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Women played pivotal role in country’s Covid-19 response – Ramaphosa

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Women played pivotal role in country’s Covid-19 response – Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa
President Cyril Ramaphosa

8th March 2021

By: Thabi Shomolekae
Creamer Media Senior Writer

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As the world observes International Women’s Day on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa has acknowledged the role of women in the country’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in keeping with this year’s theme of women’s leadership and achieving an equal future in a Covid-19 world.

Ramaphosa called on South Africans to acknowledge how far the country had come as a result of the role of women leaders, particularly in helping the nation through the Covid-19 pandemic.

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“Since the coronavirus pandemic reached South Africa a year ago, the women of South Africa have played a pivotal role in the country’s response. We salute the resilience and bravery of women frontline workers, who worked to fight the pandemic as nurses, doctors, emergency personnel, police and soldiers,” he said.

However, he acknowledged that South African women still faced many challenges and argued that there could be no meaningful progress for women if society continued to relegate women to ‘traditional’ professions, occupations or roles, while it was mainly men who sat on decision-making structures.

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He said women were still vulnerable to gender-based violence and femicide and were still under-represented in the boardrooms and corridors of power and were still more likely to be poor and unemployed compared with their male counterparts.

Ramaphosa said the pandemic had once more demonstrated women’s capacity to organise, collaborate, lead and achieve and stated that through their actions, they have demonstrated there was no such thing as ‘a woman’s place’.

“Our efforts to contain the pandemic have been greatly boosted by the thousands of fieldworkers like Azalet Dube from Doctors without Borders, who went into communities to raise awareness about the disease, who worked in health facilities as contract tracers, and who provided psycho-social support to families and individuals in distress,” Ramaphosa said.
 
He explained that the dedication of the nation’s educators had ensured that the country’s young people were able to receive an education despite the disruption caused by the pandemic.

“We owe a debt of gratitude to the many women who have worked as teachers, principals, lecturers and as administrators at institutions of higher learning. We thank the women leading civil society organisations who worked and continue to work with the Ministerial Advisory Committee,” Ramaphosa said.

He noted that in the private sector, women business leaders had been visible in mobilising financial resources to support government’s efforts, while women doctors, researchers and scientists continued to play an important role in South Africa’s epidemiological response.

Ramaphosa also acknowledged the women in his administration and their roles in the national relief response.

He concluded that as the country struggled against this disease, women had been present and prominent in almost every arena of life, adding that this has set a standard for the kind of society the country continued to build.


 

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