Does South Africa really need another gender equality bill?

Human resource experts in South Africa are skeptical about the practical implications of the Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill.

The bill aims to enforce a blanket target of 50/50 representation in all sectors of the South African labour market, both public and private.

The founder and CEO of the Landelahni Recruitment Group, Sandra Burmeister, said that the problem with the bill is that it does not distinguish between markets where there may not be suitably qualified women.

“The question is whether we have the resources to meet the proposed 50 percent targets,” she said.

The Commission for Employment Equity reported steady gains for women in management positions, but a study compiled my MasterCard showed that South African women still do not enjoy equality with their male counterparts.

While I understand and even agree to some extent with Burmeister’s concerns, I think the bill is necessary to push forward a less gendered society and encourage women to enter traditionally male vocations.

In a country with a 25% unemployment rate, students are more likely to pursue tertiary education in fields where they stand a better chance of being employed.

The guarantee of after-school opportunities in technical fields might also have a positive impact on South Africa’s dwindling maths and science literacy rates.

J Brooke Spector writes that of the 400 000 students admitted to South Africa’s Matric (final) exams, “only 50,000 or so will have achieved a 50% passing level in mathematics, and less than 10,000 will have achieved an 80% level in that subject.”

In addition, stimulating employment opportunities for women might help to curb the rising levels of child marriage. A recent report by the The Women, Children and People with Disabilities Ministry found that

Girls with low levels of schooling are more likely to be married early, and child marriage has been shown to virtually end a girl’s education. Conversely, girls with secondary schooling are up to six times less likely to marry as children, making education one of the best strategies for protecting girls and combating child marriage.

So while it is true that there might be an initial shortage of skilled women, a shortage caused by, among other things, the gendered labour market, I think the bill will be able to stimulate development to meet the demand in a way that market forces have not.

The Commission for Gender Equality is awaiting feedback on its request to speed up the bill.

Tafelberg refuses to publish award-winning author’s new book

Writer Annelie Botes.

Annelie Botes’ latest book, Swart op Wit, has been turned down by one of South Africa’s powerhouse publishers following a controversial interview two years ago.

Tafelberg decided against publishing the manuscript in August, but Botes only recently went public with the decision.

Swart op Wit (‘black on white’) was intended to clarify comments she made in an interview with Rapport during which she admitted to not liking black people because she doesn’t understand them. She later told the Mail & Guardian that her attitude is partially fueled by fear.

This sparked a lot of controversy, most of it knee-jerk reactions along the line of “this sort of thing doesn’t belong in the new South Africa”.

This isn’t a view I disagree with. Like a lot of South Africans I share the dream of a non-racial society. But I find the reaction to Botes’ comments vividly disproportionate to the situation.

Our gross overreactions to any and all blips of racism seem even more bizarre when contrasted with our sanguine attitude toward corrupt politicians, crime, poverty, and education, which leads me to believe that the strong criticism of racism may be more indignation for its own sake than the product of true conviction.

That’s not useful in the new South Africa. What we need is honesty, even honest mistakes, and the empathy and maturity to learn and grow from them.

I think white South Africans in general are adrift in a cultural void. English-speaking white people are a minority within a minority. Afrikaans-speaking white people are divided among themselves, with many unable or unwilling to separate their ethnicity from ethno-centrism or to reinvent Afrikanerskap apart from Apartheid’s legacy.

Many have abandoned their cultural legacy entirely or don’t believe it ever existed.

Seen in this light, maybe Botes’ comments are not all that surprising.

“Only when we appreciate our own culture will we be able to respect and value other cultures and see in them the gifts of God,” writes Dr Madge Karecki, a lecturer at the University of South Africa.

Until South Africans figure out where in the cultural soup they go, toes are going to be tread on. But I’d rather we honestly, humbly blunder about than strike the pose currently in vogue.