So much achieved; so much left undone

National Women’s Day in SA commemorates the multiracial march of about 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria on August 9 1956 to protest against the introduction of pass laws.

When reflecting on what it means for me to be a woman in SA today, I cannot but be appreciative of what women’s activism has done for my life.

It would be anywhere from impossible to difficult to be a somewhat successful finance professional and single mother to two girls in many countries outside SA. My quality of life would be unimaginably worse if I lived in Afghanistan, and a tad less comfortable if I lived in Lagos.

In SA, more women receive undergraduate education than men. The laws and social attitudes about women in the workplace make overt discrimination taboo. Shortcomings in how women are treated remain in the spotlight, and closing the gaps in educational and career opportunities between men and women is given priority. My career has thrived, as have those of other women around me. I get to have letters behind my name on LinkedIn, and I can strive for the corner office.

In many societies, the social stigma attached to having children out of marriage has left women who could not form desirable marriages childless. Other than some minor irritations, single-parent families are welcomed everywhere and included in everything in this country. In many countries, including some advanced economies, women barely earn enough to maintain a household and care effectively for their families as single parents. Access to opportunities and a relatively low cost of living allows me to financially support my children and be there for them physically and emotionally. In our world, this is a privilege I do not take for granted.

Yet, when thinking about Women’s Day I also feel a deep rage at things undone, bodies unloved and citizens betrayed. Poor SA women have no access to the privileges I take for granted. The Federation of SA Women contributed to the Congress of the People where the Freedom Charter was drawn up in 1955. It addressed the need for childcare provision, housing, education, and equal pay and equal rights with men regarding property, marriage and guardianship of children. For poor SA women and women in rural areas, that list of demands remains unfulfilled.

Women doing unskilled work often live in shacks in unsafe communities and travel long distances to work. Their days are so long that they can barely take care of their children, and their wages so low that they remain in poverty.

Their children receive an education that is so deficient as to guarantee lack of social mobility. Women’s bodies are not safe, and gender-based violence is endemic.

Equal pay remains a well documented problem across all income spectrums.

While equality is codified in the SA constitution, women still struggle to access equal rights with men regarding property, marriage and guardianship of children, especially where customary laws are dominant and social norms patriarchal. Access to equality is mediated by a society and bureaucracy that is itself patriarchal.

The women who went to the Women’s March in 1956 thought that if they defeated apartheid, they would defeat patriarchy. The end of apartheid and the advent of the new constitution gave women legal rights. The hope would have been that legal rights, once bestowed, would filter easily through society. This has not happened.

It should not be the case, but it takes resources to claim rights. In this, as in many things, SA’s economic inequality replicates as inequality in other spheres of life.

The year 1955 was 67 years — three generations — ago. For women in a position to reach for what these women fought for, the intervening years have seen a gradual increase in access to rights that is enviable across the world. Yet for poor and rural women, those rights remain intolerably circumscribed.

I CANNOT BUT BE APPRECIATIVE OF WHAT WOMEN ’ S ACTIVISM HAS DONE