Date: 20/02/2006
Source: Ministry of Trade and Industry
Title: Thabethe: Gender and Women Economic Empowerment workshop


Keynote address by Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Elizabeth Thabethe, at the Gender and Women Economic Empowerment workshop, Orlando West, Soweto

ADVANCING WOMEN’S ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Counsellor Padi
Members of Soweto Small Business Executive Council
Members of Amathuba Youth in Business Forum Soweto Business people;
Government representatives
Community and business leaders;
Ladies and gentlemen

Welcome

Good morning to all of you. I would like to thank Counsellor Padi for welcoming us here in Soweto, a home for many of us. I would like to thank the Soweto Small Business Executive Council as well as Amathuba Youth in Business Forum for helping us in organising this workshop. Special thanks to Mr Jerry Moloi and Mr Solly Moripe for assisting my office and in particular the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Gender and Women’s Empowerment (GWE) Unit in organising this workshop. We shall be forever grateful for all your support. To all of you, thank you for taking the time to be here. Being the beginning of a new year, which is 2006, best wishes to all of you and may all business endeavours grow and strengthen. Our resolution for 2006 is to make this year a very successful one for all South African women in business and to realise this we will need all your support.

To all of you, your continued support is highly appreciated. We will also continue to bank on all your valued support as we begin to implement our strategy. This is our eighth consultation forum, after consulting with women from the Northern Cape and Free State, Western Cape, the North West, Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and last month in Polokwane. The support received from all women entrepreneurs has been overwhelming and encouraging to us.

Introduction

I would also like to introduce myself to you as well as my foot soldiers. To those of you whom I have not met, I am Elizabeth Thabethe, one of the two Deputy Ministers of Trade and Industry. My overall responsibilities include dealing with consumer and corporate regulatory maters as well and mainstream the issues of the second economy as we facilitate the growth of the South African economy. The theme of this conference was carefully selected to reflect our strategic position on this matter. Women are the backbone of the second economy and our first woman Deputy President; Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka supports this view wholeheartedly.

Together with me, I have brought with Mr Martin Lebea, Ms Refilwe Motau, our two new recruits Ms Granny Balepile and Jessicca Sibuyi and Ms Mmabatho Matiwane. All from the Gender and Women’s Empowerment Unit, working hard to ensure that all your views inform our strategy.

Partnerships

Our forum today is dedicated towards ensure that we open and sustain an ongoing dialogue with you on how we can accelerate the improvement of your standard of living. The DTI is the key driver of economic growth and has committed itself to champion this very objective. It is also our first initiative of taking the DTI to the people as part of educating our people about the work of the DTI.

Outline

Although my input is entitled, “advancing women’s economic empowerment through entrepreneurship”, I want to share with you how the strategic framework on gender and women’s economic empowerment came about.

I would also like to reflect on the importance of this framework and entrepreneurship in growing our economy and reducing the inequalities that we have inherited, as well as how we intend to facilitate further consultations.

Inception of strategic framework

Since its establishment, the GWE Unit has played a key role in successfully transforming the employment profile of the DTI to reflect gender equity. As a result, the organisational culture of the Department now also caters for the needs of its female employees.

Externally, the DTI has also successfully managed to change public perceptions about the role of women in the economy. To this end, we have encouraged and supported women in their entrepreneurial efforts through initiatives such as Technology for Women in Business (TWIB) and South African Women Entrepreneurs' Network (SAWEN), amongst others. However, despite all these efforts we have to admit that our policies and programme have not always maximised the full benefits for our women in business as a result many of the challenges that they faced a decade ago continue to exist.

The relative success of our economy since 1994 has also opened up extensive business opportunities for women. However, many of them are unable to exploit these opportunities because they are still trapped in the lower echelons of the economy. Consequently, it has become necessary for the DTI to ensure that institutional support for women in business is entrenched and that we continue to search for new and innovative ways to support women in business. We are of the view of growing the economy to accommodate new entrants. Our strategic framework was born out of the realisation that we have to embark on an active measurable programme of action to ensure that women, especially those in the second economy, can begin to establish and sustain successful enterprises.

Strategic framework on gender and women’s economic empowerment

Ladies and gentlemen, earlier last year, the Executive Board of the DTI approved the further development of the draft Strategic Framework on Gender and Women’s Economic Empowerment for 2005. Its implementation was also simultaneously elevated to one of the Department’s major projects in 2005. In keeping with our maxim that the people must govern, we have now embarked on a process of consulting with various stakeholders on how best to fast track and maximise our interventions for women entrepreneurs.

In doing so, we want to ensure that the voices of our women are heard and influence this strategic framework. As we consult with you, we also want to educate you and our partners about the programmes of the Department that cater specifically for the needs of this country’s women and how these operate. We also want to use these consultative forums to get your advice on how other programmes in the Department can incorporate and cater for the specific needs of women. We believe that this will be the best way to service you.

You may ask (as many have and will continue to ask), why it is important to have a special strategic framework on gender and women’s economic empowerment? The President and the Deputy President have partially responded to this question when they raised their concerns around the second economy.

The need for such a strategic framework is central and critical to strategies needed to urgently address the challenges of the second economy. While black people comprise the majority of people in the second economy, women are majority of those affected because they face the double jeopardy of racial and gender discrimination. Hence we need measures that address their specific challenges in the second economy. Their additional family and community responsibilities also make them more vulnerable thus deserve special and or targeted interventions that our strategic framework proposes. Ms Mmabatho Matiwane will present these interventions later in the programme and your inputs are very critical.

Role of small business

Ladies and gentlemen, as recently indicated by Minister Mpahlwa, entrepreneurship is the core to building a vibrant and a sustainable small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMME) sector. The SMME sector is critical to achieve the key national development objectives of economic growth, employment creation and equity.

Combining formal and informal business activities, SMMEs constitute about 95% of all enterprises in the country. If we exclude all informal activities and self-employment, SMMEs currently absorb between 50% and 60% of the formally employed labour force and contribute at least 30% to gross domestic products (GDP) and its contribution is growing.

It is a well-known fact that Soweto residents spend most of their disposable income outside of the township. Meaning that 80% of the disposable income available, which may also be referred to as (R10.5 Billion per annum), is spent outside Soweto. This is one of the factors that inhibit investment and job creation. According to the Johannesburg News Agency, despite accommodating over 43% of the Johannesburg’s residents, Soweto has over the years failed to develop economically and still plays the historical apartheid resistance role of being little more than a dormitory area of low cost housing.

Opportunities

Today ladies and gentlemen I would like to encourage and challenge you to use this opportunity that has been presented to you. By seeking information on the new business ventures that are occurring in our community. For instance the infrastructure development that is occurring in Kliptown, Power Park and Protea, amongst others. All current and future infrastructure development initiatives aimed at improving the quality of life and increase the community’s access to public transport such as buses and taxis are another opportunities. These are just a fraction of some of the opportunities we can take advantage of.

Last year November I launched a report titled “South African Women Entrepreneurs - A burgeoning force in our economy”. This report indicates that women comprise 83% of the informal economy, of which 61% of are African women. This category may also be divided into survivalist and informal entrepreneurs. This poses a huge challenge to all Sowetan women to stand up and seek for business opportunities. Opportunities do exist for women in the hair and beauty, tourism, retail through formulations of consortiums, services (car cleaning, catering etc). Opportunities are there, waiting for women to take advantage of them. The team that I had brought with me represented through our agencies and Units, will guide you as to how you can begin to do engage with all of these.

As part of implementing our resolution of 2006, on 12 January this year, the DTI hosted an urgent consultative workshop on engendering Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA). Through this workshop, we have successfully managed to identify critical areas of intervention critical as part of fast tracking women’s economic empowerment.

Like the Deputy President Mlambo-Ngcuka, we as the DTI are of the opinion that the success of ASGISA will mainly be determined by its positive impact on the second economy. We also believe that if ASGISA works for women, it will work for the rest of SA as women are of those to benefit. Women have to be afforded with the opportunity of actively participating in ASGISA as part of empowering them in growing our economy towards achieving the 6% target growth by 2014. Women in this township are therefore invited to participate in this process. Last week we released an advert calling for all women entrepreneurs to apply to be captured in a women’s directory that will be used as a major reference book for procurement purposes. Together with this we have also released another advert calling for all interested women to participate in the capacity development placement projects. All of you are therefore invited to participate in these exciting opportunities.

To conclude, as we proceed, we will be consulting with stakeholders like you in all provinces. A special forum will be held for rural and peri-urban women stakeholders because we want our strategy to provide for the needs of such vulnerable groups. Relevant community based organisations will also be consulted. It is also important to us that social entrepreneurship is also catered for which we consider a critical economic intervention for alleviating poverty and addressing women’s strategic gender needs which can hinder the success of women entrepreneurship in this country.

Such challenges can seriously impede women’s entrepreneurship in this country. After that we will engage various parliamentary structures and eventually with Cabinet for final approval of the strategy. To ensure synergies with provinces, we have already established an inter-governmental task group on women’s economic empowerment, where the various government departments engage on a monthly basis. We look forward in partnering with all of you in making this particular intervention a success.

Malibongwe

Issued by: Ministry of Trade and Industry
20 February 2006