on the Status of Women:
* Women remain over-represented amongst the poor;
* Women still earn lower incomes than men;
* Women are still under-represented in decision-making and management structures;
* Despite progress, the state of our reproductive health indicators cannot be regarded as “healthy”;
* Violence against women still occurs at unacceptably high levels;
* We have to improve data collection, analysis and interpretation with regard to the status of women.
* Lack of effective implementation of the gender institutional and coordination framework
* Gender-mainstreaming remains a parallel process to the national and departmental priorities
We have to propose and agree on concrete and pro-active steps that will be taken in our society to respond to these challenges. Decisive action will enable us to report in 2015, at the final review of the Beijing Platform for Action and of the Millennium Development Goals, that gender inequality has been banished to the history books of this country.
President Thabo Mbeki, in his State of the Nation Address in 2003, said that one of the new measures with regard to mainstreaming gender is the decision to include gender targets in the core performance criteria of every government institution and senior manager.
The Minister of Social Department, the Honourable Dr Zola Skweyiya further articulated the following commitments at the workshop on gender mainstreaming recently: * to strengthen our Gender Focal Points to ensure that every province institutionalises a well-equipped gender focal point in the Head of Department’s offices and this will ensure that each and every administrative decision takes into account the promotion of gender equality within and outside our Departments, * to accelerate beyond Women’s Month and the 16 Days of Activism, our advocacy and information campaigns. This will empower ordinary citizens to grasp the key issues related to the Beijing Platform of Action. Our vision is that every organisation and locality must have a localised Beijing Platform of Action. * all our strategic plans and business plans will now set gender based targets and each and every senior and middle manager will enrol for gender mainstreaming training within a year. * With regard to procurement in our Department, we will work towards ensuring than within the next three years, 50% of all contracts are directed or have women as beneficiaries. * All our international agreements will now have a gender dimension and we will religiously monitor this element within them.
Chairperson, colleagues we have to look at much more than these and this would include an assessment of the impact on women of such interventions as the provision of free medical health care, clean water, electricity, housing, jobs through our public works and other programmes, the special focus on violence against women and so on.
This will help us precisely to respond to our continuing challenges with regard to the central task of the emancipation of women, defined in our Constitution as the creation of a non-sexist society. As we do this, we would also have to take into account our international commitments as contained in the African and UN conventions on women, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action. On this occasion of the Launch of the State of World Population Report, we convey our best wishes to the women of our country, Africa and the world.
I thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Social Development
12 October 2005
Source: Ministry of Social Development
Title: Benjamin: Launch of World Population Report
Speech by Deputy Minister of Social Development, Dr Jean Benjamin, at the launch of the World Population Report
Programme director
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative
Colleagues from international organisations,
diplomatic corps, government departments,
The media and other organisations,
Ladies and gentlemen
This year’s report on the state of the world’s population focuses our attention on the advancement of women and gender equality. The tone for the release of this report in South Africa was set by the numerous World Population Day activities that were undertaken countrywide in July and the many Women’s Month activities that took place in August.
As you are aware, progress on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, was reviewed by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, earlier this year in New York. South Africa’s delegation to the review session included ministers, deputy ministers, members of parliament, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and national and provincial government departments.
At that session, South Africa together with all governments adopted the outcome declaration of the 49th session. The most important outcome of the session was the reaffirming of the Beijing declaration and the Platform for Action by world governments, as well as, the link that was made between the MDGs (millennium development goals) and the instruments for advancement of women including CEDAW.
Dr Nkosazana-Zuma said in her presentation at the session that without women’s empowerment and gender equality the world community will not be able to achieve the MDGs and its full development potential. The minister also stressed the importance of mainstreaming gender priorities in the budgetary process as this is still an important challenge in addressing women’s empowerment and attaining gender equality. Therefore, the implementation and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals is about the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.
Colleagues,
In the South African context, our commitment to address gender inequality cannot be discussed separately from the eradication of poverty. The government remains committed to the fight to address poverty, inequality and to restore human dignity. These goals were expressed in the objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme and resonate in the policies and strategies of the South African government.
We all have a very important role to play in the endeavour to meet people’s basic needs and to develop our human resources. These areas of development are particularly characterised by the inequality that was created by apartheid.
South Africa also remains committed to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, particularly by contributing to realise the objectives of the Beijing Platform for Action and the Programmes of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the World Summit on Social Development.
On the African continent our President is tasked with the eradication of poverty and the facilitation of peace processes hence the country’s commitment to the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa and the Africa Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.
Chairperson and colleagues, the most fundamental principle in South Africa’s constitution is equality between all our people, regardless of gender, race, language or religion. Specifically, our Constitution entrenches the right of couples to, freely and equally, decide on the number of children they wish to have and when to have them. The significant strides achieved by our country include the facts that:
* Our Constitution reaffirms the creation of equality and equity, founded on the principles of the Freedom Charter, which promotes harmonious partnership between men and women, boys and girls, young and old.
* South Africa has a woman at the helm of the second most powerful political office on the land,
* Over 43% of our Cabinet Ministers are women and the majority of our Deputy Ministers are women.
Our population policy, which was adopted in 1998, promotes measures that will enable women and children to achieve their full potential by eliminating discrimination, protecting women’s rights and increasing the participation of women in decision-making.
This was confirmed by the adoption of the National Policy Framework for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality in 2000, which further advocates for the gender institutional and co-ordination framework, equal access to and control over resources and services and special focus to the girl-child. We believe that men and women should participate equally in all areas of family and household responsibilities, including responsible parenthood, reproductive health, child-rearing, household and community work (or in their reproductive, productive and community work)
Significant progress has been made in promoting equal rights for all South Africans. Given that apartheid not only entrenched racial inequality, but also excluded African women more than anybody else from public and economic life, we also had to and must continue to address the gender dimension of inequality in South Africa. Numerous acts and policies are in place to ensure equality in marriage, to protect women and girls against abuse and violence and to give women the freedom to make decisions on matters affecting their own lives and bodies.
Affirmative action programmes have ensured that more women participate in decision-making in all spheres of government. Today, South Africa is one of the countries in the world with the highest proportion of women in parliament.
We reported to the Commission on the Status of Women that the participation of women ensured that the Beijing Platform for Action is mainstreamed in the government’s policies and programmes. For example, we have done well towards achieving almost universal access to primary education for girls and boys.
Whilst we are fighting the scourge of HIV and AIDS, research now shows that we have managed to arrest the resultant rise in maternal and child mortality. Good progress has also been made in women’s access to reproductive health care. Almost all pregnant women now receive care and over 80% of babies are born in health facilities. The number of women who die during childbirth is declining, as are the number of infants that die.
The government’s education, service delivery, poverty relief and social development programmes have contributed to reducing the gap between men and women and sometimes even closing it. For example, boys and girls attend schools across the country in equal numbers and generally women have become more literate than men.
Chairperson, social grants have become one of our most effective tools to fight poverty and inequality. The Ten Year Review found that almost all older persons and children in South Africa would be free of ultra-poverty when a hundred percent take-up rate is achieved amongst those eligible.
The poorest households in the country are the major recipients of these grants, and the study showed that these and other social transfers contributed to reducing inequality in our society by one third. Women are the largest group of grant recipients.
Having said this, poverty remains rampant, especially amongst black South Africans and particularly amongst women. Whilst the country has experienced impressive economic growth over recent years, this growth has yet to impact significantly on job creation and poverty reduction. One reason for this is that the number of young men and women who become economically active annually is at its highest ever.
The largest age cohorts in our society are those between 10 and 20 years of age, namely children who are at school, completing their education and entering the labour market. The growth rate amongst entrants to the labour market is much faster than the country’s overall population growth. Although economic growth outstrips population growth, its translation into jobs to meet the huge demand that exists, remains a challenge.
Therefore, youth development must remain a priority for all sectors of society. The meaningful social and economic integration of young people into our society is one of the most important vehicles towards sustainable development, the eradication of poverty and addressing inequality.
Some progress has been registered in youth development during the past decade. Today, fewer teenage girls become pregnant than ever before. The new HIV infection rate amongst young girls also stabilised over recent years. This is indicative of the fact that young men and women are becoming sexually more responsible. Many have chosen education and employment, to enable them to be able to better care for their children, when they choose to have them later in their lives.
Chairperson, four out of 10 households in South Africa are headed by women. Historically those were the poorest households. Whilst many female-headed households remain poor, progress has been made to close the gap between them and male-headed households.
For example:
* About half of the housing subsidies that were paid since 1994 went to female-headed households;
* The gap in access to decent sanitation and electricity between households headed by men and those headed by women reduced by more than 50% during the past decade.
My expectation is that, when we read the World Population Report, we should not only reflect on progress, but that we use the reflection as a basis for interrogating our own contributions and progress and to identify challenges that relate to us directly in South Africa and in Africa. We have to remain cognisant of the fact that challenges abound.
We will, however, not rest on our laurels until there is equality in our land regardless of gender, age, race and ability. This will require that we accelerate our pace in meeting key targets such as ensuring that women constitute at least 50% of all political decision making bodies, including local authorities.
In our current, second, decade of freedom we have to ensure that women and men, and households that are headed by women and men, receive the same levels of social services. We have to elect and appoint even more women to positions of decision-making and support them. Especially in the coming local government elections, we have to increase the proportion of women who are councillors beyond the current 28%.
Gender issues cannot be discussed without talking about the roles of and relationships between men and women. The achievement of gender equality has to be understood as the responsibility of both men and women. It does not mean we have to become the same, but it does mean that our rights, our options and our opportunities have to be recognised equally – and in reality have to be equal.
Chairperson, as I said, many challenges remain. Allow me to mention a few that we identified during our preparations for the UN Commission on the Status of Women:
* Women remain over-represented amongst the poor;
* Women still earn lower incomes than men;
* Women are still under-represented in decision-making and management structures;
* Despite progress, the state of our reproductive health indicators cannot be regarded as “healthy”;
* Violence against women still occurs at unacceptably high levels;
* We have to improve data collection, analysis and interpretation with regard to the status of women.
* Lack of effective implementation of the gender institutional and coordination framework
* Gender-mainstreaming remains a parallel process to the national and departmental priorities
We have to propose and agree on concrete and pro-active steps that will be taken in our society to respond to these challenges. Decisive action will enable us to report in 2015, at the final review of the Beijing Platform for Action and of the Millennium Development Goals, that gender inequality has been banished to the history books of this country.
President Thabo Mbeki, in his State of the Nation Address in 2003, said that one of the new measures with regard to mainstreaming gender is the decision to include gender targets in the core performance criteria of every government institution and senior manager.
The Minister of Social Department, the Honourable Dr Zola Skweyiya further articulated the following commitments at the workshop on gender mainstreaming recently: * to strengthen our Gender Focal Points to ensure that every province institutionalises a well-equipped gender focal point in the Head of Department’s offices and this will ensure that each and every administrative decision takes into account the promotion of gender equality within and outside our Departments, * to accelerate beyond Women’s Month and the 16 Days of Activism, our advocacy and information campaigns. This will empower ordinary citizens to grasp the key issues related to the Beijing Platform of Action. Our vision is that every organisation and locality must have a localised Beijing Platform of Action. * all our strategic plans and business plans will now set gender based targets and each and every senior and middle manager will enrol for gender mainstreaming training within a year. * With regard to procurement in our Department, we will work towards ensuring than within the next three years, 50% of all contracts are directed or have women as beneficiaries. * All our international agreements will now have a gender dimension and we will religiously monitor this element within them.
Chairperson, colleagues we have to look at much more than these and this would include an assessment of the impact on women of such interventions as the provision of free medical health care, clean water, electricity, housing, jobs through our public works and other programmes, the special focus on violence against women and so on.
This will help us precisely to respond to our continuing challenges with regard to the central task of the emancipation of women, defined in our Constitution as the creation of a non-sexist society. As we do this, we would also have to take into account our international commitments as contained in the African and UN conventions on women, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action. On this occasion of the Launch of the State of World Population Report, we convey our best wishes to the women of our country, Africa and the world.
I thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Social Development
12 October 2005
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