Date: 24/01/05
Source: Ministry of correctional services
Title: Gillwald: 10th Annual Africa’s Women in Leadership Summit
Address by the Deputy Minister of Correctional Services, Ms Cheryl Gillwald, (MP), at the 10th Annual Africa’s Women in Leadership Summit, at the Inter Continental Sandton Sun and Towers, Johannesburg, South Africa
24 January 2005
Chairperson of Proceedings, Ms Hermine Wilken Distinguished guests Delegates Ladies and gentlemen
Thank you so much for inviting me to be with you on this special occasion. Allow me, on behalf of government and the people of South Africa, to welcome you to Africa’s economic hub, Johannesburg, where we are meeting to review our achievements in promoting women’s empowerment and leadership across the African continent.
As we are all aware, this year marks an important milestone for the global women’s movement as we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA). As one of the most important legacies of the previous century’s advocacy for women’s rights and empowerment, the Beijing Conference of 1995 set the agenda for women’s empowerment within the public and corporate spheres of our global community.
This year, at the end of February, the world’s women will once again focus on the Beijing+10 Platform to assess progress, identify challenges and consider new initiatives and alternatives.
This gives us a unique opportunity as African women leaders to re-look at our continental achievements and to take stock of the many challenges that still face our continent’s women.
Ladies and Gentlemen, our President, Thabo Mbeki (who is the former chairperson of the African Union) and other African visionaries have declared this century the “African Century”. Our attention at this summit should therefore focus on the day-to-day challenges facing African women with a clear view to removing any impediments to rights realisation and human development. It is our task as women to find custom-made solutions for the African problems that we face.
In essence, we need to set an African agenda to deal with poverty and under-development in which the empowerment and development of women is a leading and recurring theme. We need to place our micro political goals within a holistic vision from which not only South Africans but also our African neighbours and other peoples of the world will benefit.
The South African government has committed itself to a better life for all in the local, regional and global contexts. The national development agenda identifies specific vulnerable groups as central to the process – women, children, the elderly and the disabled. Interventions will be aimed at ameliorating the negative impact of underdevelopment in which the equality of outcome is an essential criterion of success.
The fight against poverty and under-development is the theme that continues to dominate socio-economic and political discourse. When we hosted the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002, participating nations made a commitment to reducing global poverty levels by half by 2015. The benchmarks set at that conference will continue to guide our development process.
The development of women is not the sole preserve or responsibility of government. Indeed, if business, organised labour, the faith-based organisations and civil society do not play an active role in this process, the entire endeavour is doomed to failure. And each one of us has a role to play:
If we do not guard against current trends in unbridled consumerism and the “short-termism” that blights decision-making in world markets; we run the real risk of contagion – on a massive scale – from toxic waste and factory- and vehicle emissions.
If we ignore the growing gap between the world’s poor and the relatively small – and shrinking pockets of affluence that remain, we put at real risk the futures of our own children and their children’s children.
If we ignore the plight of Muslim detainees in Quantanamo Bay now, how can we possibly expect others to resist, on our behalf, the forces of power and might if we, ourselves, become victims of unilateralism and greed?
If, for example, we do not determine for ourselves a new definition of security – one unrelated to force and might; how will we escape the vortex of attack and counter-attack which characterises conflicts the world over? Surely a new definition of security is urgently required – a definition that incorporates a reduction in the levels of world poverty; an increase in racial, cultural and religious tolerance; and an improvement in the quality of life for a majority of the world’s citizens. Surely these are qualities that will bring increasing levels of peace and stability to the world’s people.
Central to the promotion of women’s empowerment and development is the necessity to achieve a critical mass of progressive, development-oriented women within the decision making processes of government, business and other social, political and economic institutions that determine – or at least influence - the course and quality of our lifestyles.
However, promoting women to positions of leadership in the socio-economic, political and cultural spheres of our societies still remains a challenge. In response to this challenge, the government’s policy of affirmative action is designed to inject appropriate and representative levels of gender and race diversity into all levels of decision making; a process that we believe will improve quality of decision making for all South Africans – men and women alike.
Last year marked the end of the first decade of freedom and democracy. It was a time to celebrate and we had much to celebrate: a free and fair electoral mechanism; an economy demonstrating resilience and the first real opportunity for growth in decades; political stability, the likes of which could not have been anticipated just ten short years ago and a society united as never before, despite the rigors and challenge of rapid and unprecedented change. And while we celebrated our achievements of the past ten years, we did so cognisant that much, much more has yet to be done if we are to achieve the non-racist, non-sexist society envisioned by our Constitution.
Last year’s elections demonstrated real progress in terms of women’s representation in parliament – up by nearly 10% since the previous election. Women represent 32, 8% of parliamentarians 1 at the national level. It is however important to remember that this admirable statistic is the result of the ruling party’s specific intervention on behalf of its women members by insisting that at least one-third of its representation should be female – the other parties lag behind in this regard. ANC women account for 79 percent of the total number of women in parliament. South Africa has moved up in the global ranking of women in parliament from 15th to 11th place, coming after Austria and slightly ahead of Germany. Rwanda, with 49 percent women in parliament, is in the lead position on the global stage.
Women in the ANC have also made it quite clear that the one-third quota is not a ceiling – it is an absolute minimum requirement and there is considerable pressure afoot to set the quota at 50%, which is entirely as it should be. Women are poorly represented in parliaments across the world – it is not only Africa that finds itself wanting. Labour Party women in the UK have been dismayed by low levels of female representation in their Parliament, which currently stands at about 18%.
Our President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, has walked the talk in this regard by appointing 10 female ministers and 12 female deputies to his executive. His example, reinforced by dedicated affirmation policies and an extremely progressive legal framework seems to have permeated into the government workplace. According to the Department of Public Service and Administration, nearly 25% (24, 5% to be exact) of all management posts in the public service are occupied by women. South African business lags far behind and has much to answer for in respect of the affirmation of women, especially black, African women.
Post-modern feminists have long understood the value of networks to support the empowerment of women. “The real inner workings of feminism today are about creating a network of women helping women to realise the opportunity for all women to become whomever and whatever they want to be: from CEO to homemaker, from motorcyclist to philanthropist, from fighter pilot to missionary.”2
The power of women is multiplied when we are united into a single voice. Sharing the ideas and successes of like-minded women will improve all women’s lives, showing that feminism is not an antiquated concept, just a redefined one.
It is for this reason that women leaders must translate the different positions that they have achieved in the public and private sectors into meaningful change, not only for other women working in the formal sector, but for all women, especially those in the distant rural communities of our country.
The special situation of rural women is of particular importance to us in South Africa. As a silent majority, these women play a significant role in economic subsistence, the survival of the family, the provision of food and shelter, to name but a few responsibilities they must, of necessity, undertake.
In a development-based environment, the fundamental premise for entry into the economy, even at subsistence level, is more than equal access to the enabling resources. Women and especially rural women, if they are to survive, must have equal access to land, water, credit, technology, education and health services. But more importantly they must play an active role in the decision-making processes that set economic activity in motion.
It is against this background that the achievement of true empowerment for women across all race and class barriers, and most particularly for rural African women, remains a subject of continental and international dialogue and lies at the heart of the African Union policy formulation processes.
Women leaders on our continent, such as the Pan African Parliament’s Speaker, Gertrude Mongella, and the 2004 Nobel Peace Price Winner, Wangari Maathai from Kenya are two recent icons of Africa’s women leadership and empowerment. In South Africa, women leaders are heading key government portfolios in health; foreign affairs; education; minerals and energy; and agriculture to name just a few.
But, as proud as we may be of our achievements, Africa still has a very long way to go towards empowering its women. And the hardest part of the journey probably lies ahead of us.
We need collectively to sound a clarion call for an even faster and more effective implementation of policies and practical programmes to facilitate women's empowerment. Ensuring women’s participation in decision-making processes is essential and constant advocacy will ensure the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into the many sectoral programmes that constitute the development process.
Women have made giant strides since 1994 in both the public and private sectors. An increased presence at all levels in institutional hierarchies and greater participation in the decision-making process through achieving positions of influence have been some of the indicators that the transformational process is well underway. But while good progress has been made, we must concede that much remains to be done.
For example, South Africa has ratified most of the internationally-recognised legal and other frameworks aimed at achieving gender equity. In addition, a slew of gender-progressive legislation has been passed since 1994.
To this end, charters and legal frameworks such as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Additional Protocol to the African Charter on Women’s Rights form part of the statutory environment which has been established to facilitate genuine rights realisation for women.
However, laws and charters alone are not adequate protection against the profoundly discriminatory attitudes and practices that continue to permeate our social environment.
The transformation agenda within the African continent through the African Union and NEPAD, has not only sought to improve interaction among the peoples of member states, it has provided a platform for women’s networks to identify common problems and to find solutions to these problems. This interaction has distilled the common issues into a plan of action for Africa’s development.
Achieving the objectives of this plan will require a working partnership between men and women across the political and social spectrum. An essential ingredient to the success of this plan will be the political commitment of the male-dominated leadership on the continent, to the substantive inclusion and participation of women in the development process.
Changes in the relationships between men and women are, in a way, pre-empting the development process. For rural women, male emigration to urban areas has created a gap in households, thus increasing women’s responsibilities to provide for the family’s requirements. The traditional gender-based division of responsibilities is breaking down and rural women are increasingly taking over tasks and responsibilities previously undertaken by men, including heading households. Although this is a global phenomenon, this is most prominent in the Sub-Saharan Africa with an average of 31 percent of households headed by women compared to Near East and North Africa (17 %).
The daily struggles and challenges facing women in under-developed and rural areas are particular opportunities for action. For women in rural and under-developed settings, it is only through proactive and ongoing action by women in leadership positions that these women will be finally emancipated and become champions of their own course and spokespersons for themselves.
From a continental perspective, the Peer Review Mechanism of Nepad should ensure the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into all its programmes.
It is our responsibility as women leaders to ensure that the advancement of gender equality and women’s empowerment features strongly and remains a priority on the national development agenda. Using our networks, we must also ensure that women on the continent, and indeed, internationally benefit from similar programmes. The vision is clear – a society free from domination, discrimination, sexism and patriarch. Let us insist on our President’s view that progress in the emancipation and development of women continues to be the litmus test for our country’s progress towards achieving a true democracy based on equality and freedom. We have the energy, the capacity and enthusiasm to be real agents of change. Together we can achieve a better life for all… I thank you.
For more information contact:
Joseph Mohajane
Cell: 082 567 7538
1 Gender Links Press Release dated 16 April
2004
2 Being Jane; Redefining Feminism
(www.beingjane.com) Issued by: Ministry of Correctional Services
24 January 2005
Source: Ministry of correctional services
Title: Gillwald: 10th Annual Africa’s Women in Leadership Summit
Address by the Deputy Minister of Correctional Services, Ms Cheryl Gillwald, (MP), at the 10th Annual Africa’s Women in Leadership Summit, at the Inter Continental Sandton Sun and Towers, Johannesburg, South Africa
24 January 2005
Chairperson of Proceedings, Ms Hermine Wilken Distinguished guests Delegates Ladies and gentlemen
Thank you so much for inviting me to be with you on this special occasion. Allow me, on behalf of government and the people of South Africa, to welcome you to Africa’s economic hub, Johannesburg, where we are meeting to review our achievements in promoting women’s empowerment and leadership across the African continent.
As we are all aware, this year marks an important milestone for the global women’s movement as we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA). As one of the most important legacies of the previous century’s advocacy for women’s rights and empowerment, the Beijing Conference of 1995 set the agenda for women’s empowerment within the public and corporate spheres of our global community.
This year, at the end of February, the world’s women will once again focus on the Beijing+10 Platform to assess progress, identify challenges and consider new initiatives and alternatives.
This gives us a unique opportunity as African women leaders to re-look at our continental achievements and to take stock of the many challenges that still face our continent’s women.
Ladies and Gentlemen, our President, Thabo Mbeki (who is the former chairperson of the African Union) and other African visionaries have declared this century the “African Century”. Our attention at this summit should therefore focus on the day-to-day challenges facing African women with a clear view to removing any impediments to rights realisation and human development. It is our task as women to find custom-made solutions for the African problems that we face.
In essence, we need to set an African agenda to deal with poverty and under-development in which the empowerment and development of women is a leading and recurring theme. We need to place our micro political goals within a holistic vision from which not only South Africans but also our African neighbours and other peoples of the world will benefit.
The South African government has committed itself to a better life for all in the local, regional and global contexts. The national development agenda identifies specific vulnerable groups as central to the process – women, children, the elderly and the disabled. Interventions will be aimed at ameliorating the negative impact of underdevelopment in which the equality of outcome is an essential criterion of success.
The fight against poverty and under-development is the theme that continues to dominate socio-economic and political discourse. When we hosted the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002, participating nations made a commitment to reducing global poverty levels by half by 2015. The benchmarks set at that conference will continue to guide our development process.
The development of women is not the sole preserve or responsibility of government. Indeed, if business, organised labour, the faith-based organisations and civil society do not play an active role in this process, the entire endeavour is doomed to failure. And each one of us has a role to play:
If we do not guard against current trends in unbridled consumerism and the “short-termism” that blights decision-making in world markets; we run the real risk of contagion – on a massive scale – from toxic waste and factory- and vehicle emissions.
If we ignore the growing gap between the world’s poor and the relatively small – and shrinking pockets of affluence that remain, we put at real risk the futures of our own children and their children’s children.
If we ignore the plight of Muslim detainees in Quantanamo Bay now, how can we possibly expect others to resist, on our behalf, the forces of power and might if we, ourselves, become victims of unilateralism and greed?
If, for example, we do not determine for ourselves a new definition of security – one unrelated to force and might; how will we escape the vortex of attack and counter-attack which characterises conflicts the world over? Surely a new definition of security is urgently required – a definition that incorporates a reduction in the levels of world poverty; an increase in racial, cultural and religious tolerance; and an improvement in the quality of life for a majority of the world’s citizens. Surely these are qualities that will bring increasing levels of peace and stability to the world’s people.
Central to the promotion of women’s empowerment and development is the necessity to achieve a critical mass of progressive, development-oriented women within the decision making processes of government, business and other social, political and economic institutions that determine – or at least influence - the course and quality of our lifestyles.
However, promoting women to positions of leadership in the socio-economic, political and cultural spheres of our societies still remains a challenge. In response to this challenge, the government’s policy of affirmative action is designed to inject appropriate and representative levels of gender and race diversity into all levels of decision making; a process that we believe will improve quality of decision making for all South Africans – men and women alike.
Last year marked the end of the first decade of freedom and democracy. It was a time to celebrate and we had much to celebrate: a free and fair electoral mechanism; an economy demonstrating resilience and the first real opportunity for growth in decades; political stability, the likes of which could not have been anticipated just ten short years ago and a society united as never before, despite the rigors and challenge of rapid and unprecedented change. And while we celebrated our achievements of the past ten years, we did so cognisant that much, much more has yet to be done if we are to achieve the non-racist, non-sexist society envisioned by our Constitution.
Last year’s elections demonstrated real progress in terms of women’s representation in parliament – up by nearly 10% since the previous election. Women represent 32, 8% of parliamentarians 1 at the national level. It is however important to remember that this admirable statistic is the result of the ruling party’s specific intervention on behalf of its women members by insisting that at least one-third of its representation should be female – the other parties lag behind in this regard. ANC women account for 79 percent of the total number of women in parliament. South Africa has moved up in the global ranking of women in parliament from 15th to 11th place, coming after Austria and slightly ahead of Germany. Rwanda, with 49 percent women in parliament, is in the lead position on the global stage.
Women in the ANC have also made it quite clear that the one-third quota is not a ceiling – it is an absolute minimum requirement and there is considerable pressure afoot to set the quota at 50%, which is entirely as it should be. Women are poorly represented in parliaments across the world – it is not only Africa that finds itself wanting. Labour Party women in the UK have been dismayed by low levels of female representation in their Parliament, which currently stands at about 18%.
Our President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, has walked the talk in this regard by appointing 10 female ministers and 12 female deputies to his executive. His example, reinforced by dedicated affirmation policies and an extremely progressive legal framework seems to have permeated into the government workplace. According to the Department of Public Service and Administration, nearly 25% (24, 5% to be exact) of all management posts in the public service are occupied by women. South African business lags far behind and has much to answer for in respect of the affirmation of women, especially black, African women.
Post-modern feminists have long understood the value of networks to support the empowerment of women. “The real inner workings of feminism today are about creating a network of women helping women to realise the opportunity for all women to become whomever and whatever they want to be: from CEO to homemaker, from motorcyclist to philanthropist, from fighter pilot to missionary.”2
The power of women is multiplied when we are united into a single voice. Sharing the ideas and successes of like-minded women will improve all women’s lives, showing that feminism is not an antiquated concept, just a redefined one.
It is for this reason that women leaders must translate the different positions that they have achieved in the public and private sectors into meaningful change, not only for other women working in the formal sector, but for all women, especially those in the distant rural communities of our country.
The special situation of rural women is of particular importance to us in South Africa. As a silent majority, these women play a significant role in economic subsistence, the survival of the family, the provision of food and shelter, to name but a few responsibilities they must, of necessity, undertake.
In a development-based environment, the fundamental premise for entry into the economy, even at subsistence level, is more than equal access to the enabling resources. Women and especially rural women, if they are to survive, must have equal access to land, water, credit, technology, education and health services. But more importantly they must play an active role in the decision-making processes that set economic activity in motion.
It is against this background that the achievement of true empowerment for women across all race and class barriers, and most particularly for rural African women, remains a subject of continental and international dialogue and lies at the heart of the African Union policy formulation processes.
Women leaders on our continent, such as the Pan African Parliament’s Speaker, Gertrude Mongella, and the 2004 Nobel Peace Price Winner, Wangari Maathai from Kenya are two recent icons of Africa’s women leadership and empowerment. In South Africa, women leaders are heading key government portfolios in health; foreign affairs; education; minerals and energy; and agriculture to name just a few.
But, as proud as we may be of our achievements, Africa still has a very long way to go towards empowering its women. And the hardest part of the journey probably lies ahead of us.
We need collectively to sound a clarion call for an even faster and more effective implementation of policies and practical programmes to facilitate women's empowerment. Ensuring women’s participation in decision-making processes is essential and constant advocacy will ensure the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into the many sectoral programmes that constitute the development process.
Women have made giant strides since 1994 in both the public and private sectors. An increased presence at all levels in institutional hierarchies and greater participation in the decision-making process through achieving positions of influence have been some of the indicators that the transformational process is well underway. But while good progress has been made, we must concede that much remains to be done.
For example, South Africa has ratified most of the internationally-recognised legal and other frameworks aimed at achieving gender equity. In addition, a slew of gender-progressive legislation has been passed since 1994.
To this end, charters and legal frameworks such as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Additional Protocol to the African Charter on Women’s Rights form part of the statutory environment which has been established to facilitate genuine rights realisation for women.
However, laws and charters alone are not adequate protection against the profoundly discriminatory attitudes and practices that continue to permeate our social environment.
The transformation agenda within the African continent through the African Union and NEPAD, has not only sought to improve interaction among the peoples of member states, it has provided a platform for women’s networks to identify common problems and to find solutions to these problems. This interaction has distilled the common issues into a plan of action for Africa’s development.
Achieving the objectives of this plan will require a working partnership between men and women across the political and social spectrum. An essential ingredient to the success of this plan will be the political commitment of the male-dominated leadership on the continent, to the substantive inclusion and participation of women in the development process.
Changes in the relationships between men and women are, in a way, pre-empting the development process. For rural women, male emigration to urban areas has created a gap in households, thus increasing women’s responsibilities to provide for the family’s requirements. The traditional gender-based division of responsibilities is breaking down and rural women are increasingly taking over tasks and responsibilities previously undertaken by men, including heading households. Although this is a global phenomenon, this is most prominent in the Sub-Saharan Africa with an average of 31 percent of households headed by women compared to Near East and North Africa (17 %).
The daily struggles and challenges facing women in under-developed and rural areas are particular opportunities for action. For women in rural and under-developed settings, it is only through proactive and ongoing action by women in leadership positions that these women will be finally emancipated and become champions of their own course and spokespersons for themselves.
From a continental perspective, the Peer Review Mechanism of Nepad should ensure the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into all its programmes.
It is our responsibility as women leaders to ensure that the advancement of gender equality and women’s empowerment features strongly and remains a priority on the national development agenda. Using our networks, we must also ensure that women on the continent, and indeed, internationally benefit from similar programmes. The vision is clear – a society free from domination, discrimination, sexism and patriarch. Let us insist on our President’s view that progress in the emancipation and development of women continues to be the litmus test for our country’s progress towards achieving a true democracy based on equality and freedom. We have the energy, the capacity and enthusiasm to be real agents of change. Together we can achieve a better life for all… I thank you.
For more information contact:
Joseph Mohajane
Cell: 082 567 7538
1 Gender Links Press Release dated 16 April
2004
2 Being Jane; Redefining Feminism
(www.beingjane.com) Issued by: Ministry of Correctional Services
24 January 2005
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