South Africa: Women’s month approaching, show us the money for gender equality?

South Africa is gearing up for commemorating women’s month during August and the 9th of August is set aside as National Women’s Day. It is time to take stock of whether women have much to ululate. The country seems to be taking one-step forward and two steps backwards in terms of achieving gender equality. Progressive laws and policies are in place but the gap lies in implementation and allocation of human and financial resources.

For instance, South Africa has set up a Ministry of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities but on closer analysis at the budgetary allocations, the agency gets the least of the share.There are inadequate human resources to deal with the vast problems related to the continued marginalisation of women in communities and in particular, the gender violence scourge and high poverty levels that families continue to experience.

At an inaugural launch of the Women and Budget initiative the Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana and Precious Moloi-Motsepe, co-chair of the Motsepe Foundation – who is spearheading the Women in Budget initiative promised to consult with women from both business and civil society and draw up a report on what the gaps were in the 2012 Budget when it came to supporting women.

The report would be presented during Women’s Month in August, and would hopefully help inform Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on how to draw up next year’s budget to ensure it did more to empower and benefit women

So this is something to look forward to in the coming month as the nation also awaits the launch of the National Gender Based Violence Council by the same Ministry also scheduled for August. This is in response to gender based violence which has reached alarming levels as shown by the Gauteng Gender Based Violence indicators project conducted by Gender Links and Medical Research Council. The report showed that at least

The Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance is calling on government to ensure that the Gender equality bill currently in the making will receive sufficient financial backing to help the country meet the 28 targets of the SADC Gender Protocol by 2015.