Programme director
Business Women Association (BWA) President Kunyalala Maphisa
Representative of Nedbank
CEO Business Unity SA, Jerry Vilakazi
Director-General of the Department for Women, Children and People with Disabilities
Mr Sipho Zikode, Deputy Director-General at Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
Honoured guests
Ladies and gentlemen
It is a great pleasure for me to join you this afternoon as we release the 8th edition of the annual Women in Leadership Census. The census has become a critical measure of progress in women representation at board and management level in private and public sector in South Africa.
We need to consistently monitor the progress we are making in increasing women representation in all sectors particularly in decision making positions. This will enable us to identity and replicate best practices and be able to take corrective measures to deal with any form of resistance to transformation.
The key challenge facing us is that women are most affected by the high levels of unemployment and poverty in our country. African women in particular are identified as most affected with SA Institute for Race Relations estimating unemployment to be as high as 60% amongst African women aged 16-24 years.
The report being released today indicates that women are also underrepresented at 45% of the employed population in our country. As 2011 has been declared the year for job creation, we have a task to ensure that all job creation initiatives pay particular attention on the plight of women. We have to ensure that a percentage of the R9 billion job fund is targeted at women. Women have also called for an Empowerment Fund for Women. We need to engage with this matter and agree on how much we want and what we are going to use it for.
This year also marks the centenary of International Women’s Day, a day which started 100 years ago with the demands for women to vote and to be voted into public office and better working conditions. The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day has continued to focus on the issue of employment for women under the theme:
‘Equal access to education and training, science and technology: A pathway to decent work for women’
The area of science and technology offers great opportunities for advancement of women both as active participants in these sectors and as consumers of information and communication technology (ICTs). The New Growth Path acknowledges that new economic developments around the knowledge-intensive sectors and green technologies require a new kind of education and training as well as the establishment of learning organisations. Coupled with a recovering economy, these sectors provide a great opportunity for recruitment of the large number of young women and people with disabilities coming through our basic education system.
As business women already at the upper echelons of the economy, you have an obligation to support initiatives aimed at mentoring girls into diverse sectors of our economy. There are a number of these initiatives requiring private sector support including:
- Dinaledi school programme which promotes enrolment and performance in maths and science
- Girls and Boys Education Movements
- Techno Girls which facilitates exposure to various career options through job shadowing
It is of much concern that women constitute less than 10% of CEOs and chairpersons of boards of companies listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). They only hold less than 16% of directorship and 21% of executive management positions.
It is also disturbing to note that the number of top performing companies with 25% or more women directors and executive managers continue to decrease from 58 in 2008 to 37 companies in the latest report. At the bottom end, the list of worst performers with no woman at directorship or executive management remains constant at 27 companies.
These challenges clearly indicate the urgent need for additional tools to hasten the process of transformation, 16 years into our democracy. We have to find measures to address this abnormality which is a major an indictment on the process of economic transformation as far as it relates to women of South Africa. I am committed to join the campaign by BWA to demand that gender diversity be included in JSE listing rules and the King Code.
The proposed Gender Equality Bill should seek to address issues of enforcement and compliance to achieve our target of 50/50 gender parity. The Bill is still work-in-progress and we have asked the South African Law Commission to work with us in consolidating the research necessary for development and passing of this Bill.
Programme director, it is encouraging that under the leadership of the ANC, government continues to lead in terms of increasing women representation with figures above 40% of elected positions in local government, parliament and cabinet. We have called on opposition parties to play their role in advancing the country towards gender parity by increasing the number of women candidates on their lists for local government elections.
We will also be monitoring all government departments to ensure that the public service continues to increase from the current 35% of women at senior management level. We will equally be monitoring compliance with regard to 2% employment equity for people with disabilities.
A number of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) continue to feature amongst the top performing companies in the Census and we need to encourage more SOEs to make efforts to feature in this list. Last week, Cabinet added to this good performance by endorsing the appointment of Nombulelo (Pinky) Moholi as the Chief Executive Officer of Telkom SA. I would like to congratulate Pinky Moholi for being the first woman Chief Executive to lead this major information and communication technology entity.
We also welcome the announcement by JSE that its deputy chief executive, Nicky Newton-King, will assume the position of chief executive at the end of this year. She becomes the first woman to run this institution in its history of 120 years.
We need to continue to advocate for more of these appointments. The Women in Leadership Census is one of the tools we need to use to demonstrate the challenges that still face women and campaign for more action to be taken to empower women and achieve gender equality in all sectors of our society.
Thank you for your attention.
Source: Department of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities
