Issued by: Department of Welfare
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
International Women's Day will be celebrated worldwide on 8 March 1996. The focus, according to Dr Noeleen Heyzer, Director of UNIFEM in South Africa, will be to translate the Beijing Platform of Action from words into action.
The Department of Welfare will be making this commitment part of its mainline policy and has already identified certain activities and priorities to promote women's issues. This includes a flag-ship programme that focuses on unemployed women with children under five years involving all provinces.
Another involvement is the promotion of appropriate and sustainable social security strategies to ensure a minimum living standard for women, especially single parent families.
The Department is also, with other stakeholders, involved in the National Network on Violence Against Women that will develop a national strategy on violence against women and is also ready to take the Beijing Resolutions forward.
Through its population policy formulation process, the Department will promote and ensure the interrelationship between populations, sustained economic growth and development and gender equality, Equity and the empowerment of women.
Following the Charter for Human Rights, the Interim Constitution and The Beijing Platform for Action, the Department plans to mainstream gender into its policy to create sensitive welfare services.
South Africa has its own National Women's Day on August 9 that commemorates the march of 20 000 women to the Union Building on this date in 1956 where they protested against the extension of the pass law system to women. The Department of Welfare is already involved in organising a national event for 9 August this year.
Background to Women's Day
International Women's Day dates from 1907 when, on 8 March, women garment workers in New York walked through the streets demanding improved working conditions and equal rights.
On the same day the following year women again demonstrated in New York for the right to vote and for an end to sweatshops and child labour. In 1910, German socialist, Clara Zetkin brought a resolution before the Second International Conference that the first struggles of women should each year be commemorated on 8 March. Since then, International Women's Day is commemorated worldwide on 8 March every year.
The International Focus on 8 March 1996 will be "To translate the Platform for Action from words into action".
March 8 1996 Media Enquiries/Michael Fumarola, Tel (012) 312-7650, Fax, 324-2647