Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.
I have a simple message for you today. Muslim women must take advantage of the equality provision in the Constitution. Don’t hold back, take what we fought for and won and make it work for you. Shape your talents and make yourself the best you can.
Women have been on the wrong end of the stick for far too long. Women have been powerless for far too long. Women have been the “hewers of wood and drawers of water”for far too long. Look at the consequences. Look at the global consequences of inequality. More women die in wars than men. More women live in poverty than men. More women are unemployed than men.
When we use women’s talents, then we all benefit. When use women’s talents, we build a better world. We have a long history of struggling for both political and economic emancipation. South African women organised and rose to the political challenge of fighting for their freedom. Out of this triumphant organisation of resistance to oppression came the legendary slogan: “Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo”.
In union affairs, it is women who focused on the most disadvantaged workers and fought vigorously for better conditions of work. In political organisations, women placed the gender agenda at the forefront of debate and action. In the education sector, women led and lead the charge to equal access for all.
Today, South Africa has achieved a general level of gender equality - in no small measure shaped by our constitution - that has only been accomplished in other countries after many decades of democracy. For the first time we have large numbers of women in Parliament.
For the first time, we have a substantial number of women as school principals. For the first time, we have women as vice chancellors. For the first time, we have women heading up state owned enterprises. And we have women as business executives in South Africa, although not enough women are members of boards.
Despite progressive government policy, we have not yet created a comprehensive and systematic approach to structuring key impact programmes affecting the worst forms of gender inequality. As you know, we live in a world where the influence of science and technology is ubiquitous. It lies at the heart of our communication, our household needs, our transportation; our entertainment, and increasingly, of the education process itself.
The sciences cast a broadening shadow over every aspect of our lives, and in practically every instance it acts to improve our lives. But we need more scientists, more mathematicians, and more engineers. In other words we are faced with an urgent and deepening challenge in the field of human capital development.
In government one of our main aims is to instill a spirit of innovation in our nation - a willingness to look at challenges afresh, to consider problems and their solutions from different angles, and most importantly, to come up with solutions that act to solve known and real problems.
We used to rely on new ideas coming from universities and major companies in the US and Europe. Ideas flowed from this innovative core to the idea-and-technology-dependent periphery. This is no longer solely the case.
The core and periphery are being scrambled up. Places that were on the margins of innovation ten years ago -Bangalore and Pune in India, Daejon in Korea, Shanghai and Shenzhen in China – are now essential stops in the continuous flow of people, ideas and technologies around the world. Of course, the development of China and India into science and technology global contenders did not happen overnight.
The Chinese and Indian governments chose to invest in technology and scientific education. As a result China has lifted huge numbers of its citizens out of poverty by expanding its production of manufactured goods, while India’s growth and development is largely the result of IT-enabled services.
Innovation in China and India is also not just about new knowledge, but about knowledge that is new to these countries. It’s about emulation and adaptation and diffusion. This kind of innovation is important because it helps to understand why these economies are growing so fast and how rapidly they are likely to grow in the future. A lot of South African innovation is of this kind and takes place well behind the frontier of technological innovation.
Let me say a word or two specifically about science. Our lives have been improved immeasurably by science, engineering and medicine. They have provided us with fast transport and communications, safer and better accommodation, better medical care, abundant energy, reliable and clean water and food, and infrastructures to support all these necessities.
Science has helped us gain an understanding of how human activity is warming the climate, and what impact that will have on food and water security, and, crucially, what needs to be done to slow or reverse the warming trend.
Engineering offers us practical ways to meet these challenges by developing clean energy sources and transforming our ageing buildings and transport technologies so that they are efficient and sustainable.
There is always one particular breakthrough in science and technology that each of us counts as special - the growth of the internet, the first heart transplant, the discovery of Australopithecus Sediba.
For women the breakthrough last year in the prevention of AIDS is particularly significant – the proof that ARV treatment is also a prevention of transmission to a partner – because women are particularly at risk of HIV infection. I want more Muslim women to choose to become scientists.
Yet the peculiar thing is that while we now have a gender balance in favour of women at university, there is a postgraduate research balance in favour of men. This is not something that I know about in the abstract. I am the mother of a daughter who has just completed her PhD in genetics. I am keenly aware of the challenges she faces as a woman in a man’s world.
We all need mentors but women perhaps need mentoring of a special kind at university in the sciences. We need interventions in favour of developing women in research, not only for its own sake but also to compensate for women’s dual careers at home and work.
Some practical intervention are already in place, the provision of equipment grants; special conference funding, workshops in publication and writing skills; postgraduate grants and research fellowships for women, special concessions for study leave (including lecturing replacements), as well as active institutional communication about research opportunities. Without incentives that support and recognise women in research, significant change is unlikely to take place.
We have opened up our universities to change, and thousands of black students and women today enjoy state-supported access to higher education. We invest in frontier research in universities in order to promote breakthroughs in the major new crosscutting fields like nano-technology, bio-technology and eco (or green) technology.
Yet there is still much work to do. South Africa is short of skills. We are concerned about numbers of graduates leaving South Africa, both black and white. We know that the only way to entice them back is to offer them better work, pay and opportunities.
South Africa is, like many developing and developed countries, in the grip of a skills shortage. Globally the market for peoplewith portable skills in engineering, finance, marketing, construction, health care, management and technology is exploding.
Companies operate in dozens of countries, requiring complex technologies and a massive pool of highly skilled people able to navigate tricky international waters. Low-income developing countries like China and India are spending billions on infrastructure, creating enormous demand for skilled workers. All these things are creating a fierce competition for talent.
In closing, I would like to reiterate that significant progress has been made in South Africa with regards to the issues facing women in education. We recognise our national and international obligations in relation to addressing inequalities between men and women in the education system, and we need to move beyond a demographic transformation to address the qualitative experiences of young people in the education system at all levels.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of all women throughout the world towards our struggle for liberation.
