SAWID: Message of support for Barometer 2020

Ms. Colleen Lowe Morna and Members of the SADC Gender Protocol Alliance

Please accept our warmest greetings and congratulations for organising this webinar launch of the 12 th edition of the SADC Gender Barometer #VoiceandChoice in the Time of COVID-19 at such an uncertain time in the life of our country.

At a time of increasing global financial instability and growing social unrest due to unmet human needs worldwide, the status, equality and well-being of South African women is a cause of great concern. Women and poor families in South Africa continue to face tremendous obstacles in reaching their full human potential, and the face of poverty remains overwhelmingly a female one. It is clear that women themselves need to become agents of their own development.

The Covid pandemic merely exacerbated existing gender, race and class inequalities worldwide, opening up fault-lines in the structure of the economy, bringing to the surface centuries of racial inequality, and laying bare distorted and violent power relationships between men and women.

Data from Statistics SA have pointed out that unemployment and lack of schooling are key drivers of poverty, and that 79% of individuals with no education are poor in South Africa. Households with no employed adults, therefore, or who have adults who lack formal education, present a vicious cycle of deprivation

The women of South Africa are determined to act as Champions of Change towards the eradication of poverty and inequality, with women at the centre of the development agenda, focusing their efforts in alignment with strategic outcomes and goals articulated in the African Decade of Women, the vision 2030 of the National Planning Commission, and the New Growth Path of South Africa.

We therefore fully support this exciting launch and we are determined to collaborate with you in every way to ensure that SADC women’s agency is highlighted and legislated, so that the human dignity enshrined in the South African Constitution becomes a reality for every young girl and woman in our region.