On Friday the world observed International Women’s Day (IWD), the annual ritual of assessing the progress towards gender equality in the manifold socio-economic sectors especially in the workplace, the boardroom,health policy and practice, income disparity and pay gaps, political representation, gender-responsive budgeting, agriculture and more recently even in climate, ESG (environmental, social and governance) and renewable energy cohorts.
The fact that we indulge in this perennial soul-searching playbook suggests that the gender equality ecosystem remains a work in progress, albeit patronisingly slow in any meaningful transformative impact.
The reality for billions of women is that in societies across the world, including the West, shaking off patriarchy rooted in the very beginning of human existence as symbolised by the Abrahamic faith traditions and subsequently nurtured by over two millennia of feudal, imperialist, and colonial mindsets, has been an uphill struggle throughout history.
Although there have been commendable pockets of progress in closing the gender gaps over the past few decades, and March has also been dedicated to Women’s History Month, the inequality metrics remain doggedly entrenched largely because of a mismatch between policy, corporate and other initiatives on the one hand and their urgent implementation on the other hand. This is largely due to a toxic mix of paying lip service, misplaced and oft subliminal paternalism, a lack of political will and policy prioritisation, a lack of resource allocation, and downright misogyny.
Social media with its nefarious influencers, populist politics, pornography, the callous abdication of any responsibility over race and gender equality hate content by tech giants, and the inability and lack of urgency of governments and international gatekeeper organisations in regulating the online space, have contributed to increased misogyny, sexual harassment and the marginalisation of women.
No country or society is spared. The reality is that gender inequality transcends wealth, class, economic status, ethnicity, creed, cultural mores and faith traditions.
A recent global study by pollster Ipsos Mori and King’s College London suggests that more Brits, Italians, Germans, Brazilians, Indians and Spaniards concur with such sentiments. In Spain and India, both with traditional macho patriarchies, the feedback was a disconcerting 80% and 75% of respondents. This is a pity given that Kerala is uniquely regarded as a matrilineal society – the only state in India if not the world to do so. But even here the gender paradoxes are striking, having the highest female jobless rate in India and pronounced gender imbalances.
If we use Madiba’s haunting lament as a yardstick that “freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all forms of oppression”, then South African women and for that matter billions of others elsewhere are far from free! Democracy, ideology and liberation are neither panaceas nor guarantors of women’s emancipation.
While the equal rights of women are enshrined in the widely acknowledged progressive Constitution and Bill of Rights of democratic South Africa, women, especially those in rural and inner-city areas, have borne the brunt of extreme brutality touching almost every social and financial inclusion metric, including the sexist attitudes of at least two presidents to HIV and its spread, which resulted in yet another metric of shame – one of the highest incidence of Aids per capita in the world.
One can call out the social conservatism of the ANC founders and the entrenched patriarchy and misogyny within the ruling party’s own ranks – a microcosm of such attitudes in general perhaps in wider society. It took the ANC, founded in 1912, another 31 years to accept women as full members in 1943 when the pioneering activist
Charlotte Mannya Maxeke, a founder of the Bantu Women’s League, a forerunner to the ANC Women’s League, joined the ranks.
* Parker is an economist and writer based on London
Cape Times