E Thabethe: Gender and Women Economic Empowerment workshop

20 February 2006

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