If things are to change – women must do it

Sometimes I lose hope for women. When what could arguably be the most powerful women’s organisation in this country – the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) – unashamedly admits publicly that a woman is not ready to lead SA, then we are in serious trouble.

The women in the ANC mustn’t complain if other parties such as the DA and NFP are grooming women leaders who are ready to lead this country if an opportunity arises. These parties are progressive because they see the country is ready for a woman president.

Our girl children need role models in politics. We can’t raise a generation that will behave like its grandmothers and mothers before it – vote and support men to be in positions of power, while they settle for less. We need to change that. If we say to our girl children they are just as brilliant as any other child, girl or boy, we need to show them examples.

The ANCWL is expected to be championing the fight for women’s emancipation because of the struggle credentials of its founding mothers. Instead the custodians of the green and black uniform are the ones spitting on the graves of all those gallant women heroes of our struggle for liberation. They are trashing the women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 against oppression and against the pass laws, and those who were jailed and banished for their courage to stand up against apartheid.

Their march to Pretoria was motivated by the realisation that if women didn’t stand up for themselves, no one would, not even the men in their lives could fight on their behalf. In fact, no man would have succeeded in mobilising the women from all sectors of society to march against their oppression; it had to be women themselves because they were the ones whose dignity was being trampled upon.

Women at the time were treated worse than men. They had no rights in terms of the law even fewer in terms of so called customary laws. Women then had no signing powers; therefore, they couldn’t enter into a legal agreement. They couldn’t own a house, nor could they single-handedly open a bank account. In some families, women were forbidden to further their studies at tertiary institutions.

There is a part of my family where the women were not expected or even supported to go beyond Standard 6 (Grade 8), because once past puberty, they had to hone their cooking and sewing skills in preparation for marriage.

The only careers that were tolerated and highly recommended for women were nursing and teaching. So it took a lot for the women to defy stereotypes and oppression, and take to the street to demand their rights not to be oppressed further by being forced to carry a dompas.

That is leadership at its best. It took guts, tenacity, vision and inner strength to defy apartheid laws, let alone traditional, or even religious norms that dictated that women must be submissive and obedient. When leadership books are written, often wars that were fought by men, like the Anglo-Boer War, are always used as examples.

The march to the Union Buildings was an example of women’s ability to mobilise, organise, lead and execute a strategy and books ought to be written about that. Besides, not a single massacre of the oppressed masses in this country didn’t have women or girl child victims. Even in the recent Marikana killings, there was a female victim.

Women have always been at the forefront of our liberation struggle, precisely because they are the ones who felt the oppression the most.

Examples are many. The history of women’s struggle for liberation is well documented, which is why it is difficult to understand why the women in Mpumalanga would wake up one morning and decide that women are not ready to lead.

How dare they, the ANCWL tell SA, tell our girl children – after our history is littered with the bodies of women soldiers, young and old, who died so that women today can say they are free – that you and I cannot lead.

Our Parliament is full of women whether you voted for them or not, but they are there when the laws are shaped and promulgated. Our judiciary has a few women, but they are there nevertheless.

The same happens in the corporate world, civil society, everywhere – in fact there are more women than men in this country. The problem is that where it matters most, women are still discriminated against and marginalised.

A UN study titled “Women, Poverty and Economics”, confirms that “women bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty. Statistics indicate that women are more likely than men to be poor and at a risk of hunger because of the systematic discrimination they face in education, health care, employment and control of assets”.

The study further asserts that according to some estimates, women represent 70 percent of the world’s poor. They are often paid less than men for their work, with the average wage gap in 2008 being 17 percent; I have no doubt its even higher in SA. Women face persistent discrimination when they apply for credit for business or self-employment.

Official statistics say more than 25 million of SA’s population of 48 million people are women, and the highest population of poor rural dwellers are women.

And yet our sisters in Parliament and within the ANCWL are quite happy that we have a Ministry of Women, Children and People with Disabilities.

That is how important we are that we would be lumped in the same basket as the children.

It’s well and good for the government to be giving women and children grants to try and alleviate poverty, but I contend that SA women deserve more than subsidies to break the poverty cycle.

If we are really committed to the emancipation of women, we need a mind shift. Everything from education to infrastructure, has to be designed towards ensuring that women are empowered and therefore that they succeed.

It is not only women in the ANC who vote for men even 100 years after the organisation was formed, the trend repeats itself in all sectors of our society.

As Thenjiwe Mtintso, a member of the ANC NEC, wrote the other Sunday, women “should love themselves enough to believe in our ability to lead our country”. This may sound like a simple mantra but if this is where we need to start, so be it.

But something needs to happen and something needs to change and fast.

And that change is not going to come from our countrymen (excuse the pun) but it will come from the women themselves.