Significant emphasis was placed on the importance of networks and partnerships in shifting the agenda on sustaining the planet to address women’s experiences and concerns; and also, in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment in general. For example, it was revealed at the meeting that CPUT’s relationship building had led to its nomination as a participant at the international Commission on the Status of Women
A Think tank on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) established by CPUT with partners including UN Women was inaugurated at the meeting; and a number of other key university initiatives promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment were presented. These included efforts by the university’s leadership to promote the advancement of women and girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); a programme to empower girls and young women within the academic space; student led digital solutions to gender based violence (GBV); and a proposed initiative to support women’s entrepreneurship and the inclusive dissemination of fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies more effectively.
The conference was attended by the university’s leadership, including deans and directors from CPUT’s faculties and departments; representatives of the Student Representative Council (SRC); institutional partners including United Nations (UN) Women, Ilitha Labantu, Snake Nation, the Transformation Managers Forum (TMF) of Universities South Africa (USAf) and Higher Education Resource Services, South Africa (HERS SA); and a range of other government and civil society stakeholders, including the media.
1 Report on a meeting to celebrate International Women’s Day under the theme ‘Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow’ convened by the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) on 8 March 2022 at CPUT Granger Bay Campus, Cape Town Introduction The Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) held a meeting on 8 March 2022 in Cape Town to celebrate International Women’s Day under the theme “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”. 1
In addition, CPUT’s institutional drive to support communities in Cape Town and beyond was described and interrogated, including in relation to in its efforts to support vulnerable young women arriving as first year students at the university; and in relation to a Women’s Hub in Gugulethu, Cape Town, which was 1 The meeting was moderated by Nomfanelo Kota, former press attaché, Permanent Mission of South Africa to the United Nations (UN); and Nkhabele Marumo, Chairperson, Ilitha Labantu.
Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore once wrote: “Spring has passed. Summer has gone. Winter is here and the song that I meant to sing remains unsung. For I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument.” These lines talk to the inability to speak even (or particularly) when things are going wrong. In this context, Russian former world chess champion Gary Kasparov gave warning in his 2021 book, Winter is Coming, of the dangers of Putinism and of the complacency of the West in relation to this threat. In particular, he talks about the policy of appeasement, which is like feeding a crocodile in the belief that the crocodile will then only eat you last.
By contrast, women in leadership positions are more likely to advocate for the interests of the disenfranchised, that is, those who don't make it to the table but feel the effects of the decisions that are made by the leaders. In this regard, war is just one real world example of the negative impacts of gender inequality, highlighting the need to advocate for the rights of women In this regard, it is important to emphasise that the implementation of such rights does not come at the expense of men, rather allows for greater progress for all and the upliftment of future generations. Accordingly, everyone should look around themselves in their personal and professional capacities and ask where women are under represented and how the situation can be improved. Meanwhile, the pandemic and its accompanying negative impacts must not prevent efforts to grapple with the issue of gender inclusivity.
2 This section is based on remarks made by Professor Chris Nhlapo, Vice Chancellor of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by CPUT on 8 March 2022.
Session 1: Opening and inauguration of the Think Tank on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Opening remarks 2
Reflecting on the topic of gender equality for a sustainable tomorrow, which is the theme of International Women’s Day in 2022, it is important to reference the unfolding conflict between Russia and Ukraine which has the potential for producing a larger war and which has raised the spectre of nuclear annihilation. While men are usually the instigators of war (and of violent responses in domestic settings), it is always the women who deal with the heart breaking effects of the conflicts During the present war, Ukrainian women have set up makeshift hospitals in bunkers and cared for the most vulnerable, including sick young children.
2 launched by non profit partner Ilitha Labantu with the aim of collecting local women’s untold and unheard stories.
As a university of technology, it is important that CPUT accelerates the careers of women in technology and reinforces authentic women’s leadership in this space. Role model visibility in science and technology is critical to attracting more women to these fields. So, as an institution, CPUT has to have more professors
As an institution, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology has made a decision to be “One Smart CPUT”. The strategy focuses on two dimensions: the dimension of “oneness”, which speaks to people building a coherent society; and the dimension of “smartness”, which entails CPUT leveraging its status as a university of technology to use technology as a vehicle to achieve a number of key goals by 2030 and to make its processes as efficient as possible.
The intention now is to develop the next generation of women academic supervisors and lecturers in STEM subjects as part of efforts to respond to the broad transformation requirements of the country and the continent. The approach is practical, taking one step at a time in the belief that this is how change happens, incrementally but unremittingly. So, the aim is not to advocate for tectonic change, but rather to produce sub atomic and atomic changes which, when they come together, make a huge change. In this regard, all CPUT’s faculties, institutes and directorates should be seeking to ensure that such change is happening in every way possible.
The challenge may seem insurmountable today but that doesn’t mean that all efforts should not be made Future generations are depending on what is done in the present So, for CPUT, this is a time for choosing for choosing inclusivity; for choosing to provide reasonable accommodation and living standards to all members of society; for choosing moral values. Under the principle, “If not us, who else?”, the university has chosen to adopt a leadership position in addressing gender based violence and promoting inclusivity and transformation, leaving it to others to follow 2. CPUT’s STEM programme 3 If women put their minds to something they can achieve it. Women have come a long way to take up their legitimate space in society, especially in previously male dominated careers and boardrooms. In this context, International Women’s Day commemorates those women who have paved the way, fighting for freedom from oppression, for community rights and, importantly, for gender equality. For many years, these women were largely ignored in history texts, including the women who marched in 1956, such as Ida Mtwana, Josie Palmer, Helen Joseph, Amina Cachalia and Lucy Mvubelo. The life of Charlotte Maxeke, who was the first black South African women to obtain a PhD, may also be remembered today. Internationally, Katherine Johnson, the mathematician whose calculations helped to put American astronauts on the moon, may also be remembered as a role model. Meanwhile, however, science, technology, engineering and mathematics remain fields predominantly occupied by men. In the past decades, women have striven to be seen as equal to men in STEM fields, but the struggle continues in a number of ways whether it is in terms of accepting the intelligence of women; redressing the gender wage gap; or addressing the issue of the differential treatment of boys and girls in the family, in which the boys often enjoy privileged access to education while the girls are left to undertake the household chores. A 2019 study into women in STEM which was conducted with the support of the European Union’s (EU’s) Horizon Europe research and innovation framework found that only one third of researchers were women. It found that women doctoral graduates were over represented in education, but under represented in information and communications technology (ICT) subjects, comprising only 20% of the cohort, and in the fields of engineering and manufacturing and construction, where they comprised 29% of the cohort. The study further noted that women earned 70% less than their male colleagues. In addition, it was found that women account for about 10% of patent applications; one third 3 This section is based on remarks made by Professor Driekie Hay Swemmer, Executive Director: Office of the Vice Chancellor, CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
3 in STEM subjects and is, accordingly, taking action. For example, the Vice Chancellor’s prestigious achievement award spends more than R1 million a year to fund masters and doctoral students who are excelling academically and demonstrating positive graduate attributes. All the 12 students who received the award in 2021 were women.
CPUT realises that girls need to know that the world needs and respects them and their unique perspectives and insights. The sooner that girls can become comfortable and confident in STEM classrooms, the better. That is when they will learn to use their voice and trust that they have something to offer. Boys also participate actively in the project. CPUT has a core team of academics, including two
4 See Greg Perry, “Leveling the playing field for women in science and technology innovation in Africa”, Global Health Matters, 16 December 2021, accessed at https://www.ifpma.org/global health matters/leveling the playing field for women in science and technology innovation in africa/; and Adefunke Ekine and Ayotola Aremu, “Making the future of African STEM female”, Brookings Africa in Focus blog, 10 February 2022, accessed at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa in focus/2022/02/10/making the future of african stem female/
Girls and women experience significant disadvantage in relation to participation in STEM subjects as a result of multiple, complex, overlapping factors embedded in socialisation and learning processes. These include social, cultural and gender norms which affect how girls and boys are brought up, learn and interact with parents, family, friends, teachers and the wider community. Girls and young women are underrepresented in STEM subjects in many settings. They appear to lose interest in STEM during adolescence; and the gender gap becomes increasingly apparent in upper secondary education as reflected in girls’ choices in relation to advanced mathematics and sciences. Women continue to drop out of STEM disciplines in disproportionate numbers during higher education studies; while transitioning to the world of word; and even during their careers. Young women students may have to drop out of their studies to help with household problems for example, to look after family members with tuberculosis (TB) and/or Aids.
In an effort to address the disadvantage experienced by girl pupils, vice chancellor Nhlapo has launched a prestigious STEM schools project. In setting the agenda for this project, he prioritised demystifying mathematics, especially for women. He noted that CPUT as an anchor institution in the region should play a leading role in assisting catchment area schools, providing in service training and development for STEM educators and tutorial support for secondary school pupils at winter schools; and helping to increase the number of pupils taking academic mathematics rather than maths literacy. The aim, Nhlapo said, should be to improve the pass marks of Grade 12 pupils and to inspire the next generation of STEM academics. In this regard, the present project has been established in the belief that girls need to exposed at a young age to the different careers available to them in STEM; and in the belief that, in the context of the 4IR, women must be fully engaged and included in order to produce the range of diverse STEM industrial solutions that will be required to meet the future needs of the various groups in the population. Girls need to know that the worlds of engineering, coding, robotics, software development and biological research belong to them too. And STEM subjects are the gateway to these worlds The project has further been established in the belief that while girls are just as capable of excelling in STEM as boys, gender inequality affects performance. In this regard, the vice chancellor is mindful that gender stereotypes, environmental circumstances, levels of support and social beliefs determine how likely girls are to perform well and retain their interest in STEM. This is the matrix of factors he would like to address and change in an effort to foster gender equality. He believes that girls need to be afforded the opportunity to study after school instead of being obliged to complete chores. Parents and teachers should also encourage girls to receive tutoring before opting to replace mathematics with maths literacy.
4 of scientifically published authors; and a minority among the staff of research funding organisations. Overall, the statistics indicate a similar picture for sub Saharan Africa and for South Africa. 4
3. Keynote address 5
Director Calvin Maseko, close to R5 million has been raised during the past few years for the project.
deans, who are leading the STEM project, which has a footprint across the Western Cape and the Eastern Cape, where pupils are being taught the basics about robotics. With the support of CPUT Advancement
Looking forward and leveraging the outcomes of the project, CPUT aims to become the hub of STEM education in the Western Cape, a beacon of hope and excitement where the barriers to and myths about mathematics are broken down. One goal is to establish a world class research chair in STEM education who would undertake longitudinal studies, train and upskill educators and help to produce the next generation of scientists within a technology enabled environment.
The gathering convened by CPUT in partnership with UN Women is a bold, strong statement that the university remains a progressive leader among its peers on women’s empowerment and gender equality. This initiative and many others cement CPUT’s role as an unapologetic intellectual home for all those who are committed to building a truly equal and non sexist society.
The International Women’s Day theme for 2022 is “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow” This theme promotes reflection on the impact of climate change and how women around the world are responding to this. The theme is a call to action for the global community to accelerate the progress towards achieving gender equality in confronting the challenges arising from climate change. Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to the human race; it is a threat to sustainable development.
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Across the world, climate change continues to affect eco systems and livelihoods. However, it must be recognised and acknowledged that its impacts vary among the regions, and among generations, ages, classes and income groups, as well as in relation to gender. Those who are already the most marginalised and vulnerable will experience the most devastating impacts. The poor primarily in developing countries are expected to be disproportionately affected; and, consequently, will be in the greatest need of effective adaptation strategies. The stark reality is that most of those in poverty are women and the poorest households are headed by women. So, women are more vulnerable than men to the impacts of climate change, mainly because they tend to be more dependent on threatened natural resources. Accordingly, it is important to proceed from the premise that a sustainable future will remain a mirage unless gender equality is placed at the centre of the global response. There can be no sustainable future if there is no gender equality. This requires that the gender bias that dominates all aspects of global life be brought to an end. A gender perspective must inform all decision making processes and programmes adopted in response to climate change The gender dimensions of the causes and impacts of climate change need to be addressed in order to produce sustainable adaptation and mitigation solutions. The importance of integrating gender perspectives into climate change policies cannot be over emphasised given that women and men contribute differently to the causes of climate change and are affected differently by its impacts. Unfortunately, women have been marginalised from the corridors of power and decision making structures on climate policymaking and programmes, although they are the most affected.5Thissection is based on remarks made by CPUT Chancellor Thandi Modise, Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
It is said that girls with dreams become women with vision. CPUT is aiming to give substance to this adage.
Consistent with the theme for International Women's Day in 2022, tribute should be paid to the women who are leading efforts to protect the environment through climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. In this regard, it is important to honour women such as Wangari Maathai of Kenya who continuously struggled to defeat the vicious cycles of environmental degradation and poverty. The green belt movement, which she founded in 1977, has planted millions of trees across Kenya as part of efforts to prevent deforestation and soil erosion, and in order to generate income for many women and their families. In recognition, Maathai received the Nobel Peace Prize for her dedication and commitment to the struggle for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation.
Reflecting on the threat posed by climate change, it is important to be mindful of the responsibility to bequeath to future generations an environment that will continue to be conducive to the sustenance of human life. The earth is humanity’s hope, we have nowhere else to run. Therefore, everything possible must be done to protect the earth and the environment. This must be done for the sake of the children who will be inheriting the earth.
The great threat posed by climate change has challenged the Department of Defence in South Africa to take action. There should be a million trees of life planted, not a million bombs of war. All energy and
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Women and men in rural communities remain dependent on natural resources for their families’ livelihoods. They are responsible for sourcing the food, water and energy for cooking and heating. They are responsible for subsistence farming in order to sustain their families. So, environmental degradation presents a significant additional burden for women. In this context, it is an irony that although women are central to food production, especially in Africa, access to land is still difficult for them. So, there needs to be a focus on efforts that can enable women to at least concentrate on ensuring that food is available and Women'sstored. capacity to respond to climate change is undermined by the ingrained sexist attitudes and gender discrimination that characterise many societies. For example, women have less access than men to land, credit, and participation in decision making structures. They have less access to the resources that could enhance their capacity to adapt to climate change. Against this background, a gender sensitive response to climate change remains essential to any effective intervention. A gender perspective on climate change calls for women’s priorities and needs to be incorporated in the responses which are forged.Meanwhile, at the same time as acknowledging the vulnerability of women to climate change, it is also important that they should not be seen as mere victims of climate change. Women are also active agents of adaptation and mitigation. Historically, women have been at the forefront of developing knowledge and skills related to water harvesting and storage, and food preservation. Thus, in the context of the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women, their voices must be heard. Women must be given the space to lead global efforts to combat environmental degradation and global warming. Unfortunately, many climate change policies and programmes across the world do not adequately acknowledge women's vulnerabilities and needs, and the contributions that they can make as agents of change. In this context and as countries prepare for this year’s sixty sixth session of the Conference on the Status of Women (CSW66) to be held in New York, it is important to ensure that the voice of South African civil society is heard. Accordingly, the outcomes of the present engagement should contribute to the country’s input at CSW66
7 resources should be deployed to defeat the scourge of climate change. The war against environmental degradation requires the kinds of discipline, skills and technology for which the military is renowned.
There should be increasing numbers of women graduating in the fields of mathematics, science, engineering and technology. Democracy has freed women to venture into these fields and to transcend the narrow confines of what are traditionally considered women’s careers. Although some progress has been made in this regard, it remains too little. This trend must be accelerated through deliberate efforts by the government, the country’s institutions of higher learning and civil society. The collective efforts to
South Africa’s democratic government has always been conscious of the need to preserve the environment for posterity. The 1996 White Paper on Defence dedicated a section to the matter, recognising the centrality of the environment to sustainable development. In addition, an environment unit was established in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). South Africa pursues a policy of defence for development and the Department of Defence continues to be involved in a number of sustainable development initiatives. For example, it recently participated in major infrastructure repairs and efforts to prevent pollution in the Vaal River system. In addition, army engineers continue to build bridges in rural areas to enable communities to access various amenities and service delivery points.
Women now have the kind of access to services and positions that would have been no more than a dream 25 years ago. Women occupy influential positions in government and civil society and play important roles in national decision making none of which would have been possible without the advent of democracy in However,1994.
the struggle for women’s emancipation is far from over. Although significant strides have been made to empower women and to promote gender equality, women still bear a disproportionate burden of the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment. The rural profile of South Africa continues to be that of a female headed household; growing poverty; human rights abuses; increased GBV; unemployment; and prevalent HIV/Aids. The greater the advances, the greater the scourges. Women continue to be marginalised and discriminated against in terms of economic opportunities and in the labour Notwithstandingmarket.the progressive nature of the South African dispensation, more needs to be done to ensure equal pay for equal work. South Africa has some significant policies aimed at advancing women's empowerment, but there is a continuing challenge in translating these into implementation, including through the legal framework. Action must be taken to strengthen the voices of women in parliament, the legislature and communities to make sure that execution, implementation and monitoring of the policies takes place. In addition, GBV continues to rob women of the opportunity to become productive citizens. It denies them their constitutional rights. It condemns them to lives of perpetual fear. They are therefore prevented from enjoying the fruits of South Africa’s freedom and democracy.
International Women’s Day in 2022 also provides South Africa with an opportunity to reflect on the progress that has been made on gender equality and women's empowerment since the 1994 democratic breakthrough and to appreciate the challenges that still persist in this regard. Despite the multiplicity of challenges facing women in the country, it should be acknowledged that South Africa's democracy has registered significant progress in restoring the dignity of women. Through the Constitution of 1996 and an array of other measures introduced since 1994, the position of, and conditions for, women have improved. The living conditions of most ordinary women have undergone a significant qualitative change.
UN Women’s executive director, Sima Sami Bahous, has called for this moment to be one when it is recalled that there are answers, not just in relation to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 on gender equality, but through the advancement of the gender equality components of all the 17 SDGs In this regard, a recent meeting of African Union (AU) ministers, which was held in preparation for the sixty sixth session of Commission on the Status of Women and where the reversal of gains was noted, affirmed the importance of: promoting women’s leadership in building a climate resilient future; investing in the resilience of women; combatting GBV; ensuring free and safe migration; expanding gender sensitive financing; and enhancing statistics and data collection as a basis for the evidence based advancement of the women’s empowerment agenda.
promote women’s empowerment and gender equality must be intensified as tribute to those martyrs who have laid down their lives for an equal and non sexist society. Response to the keynote address 6
International Women’s Day is a key commemoration for UN Women, marking the various milestones and commitments produced through various platforms which have been established to create an enabling environment to ensure that women enjoy their full rights and security. These have included the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action and the Generation Equality Forum of 2021, as well as a host of laws and policies and programmes. It has been a long journey with many losses, but there is a need to celebrate the achievements which have been made amid continuing efforts to strive for a better tomorrow so that the dignity and the right to life and prosperity of all women and girls may be restored.
The theme of International Women’s Day in 2022, which seeks to promote gender equality in efforts to address climate change and reduce the impacts of environmental disasters, comes at a pivotal moment.
UN Women was established in 2010 to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.
The interdependence of gender and the environment in response to climate change, and in building a more sustainable future for all, is clear. However, advancing gender equality in the context of climate crisis and disaster reduction has proved difficult. The challenges have included widespread social inequalities; the impacts of the global Covid 19 pandemic; and the violence and instability that threatens the daily safety and security of women across the world. Much of the latest data talks to the link between gender, social equity and climate change. In the absence of gender equality, a sustainable and equal future will remain out of reach.
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Meanwhile, climate change and instability have had and will continue to have severe, lasting impacts on the world’s environment and economic and social development, particularly among the most vulnerable and marginalised who are experiencing profound impacts from climate change. Women comprise most of the world’s poor and are generally more dependent on natural resources. In this context, it is crucial to support women’s leadership in finding solutions. In the past year, at the Generation Equality Forum, a coalition for feminist action for climate justice was launched, bringing together governments, the private sector, the UN and civil society organisations (CSOs) to make concrete commitments to climate justice. This action coalition is helping to drive global action and investment with a focus on: financing for gender just solutions; increasing women’s and girls’ resilience to climate change and disaster; and increasing the use of data on gender equality and climate change.
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6 This section is based on remarks made by Ayanda Mvimbi, Programme Specialist, UN Women, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by CPUT on 8 March 2022.
Many encouraging stories have emerged from the work of UN Women and their partners in relation to women’s efforts to address the issue of climate change. In Morocco, for instance, women are developing strategies to adapt to climate change. In the fisheries sector, about 10,000 women collect shellfish and other seafood along the coastline to make a living, risking their lives daily. Through the project there, they have managed to find ways in which they can ensure their safety while also producing food security for their families and communities.
In South Africa, CPUT in collaboration with UN Women has launched a think tank into gender equality and the empowerment of women. The university has also been an advocate of UN Women’s HeForShe programme since 2018. This collaboration has had a significant impact through activities conducted by the SRC. From the UN’s perspective, the engagement with CPUT has indicated how important it is to involve academia in gender equality and women’s empowerment efforts. The research expertise offered by universities can produce data and evidence based solutions that can help accelerate the achievement of gender equality for a sustainable tomorrow. New solutions are a pressing need, given that on the present trajectory, it would take 136 years to close the gender gap 7 This is too long. So, the question is how to use academic research to fine tune and understand the precise nature of the problems being faced, because it is through such clarity that effective solutions may be found and piloted. There is a particular need for data for Southern Africa. In this context, CPUT’s think tank has the potential to revolutionise how gender equality and women’s empowerment is promoted in the region. In its work, UN Women relies on its partners to champion and provide leadership on some of the key matters that are being addressed. UN Women understands that it is through collective efforts that the future can be shaped as envisaged. It therefore sets great store on its partnership with CPUT which seeks to identify a number of the issues which are preventing progress on the gender equality and women’s empowerment agenda.
A particular concern at present is the widely held belief that there is too much focus on women’s and girls’ issues a view that is commonplace on the streets and in social media. The challenge here is ensuring that people have the right kind of information so that they understand why it is so important to focus on women and girls; and that gender equality is not just about women, but also men. They will then understand why the present strategies continue to be required. The university has an important role to play in such popular education. People must have access to the right information, which needs to be translated to address the understandings of different audiences. In addition, CPUT has a key role to play in research and knowledge development that can produce effective responses to the immediate challenges of gender inequality and construct the building blocks of longer term societal change and transformation. In this regard, UN Women supports the success of the CPUT think tank both as part of its efforts to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment and as a best practice model that can be shared with the world at large.
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A further present focus for UN Women is gender sensitive budgeting, in particular through the adoption of preferential procurement policies. UN Women has identified this as an area which, if transformed, could foster women’s economic empowerment. Accordingly, it is currently working with South Africa’s 7 This projection is based on the rate of change as recorded in 2020 by WHICH SURVEY? PLEASE CHECK WITH UN WOMEN
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Gender equality is crucial to all the Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, unless gender equality is entrenched in processes, practices and structures, Africa will be depriving itself of the productivity, strength and opportunities that its women, who are 50% of the population, can contribute
Women face a number of significant constraints in relation to career progression. They may have to compete with boys for family resources to acquire an education. They are also limited by what may be termed the “octopus woman syndrome”, under which they are expected to play multiple roles in their societies and communities. That is, they become everything to everyone except themselves: daughter, wife, mother, aunt, niece, cook, laundry person, cleaner and carer; and the list goes on.
Meanwhile, in the workplace, they have to make an extra effort to prove that they are competent since they are generally only in positions because they have earned them. This creates additional pressure which is exacerbated by the “PHD”, or pull her down syndrome. While men enjoy membership of the “boy’s club” which offers support and an opportunity to address problems at work in informal settings such as the golf course or over a beer; women enjoy no such support. Indeed, women can tend to tear each other down. In addition, amid a lack of access to resources for personal growth, women can often be presented with an invidious choice between personal priorities and career opportunities. In the context of all these challenges, it is critical that young women are properly mentored and guided, learning from the experience of previous generations in addressing the issues that they are likely to face. Whatever the nature of the challenges whether they concern cultural matters, gender specific responsibilities, issues in the workplace or fundamental societal inequalities there are many ways in which older women can guide younger women so that they may more effectively manage the stresses faced by previous generations. In this context, a number of approaches have been adopted, including life long learning and mentoring from within professional communities. Structured mentoring, in which both the mentor and mentee have certain responsibilities for their mutual benefit, has been found to be particularly effective. Such mentoring is a key tool deployed by Empower Her International, which seeks to develop the academic space for women. The initiative is a profoundly aspirational one. On the topic of sisterhood, Michelle Obama said: “We can all rise together and we can all win.” Another adage is that the sky is wide 8 This section is based on remarks made by Professor Beatrice Opeolu, Faculty of Applied Sciences, CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
Session 2: Empowering girls and young women at university 5. Empower Her International 8
The Empower Her International initiative was launched in 2021 offering training and mentorship in an effort to empower young women undergraduate students at universities. More broadly, the programme aims to contribute to future gender equality, by empowering the generations of women graduates still to come, making them efficient and effective, and thus producing a more inclusive tomorrow.
Presidency on a national protocol for preferential procurement which is aimed at supporting the greater participation of women in the economy.
9 This section is based on remarks made by Ella Mangisa, Ilitha Labantu, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by CPUT on 8 March 2022; it also makes reference to remarks made by Nomfanelo Kota as the moderator of the meeting.
Although Empower Her International is currently based only in Nigeria and South Africa, the larger vision is to produce a pan continental network, rolling out the initiative to train as many young women as possible across the continent. The goal is to produce a more productive, more competent and more confident younger generation of women. To this end, the initiative is actively seeking partners in a bid to support every girl child in Africa through their decisions and choices; and is looking forward to identifying the next country for engagement. In this way, it is following the path charted by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan who, in helping to craft the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), envisaged a “larger freedom” being made manifest through such collaborative continental initiatives.
Session 3: Women’s experiences and indigenous knowledge: A basis for understanding women’s issues
Empower Her International was established in response to a need for greater support for young women undergraduates.
11 enough for all to fly and never clash. Everyone can succeed together. In a similar vein, former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said: “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”
Next steps include convening Empower Her International workshops in South Africa during Women’s Month in August at CPUT and the University of the Free State (UFS).
The feedback and outcomes from the workshops have been encouraging. Two cohorts of women students are now engaged in the initiative and receive information, support and advice, including links to opportunities via a dedicated social media platform on WhatsApp. Many of the young women are now on LinkedIn and are connecting to other professional platforms to advance themselves. In general, the participants are making great strides, and are already using some of the skills they acquired during the initial training.
The maiden physical edition of the workshop took place in Nigeria; while in South Africa, under pandemic restrictions, the work was conducted virtually. Two workshops were held at the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta (FUNAAB), and at Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye. The workshop training included modules on creating an effective curriculum vitae (CV); achieving a study/work/life balance; goal setting; leveraging international opportunities; and using social platforms for professional visibility and opportunities.
It was noted that most of the present opportunities and support structures were focussed on supporting post graduate and post doctoral students and that relatively little was on offer for undergraduate women. So, the initial client group became any African female undergraduate who was willing to be mentored through an empowerment process over a period of time.
6. Women’s Hub Preservation of history, experiences and knowledge 9 Ilitha Labantu see women’s empowerment as critical in its work, echoing the UN Women’s definition of “empowerment” as a process of enabling or allowing individuals to think, take action and control, and work in an autonomous way. It is the process by which one can gain control over one’s destiny and the circumstances of one’s life.
Ilitha Labantu celebrates International Women’s Day in recognition of the roles played by women in all spheres social, economic, cultural, political and their significant achievements. In this spirit, it salutes the unsung heroines in the corridors of CPUT, in UN Women, in political spheres, in businesses and particularly in local communities, which is where many women’s aspirations are forged and where many of the challenges that they face reside. In these communities, women may find positive role models but may also encounter negative influences that can hamper them on a daily basis. For good or ill, the communities plant the seeds from which a different way of being may emerge
Ilitha Labantu has worked with student representative bodies at CPUT, offering free counselling to victims, now survivors, of violence and abuse within the institution. Young African women must deal with a lot; and Ilitha Labantu has shown how vulnerable these young women are and how they may be supported.
Ilitha Labantu has also been part of the institution’s Think tank on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. This partnership has been forged in the belief that universities should not and cannot exist in isolation their scholarship should be curious about the world around them. CPUT must be concerned with the communities from which many of its young women students come, including Gugulethu and ThroughKhayelitsha.such
joint efforts, Ilitha Labantu has come to realise CPUT’s commitment to addressing realities on the ground. The collaboration has further indicated the importance of bringing local stakeholders together so that they may network their capabilities to maximum effect in their own interests and those of the broader community. In this spirit, Ilitha Labantu has approached the university to support its efforts to establish a Women’s Hub which will record and safeguard the previously unheard stories of local Thewomen.project was first conceived in 1996 by Ilitha Labantu’s founder Mandisa Monakali, who, after assisting survivors during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) process in 1996, felt that there was a need to collect women’s untold stories and address the gaps in the country’s recorded history which continue to haunt it. Subsequently, in 1998, a national conference was convened by Ilitha Labantu on healing the wounds inflicted on women by apartheid, including the consequences of being involved in the
Ilitha Labantu is at its core an organisation born from hardships; an organisation that understands the definition of struggle; and one that understands the importance of perseverance, endurance, empathy and the prioritisation of efforts to enable women to prosper. Ilitha Labantu began at a grassroots level and continues to operate in this arena. It strives to assist women and girls to foster their sense of self worth; their right to make their own choices; and their access to opportunities and resources, building their ability to influence and direct social change and control their own destiny.
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Established in 1989, it is a social service educational organisation which focuses on addressing violence against women and children and supporting those affected by such violence. At its inception, it was the only organisation in the Western Cape that sought to empower women, protecting their rights and addressing the related issues of domestic violence and the abuse of women, as well as political violence. Based in Gugulethu township in Cape Town, it offers individual and family counselling; free legal advice and support; pre and post court preparation and support; skills training and development; and empowerment and capacity building workshops. In general, Ilitha Labantu seeks to meet the needs of local communities affected by high levels of violence and limited social and economic opportunities. It is located in the residential areas of its target group and provides easily accessible and inclusive services to survivors of GBV, as well as to the broader community.
The hub will also restore women’s indigenous knowledge, which has been quite excluded from documented history, to its rightful place as a key element of the African narrative. (In this regard, it is interesting how traditional treatments and practices passed down through the generations, such as steaming to soothe blocked chests and the custom of visitors washing hands before entering the home, were revived to great effect during the Covid 19 pandemic.)
Many of the stories speak of the strength of women as mothers.
Local women are tired of being over researched; of talking and providing information to researchers coming from the outside who fail even to acknowledge their contributions in the published results. Ilitha Labantu’s Women’s Hub will return control over local knowledge to the women who provide it, recognising the contributions made by ordinary women, such as those selling fruit and vegetables or making a difference in their own families. In this way, the hub may contribute to the larger work of
13 liberation struggle. Building on its work in this area, Ilitha Labantu developed a creative methodology for women to be healed through telling their untold and unheard stories of abuse and violence under Againstapartheid.this background, the Women’s Hub will serve as a repository, where such stories and other information will be held, with the goal of enhancing the value of local women’s knowledge and promoting greater understanding, interpretation and dissemination of indigenous knowledge more generally. The hub will preserve women’s experiences of the past, including how they survived oppression In the belief that inclusive history is good history, it is envisaged that the hub will serve as a place where the history of women at the grassroots can be documented and is thus properly included in the broader South African historical narrative.
The women’s historical hub will seek to honour the lives and legacies of women living and dead whose individual and collective contributions have enriched the lives of women today. It will collect the tales not just of those women who make the headlines, but of the community based women from street structures who are so influential in the everyday life of local communities. These are the women who played leading roles not only in political spaces but also in uplifting communities, including through churches and sport.
Men talk of the history of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and why it was called “the university in the bush” because it was designed to cater only to students of colour and was thus relegated to the outskirts with no care for the safety and transport needs of the cohort. For its part, the Women’s Hub will tell another tale of marginalisation stemming from colonialism and apartheid that is, the undocumented stories of the African women who were indirectly and directly affected by a system of oppression that was orchestrated to destroy families. Women such as the mothers of the Gugulethu Seven the survivors who are the only ones left to speak on behalf of their violated kin. These stories, which show previous generations’ capacity for resilience and dedication to produce social change, need to be documented, not just for the sake of acknowledging the contribution of the elders, but for the younger generation who needs to hear these stories so that they can appreciate the crucial revolutionary role that women have played and can continue to play. The hub aims to document everything in the belief that the details of the historical record can be as vital as the bigger picture and to ensure that the contribution of women is not forgotten. In this regard, it may be seen as part of a larger project to turn his story into her story.
7. Discussion
Meanwhile, CPUT should try and make itself more visible in local communities, in recognition of its connectedness to the social and economic life around the institution. Ilitha Labantu can support such endeavour. For example, in 2020, the non profit organisation (NPO) helped to provide food for hungry students attending Northlink College in Bellville. Now, Ilitha Labantu is proposing the establishment of a scheme to help girls arriving in Cape Town find their feet and to prevent their entrapment by local young men seeking to exploit them young men who pretend to care before manipulating the girls into serving their needs. At present, many young women are being forced into domestic arrangements, under which they take care of the young men while they study, washing their clothes and preparing their food with the result that the girl is left behind. In response, Ilitha Labantu is seeking to set up a scheme under which responsible women in Cape Town can act in loco parentis, taking care of these girls, particularly in their first years in the city. to prevent them from being exploited and to ensure that the young women too are able to access the benefits of higher education.
In 1938, Charlotte Maxeke told a conference of the National Council of African Women which met in Bloemfontein: “The work is not for oneself. Kill the spirit of ‘self’ and do not live above your people, but with them. If you rise above them, take somebody with you.” Accordingly, CPUT also should seek to rise with the people of the townships, with the children of Gugulethu, Khayelitsha and Bongweni. This is also the mission of the Women’s Hub as it seeks to help the women of Gugulethu rise, including those who marched in 1956 but whose names are never heard. In this spirit, Ilitha Labantu is calling on CPUT to commemorate its own forgotten fallen heroes, such as the three SRC students, NAMES?, who died on the road to Johannesburg to join a meeting WHICH MEETING AND WHEN EXACTLY?
10 This paragraph and the next two are based on remarks made from the floor by Mandisa Monakali, founder of Ilitha Labantu, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by CPUT on 8 March 2022.
The ways in which universities engage with local communities as subjects of academic research are quite gendered, racialised and classed. The different isms all have an impact on how such research is conceived and implemented. In the South African context, it is significant that most of the professors are men and most of them are white, which is not to say that some are not more progressive and transformative than others. The problem is that, in the governance structures of higher education, these are the people who shape the future of the universities at the policy level. There is limited representation of women, particularly black women, among this group The interests of the dominant group can determine who is making the decisions about the kind of community engagement that is being undertaken, including the
11 This paragraph and the next three are based on remarks made from the floor by Brightness Mangolothi, Director, Higher Education Resource Services, South Africa (HERS SA), at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by CPUT on 8 March 2022.
14 transforming society which must start at the grassroots by ensuring that local women who are key agents of transformation can benefit from the knowledge that they provide and exchange. 10
Transformation at CPUT should not just be about race of gender, it should consider all the main pillars of a university: research, teaching and learning, and community engagement. The problem of researchers coming into spaces and erasing the subject(s) of their research is a persistent one. For example, some professors adopt an attitude of knowing better than those from whom they collect the information that forms the basis of their research. Instead, greater efforts must be made to foster greater community participation in research and the co creation of knowledge. In this regard, it is crucial that the contribution of those people who are part of the stories that academics are telling should be acknowledged 11
12 This paragraph and the next six are based on remarks made from the floor by Professor Chris Nhlapo, Vice Chancellor of CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
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CPUT has adopted a stance of learning from its stakeholders and, where there are institutional failings, addressing these. In this spirit, it recently conducted a stakeholder mapping exercise considering the university’s perceived strengths and weaknesses in the areas of teaching and learning, research, community engagement and technological development. Responding to the findings of this initiative, it adopted a stance of listening more closely to its stakeholders and seeking to communicate with them more effectively. In relation to the institution’s third mission, which is community engagement, CPUT acknowledges that it must listen to the community. It cannot design solutions for the community, rather it should learn which solutions the community is seeking.
15 topics of such engagement, and how and by whom it is being conducted all of which influences the kind of information that is being gathered.
Diversity must be forged among university leaders in order to achieve gender equality in the foreseeable future. Accordingly, HERS SA, which seeks to develop women leaders in higher education, will continue to support CPUT in its efforts to ensure gender equality in teaching and learning, research and community outreach. In this regard, it is important that the university appreciate that the local community comprises not only Cape Town, it also includes the other parts of the country from which many of its students come.
Mentorship provided by those who have already encountered the challenges faced by young women undergraduates in the institution offers an effective way of supporting these students so that they may develop and progress into academic or professional careers
In line with the principles underpinning the institutional and national frameworks of research ethics and ownership, CPUT has prioritised the establishment of a scholarship of engagement, hosting a conference on the topic in 2021 and has been pushing for greater acknowledgment of community engagement in
In this context, community members’ dissatisfaction with how they are being researched constitutes a moral question, which is addressed in CPUT’s institutional framework on ethics. Under this, researchers should acknowledge not only sources of information but also when ideas have been taken from elsewhere. The issue of ownership also is important people are making money from exploiting Africans and their knowledge and claiming it as their own intellectual property. In this regard, the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act of 2008 makes it clear that all ideas and information derived from the people should be exploited in the best interests of the people. Since CPUT is financed by the public purse, all the ideas it produces and communicates should be exploited for the benefit of the population at large. According to the 2008 Act, if the institution is unable exploit a particular intellectual property (IP), the state can intervene to take the idea and give it to another party who can better exploit and commercialise it for the people.
In this context, it is important for CPUT to appreciate that transformation is a strategic imperative. In addition to forging and promoting particular interventions, the institution should seek to ensure that its budgeting is gender responsive. It is impossible to develop women in higher education without a budget to do this. In addition, transformation should not be considered only the responsibility of particular units or departments within the institution. If transformation is to be achieved, it should be integrated into the key performance indicators (KPIs) of every leader in the higher education sector.
In addressing gender inequality in higher education, it is important to place the issue of young women struggling at university within the context of an under resourced and under capacitated sector, which is still struggling to accommodate the massification that took place from 1994 and produce equitable outcomes among a diverse student cohort. At present, 60% of students come from rural and township households, many of which are women headed and most of which are below the poverty line. The 13 This paragraph and the next are based on remarks made from the floor by NAME, POSITION, HE WAS DESCRIBED AS THE UNIVERSITY’S DATA EXPERT BY THE MODERATOR, CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
16 the indicators which produce the international university rankings. In support of such engaged scholarship, CPUT is seeking to address the issue of IP rights in relation to indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), which is an area in which collaboration with Ilitha Labantu may produce mutual benefit
CPUT’s leaders are always looking to understand how they can improve the university as a public asset which belongs not only to the Western Cape and Eastern Cape but to the whole country and the entire continent. For example, 22% of CPUT students come from the far north. So, it is important that CPUT unpack the data about its functionality and role carefully and plan accordingly. In this context, the university’s efforts to improve STEM education for children from marginalised communities in Cape Town, such as Philippi, Macassar and Delft, as well as the Eastern Cape aims to enable more inclusive access to the benefits of higher education in the academic fields in which the institution excels. The transformative initiative entails fostering capacity by enabling pupils from local communities to have access to CPUT’s facilities and laboratories, as well as the institution’s professors and post graduates who can share how they pursued their academic careers.
The university has adopted a policy of zero tolerance for GBV. It is seeking to implement this in a number of ways, including by addressing the issue of patriarchy and prejudicial approaches to gender within its practices and discourse; and by partnering community based activists, deploying their knowledge and expertise. In this context, the idea of producing a network of women who can act in loco parentis for young women arriving at the university from rural areas may be of value.
CPUT should also be innovative in its efforts to ensure its sustainability it has acquired an experimental farm at Willington which may enable it not only to feed itself, but even to commercialise some of the production. In addition, there is a need to write a proper history of the institution for posterity.
Greater access to information and more effective analysis of the data available can empower communities and enable universities and society more broadly to address persistent inequalities. For example, in a survey of residents in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, which is a township where the population depend largely on their immediate environment for their livelihoods that is, on wood for heating and cooking, and wild vegetables and hunted meat for nutrition most respondents expressed the view that there was nothing that the government could do to improve their lives. In general, they didn’t see anything wrong with their living conditions or how they survived indicating that their poverty could perhaps be better defined as a lack of information and opportunities than a shortage of resources In this context, the virtue and power of the STEM project being pioneered by CPUT’s vice chancellor rests in how it can reveal to pupils in marginalised communities, especially girl pupils, the possibility of becoming a scientist and role models who have already trodden this path. It also provides valuable information about bursaries to girl children who may otherwise be deprived as they compete with brothers for limited family resources 13
Similarly, in Rwanda, all categories of business are captured by men, although women constitute the majority (51%) of the population. Women comprise only 25% of large business owners; only 15% of medium sized business owners; and only 32% of managers. The also constitute the minority, only 38%, of employees. In terms of entrepreneurship, they are best represented in the micro enterprise category, where they comprise almost 33% of owners. However, the deployment of information and communication technologies can offer at least partial solutions to some of the challenge they face improving the visibility, competitiveness, performance and growth of their businesses and leading to commercial sustainability. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that there is a digital divide based on gender that may limit women’s access to these ICTs. In sub Saharan Africa, the gap in cellphone ownership between men and women is 13%, and the gap in internet usage is 37%. In Rwanda, the divide in relation to access to cellphones is even greater: 62% of men own such devices compared with 39% of women. In terms of online access, 13% of men access the internet compared with 5% of women. In South Africa, although ICTs are deployed much more widely, the 14 This section is based on a presentation made by Dr Simon Nsengimana, Faculty of Management and Sciences, CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
Session 4: Addressing the gender digital divide – social and economic inclusion
8. The importance of information and communication technology in women owned businesses in Kigali, Rwanda 14
17 question then is: How to cater to these students in order to ensure that they enjoy a similar access to the opportunities presented by higher education as their more privileged peers from higher income areas? In addressing this, CPUT is reviewing its processes and systems to understand the nature of the student cohort better, so that it can better serve it. Previously, the emphasis in collecting data on student intakes was on ensuring massification but not so much on clearly identifying the circumstances of the individual’s educational and home background. So, new questions are now being asked, such as: What was your school like? Did you have computers there? Did you have a library? Are you a first generation university student? In this way pre existing challenges faced by students can be more effectively identified and addressed at an early stage.
Women are underrepresented in entrepreneurship, which is generally viewed as a male career, in many countries, including South Africa and Rwanda. The reasons for this include patriarchy; stereotypes; cultural norms; religious beliefs; and the nature and composition of national and local political endeavour For example, cultural beliefs and gender inequality assign Rwandan women to housekeeping tasks. In South Africa, such factors were exacerbated during the apartheid era when many women were prevented from starting or running their own businesses. In this context, women who break the glass ceiling by going it alone to open enterprises can face significant constraints, including gender inequality; limited access to resources; and their own fear of failure.
Against this background, women’s engagement in entrepreneurial activity is quite limited compared with men’s In South Africa, women control only 19.4% of businesses. Only 9.6% of South African women are engaged in early stage entrepreneurial activity, compared with 10.9% of men; only 33.1% of women are managers; and women constitute the majority of those who are employed but only 22.2% of employers.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of women are studying engineering, science and technology subjects at university; and are embracing businesses traditionally considered the province of men such as construction, technology, manufacturing and transportation. In addition, there is now a considerable number of highly educated women entrepreneurs and a significant number of women in powerful decision making positions in society and politically.
The final category of women entrepreneurs, which was the smallest (6.2%), comprised women who had started businesses at the behest of their partner.
It was found that most of the women (56.2%) had started their businesses after gaining permission from their partners. This route to entrepreneurial activity is fraught with danger, since a partner’s refusal to give permission can bring an end to the plan. However, women who were granted permission enjoyed significant psychological, emotional and physical support in their subsequent efforts. A much smaller proportion of women (19.2%) took the “breaking the glass ceiling” route, that is, they took the view that no such permission was required and that they only needed to follow the appropriate government regulations in establishing their businesses. Such women indicated that they had to work hard to show that they were as competent in running a business as their male peers and operated under fear of failure
Unemployment was cited as the reason for starting a business by 57.4% of the respondents The data indicated that most of the businesses (88.5%) were growing. The enterprises were also found to provide more than economic benefits. A total of 21.5% of respondents reported accruing “respect in family and community” as a result of their entrepreneurial activity a factor that may be seen as significant in decreasing gender based violence.
The study’s findings come in the context of improving entrepreneurial prospects for women. It is expected that women’s engagement in entrepreneurship will shift from micro enterprises to small, medium and large enterprises over the next 20 years and that women will increasingly claim an equal share of business activity. In South Africa, the government has adopted a policy of offering 40% of public tenders to women businesses, which should accelerate these trends.
18 gap remains. There is a 6% gap in cellphone ownership between men and women and a 9% gap in relation to internet access.
In an effort to identify the factors that may contribute to the successful establishment of businesses by women, including the role of ICTs in this, empirical data were collected from 409 women owned small and medium enterprises in Kigali, Rwanda.
A key outcome of the study is a model which identifies some of the most important factors behind entrepreneurial development, which include support from stakeholders; capital; the age of the business; and online access. The model, which considers gender equality principles, may be deployed by both men and women to improve business performance, growth and sustainability.
The main challenges that the women faced in establishing and running their businesses were HIV/Aids, which was cited by 92.4% of respondents; and a lack of entrepreneurial skills, which was noted by 77% of the women. The cellphone was the most widely used ICT tool to solve business constraints, according to 73.4% of respondents. Most of the women had access to the internet (79.8%) but reported that this was less useful than cellphones in running their businesses It was generally acknowledged that ICTs and training to deploy them were useful
The study made a number of recommendations:
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9. Deploying new technologies to produce GBV solution for CPUT students 15
The SRC wants to push CPUT to become one of the safest universities in the country and beyond. No woman should walk in fear, worrying about what may happen to them. They should be free and empowered. To this end, the SRC has established programmes and sought partnerships with organisations that share its interests, such as the multi platform creative hub and media network Snake Nation; and has also collaborated closely with CPUT’s Division of Student Affairs. A particular focus of these efforts has been the need to address prevailing gender inequalities and vulnerabilities which were compounded amid an increasing risk of abuse and violence under lockdowns imposed in response to the Covid 19 outbreak from March 2020. During the pandemic, women and girls experienced intimate partner and other forms of domestic violence due to heightened tensions in the household.
In the context of CPUT’s engagement in the 4IR as a university of technology, the SRC, working with Snake Nation and the Division of Student Affairs, has sought to foster a diversity of gender and race in the technology space and create technology solutions which meet the needs of all end users, both men and 15 This section is based on presentations made by Nanga Codana, President of the Student Representative Council (SRC) at CPUT, and Tshitso Mosolodi, Snake Nation, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
The SRC has sought to establish student societies that can use technology to address the themes of the action coalitions created as part of UN Women’s Generation Equality initiative. Addressing issues such as GBV and economic justice for women and women’s rights, the emphasis has been on leveraging technology and innovation in support of gender equality; women’s bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health rights; feminist action for climate justice; and the promotion of feminist movements and leadership.
• The Rwandan government should follow the South African government’s best practice of identifying 40% of public tender opportunities for women entrepreneurs with the aim of improving their business activity, particularly in medium and large enterprises.
• The Rwandan government should update entrepreneurship programmes in education to ensure that relevant skills that enable women to improve their business performance are taught;
• There is a lack of ICT skills among women owned small and medium sized businesses in Kigali. They should be supported in searching for suitable training online so that they can improve their ICT skills and run more competitive businesses;
The Student Representative Council (SRC) at CPUT is committed to promoting a unified, equitable, non sexist, non racial and well governed education system that is appropriate and responsive to student needs and to producing a safe, conducive environment for learning, teaching, research and community service. It aspires to strive for oneness at CPUT and to continue to struggle for the empowerment of women and their emancipation. The SRC’s efforts have moved beyond rhetoric to tangible action as it has sought to eradicate historical divisions and patriarchal obstacles in an effort to ensure gender equality at the university
• Given that HIV/AIDS was found to be the most significant constraint, those who live with HIV/AIDS should be supported in using the internet to search for information and advice on how to manage stigma and discrimination;
The initiative featured a day long hackathon held in Wellington in 2021 at which students were tasked to find new ways of deploying ICTs to promote the creation of a safe environment for all students. Seventy percent of the participants at the event were women, and all the winners were women. In terms of follow up, the aim is to take the top five ideas from this event to market.
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10.
Women face significant challenges in the digital space, including in relation to their dignity, as has been illustrated by the treatment of Walter Sisulu University (WSU) student Sibongile Mani, whose reputation was damaged on social media after she mistakenly received a R14 million payo ut from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and spent more than R800,000 of the money deposited in her account. Her conviction for theft in February 2022 in relation to the incident has been appealed and a report produced by WSU and NSFAS into the affair failed to address how her dignity was tainted by a 16 This section is based on a presentation made by Professor Tembisa Ngqondi, Dean: Faculty of Informatics and Design, CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
20 women. In particular, the aim has been to leverage the creative and technologically innovative capacity of students to foster safety at CPUT and communicate the importance of combatting GBV on campus. The programme of activities has included events such as workshops, pitch nights and hackathons, encouraging the development of media and technological innovations that may, with the support of external stakeholders such as government angels, lead to start ups and foster women’s economic empowerment more broadly
PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK THAT THIS WAS A SEPARATE INITIATIVE FROM THE ABOVE HACKATHON In addition, Snake Nation in collaboration with CPUT, staged a contest asking students to develop creative assets that could be used to address the issue of GBV on social media. These included short films, music, poetry and creative efforts that tapped into graffiti and photography. The work of the winning photographer, who was a young woman, was showcased at the state theatre for ten days. Young hip hop singers addressed social concerns. A team of film students made a five episode series addressing the issue of blessers on campuses. Each of the winners received funding to help fine tune their products. Students participating in phase two of the programme can earn tokens to buy coffee, food and sanitary towels on campus and thus support their peers using this creative coin, which was established using blockchain technology. Snake Nation will further support the participating students by helping to distribute the content that is produced via its marketing engine which has a national and continental reach. The contest itself was publicised via national South African broadcast media; and the model for the initiative has been communicated to the All Africa Students Union (AASU) with the aim of rolling out similar programmes at universities in other African countries. Meanwhile, the project at CPUT continues. For Snake Nation, the collaboration with CPUT is part of a larger drive to leverage the power of social media to promote a progressive agenda for change, empowering black creatives and helping them to tell African stories in their own ways. The company is seeking to transform a media landscape in which 90% of the companies and all the major social media companies are owned by white men. In an effort to help young black people tap into the creative economy, it hosts a social media platform which fosters participation in a number of online programmes; and has built some social studios to forge creative collaboration. It hosts the creative products that it helps to produce on its own platform and also distributes them more widely via its media and student union partners in Africa and globally
Women’s dignity and digital inclusion
A number of steps should be taken to promote such digital inclusion. Open forums should be convened to discuss the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) as a driver of indigenous knowledge, facilitating the establishment of a comprehensive repository of such knowledge. A mentorship programme in support of young women should be established to foster beneficial access to the new technologies and help them address some of the negative aspects of the virtual world such as cyberbullying and cyber insecurity. The aim should be leverage 4IR for personal development and vice versa. In this regard, efforts should also be
CPUT’s vision of “oneness” also does not mean having to be the same or everyone seeking the same thing. It means oneness of purpose to achieve the university’s mandate and drive its strategy. In this vein, digital inclusion means ensuring that the young women at the university and in local communities can realise their skills and define themselves and their goals without having to compete against their male peers to achieve these outcomes The aim should be to instill these young women with the character and belief that can enable them to move beyond seeing themselves as a minority so that they can stand alongside their counterparts and say: “I am able.”
However, the tendency at present is to undervalue the many roles played by women in society, including as nurturers, and consequently to portray their engagement in digital spaces as that of a minority group. This exacerbates the harmful impacts of the new technologies in both the real and virtual worlds, such as by encouraging cyberbullying and facilitating human trafficking
American evangelist Priscilla Shirer said: “Unity does not mean sameness. It means oneness of purpose.”
Such marginalisation may be addressed by placing the women who are the custodians of local communities at the forefront of the 4IR, deploying the new technologies to support local development.
21 series of allegations made about her on social media. Against this background, a project is being launched by CPUT’s leadership to consider how to promote the dignity of women in the digital space, both at the university and among communities at large.
Just as women in the past oversaw social reproduction in local communities when the men went off to work on the mines, so today they continue with such work, including by bringing up the children. In this regard, the 4IR must be more than a topic of remote government policy making; the new technologies need to be made available in support of children’s basic education and the broader daily round of local women’s lives, including work that they may do at home. For example, coding should be made available as a subject to all children, including girls. Digitalisation may also be deployed to record and promote greater access to indigenous knowledge, including traditional customs and practices which may be culturally and even medically beneficial.
Women’s dignity must be protected in the digital space as an ethical imperative. Human dignity should be promoted holistically at the levels of the individual and the collective. In this regard, particular efforts must be made to forge and disseminate positive images of black women and restore the dignity that was taken from them under apartheid. The initiative to promote women’s dignity in the digital space should include efforts to: empower women as individuals; produce accountable control of the space; shape the rules and enforcement being forged to govern this space; and ensure innovative engineering of the space to protect privacy. In pursuing this agenda, it is crucial that women occupy a leadership role in the development and transformation of digital technologies, including in digital dignity initiatives. Only in this way can women be presented as equal partners and their worth be properly acknowledged, thus assuring the diversity of the global digital environment.
12. Responding to the presentations 18
17 This session of the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by CPUT on 8 March 2022 was overseen by Busiswa Luqhide, Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator: Office of the Vice Chancellor, CPUT.
18 This section is based on remarks made by Nonele Ganyile, Secretary General of the Student Representative Council (SRC) at CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
• Fostering strategic dialogue and engagement with a view to addressing the root causes of gender inequalities and advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment at CPUT;
Although a significant number of supervisors and lecturers are women, more should be recruited
• Embracing the value(s) of diverse opinions and providing the perfect opportunity to incubate new perspectives and fresh ideas and research agendas to ensure CPUT’s gender responsiveness through ‘Oneness’ and ‘Smartness’;
An International Women’s Day pledge was signed by CPUT’s leadership and department heads; SRC officers; and representatives of partner organisations, including UN Women, Ilitha Labantu, Snake Nation and HERS SA. The promise read: “On International Women’s Day 2022, I pledge to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in:
Since 2018, when CPUT issued a statement committing it to the fight against GBV, the university has acted to support women, including through the launch of the Think tank on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment and its support for the Queer Unicorns society which advocates for the rights of students in the LGBTQI community, encouraging young men and women to come forward as members of this community. The commitment among the institution’s leadership has been a practical one entailing quarterly discussions at CPUT’s transformation forum, where all units and departments, as well as the Student Representative Council, are obliged to report back on their transformation and women’s empowerment efforts. Such commitment is crucial given that gender equality transformation must take place on the ground at lectures and in classrooms among the students and staff, which is where the heart of the university resides. In this regard, there is a particular need for further transformation of the academic cohort.
11. Commitment pledge for partners 17
22 made to foster AI technocreneurs, for example, by helping to turn projects that are being produced at home into commercial ventures.
• Sharing lessons, case studies, research agendas and stories; and
The digital transformation programme may usefully adopt a blockchain model to transfer skills, with each person who is trained then training someone else. In this way, whole communities can be trained without having to convene everyone in a single space, and the advantages of technology can be communicated widely to touch even more lives.
• Providing a platform to enable mutually beneficial consultations among researchers or academics and students, communities and the private sector in solving problems locally, nationally, continentally and globally.”
23 especially in the fields of construction, engineering and science, where the number of women academics has been and remains quite low. Such a shift is important in the context of the marginalisation that women face as entrepreneurs
Relatively few businesses are owned by women and the prospects for the survival and growth of these enterprises are limited. For example, women owned construction companies are generally unable to achieve a rating higher than Grade 3 from the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), which indicates how untransformed this sector is. Meanwhile, at university most of those studying for masters or advanced diplomas in construction are men; and women in the industry generally opt for quantity surveying jobs, which are based in the office, rather than seeking to working on male dominated building sitesSimilarly, in the field of politics, it is generally men who are put forward for senior positions at the deployment meetings convened by the various student groupings Even the women at these gatherings tend to vouch for the men. The exclusion of women from the possibility of occupying leadership positions speaks to widespread internalised patriarchy and chauvinism in society. Women are supposed to obey, follow and agree, while the men are made the leaders.
In society at large, the objectification of women through sexualised imagery continues to contribute to their dehumanisation and disempowerment. Within this environment, the Über and Bolt platforms which could be making women’s lives easier by providing a ready and safe source of transport are instead being exploited by male drivers to procure sexual favours. Powerful men in offices feel enabled to try and exchange promotion opportunities for sex regardless of how well qualified the women applicants may be.
Similarly, university academics leverage their power to pass or fail students as a means of coercing them into sex and the affected students are scared to come forward. At home, boys are still being taught that they can do what they please with women and that women should just do as they are told So, greater efforts need to be made to produce a new outlook among boys and young men so that they address the issues of GBV and women’s rights properly, no longer viewing young women as competition but rather as a group of people who should be empowered because of a history of suffering and inequality.
Meanwhile, at the national political level a lack of accountability intersects with gender and class discrimination to ensure that women such as in the case of Sibongile Mani at WSU are blamed in instances of graft, while the powerful escape justice and corruptly benefit; whistleblowers are killed; and township residents and poor students suffer as they are deprived of valuable public resources.
At the university level, initiatives to address the challenges faced by young women undergraduates must acknowledge the ways in which these young women’s lives are constrained. For example, student efforts to produce solutions to address the scourge of GBV must be based on an understanding of the damaging impacts of such violence and the individual strength and resolve required to manage the subsequent trauma In the sphere of the new technologies, training on digitalisation and coding should be shaped to address the learning needs of first year students who have little experience in this field, having perhaps never owned a cellphone or a computer. 4IR information and knowledge must be presented in a way that is understandable to those with little experience of the technologies involved. Similarly, efforts to turn girls and young women away from older male “blessers” must be founded on an understanding of their material plight, going hungry perhaps while they are waiting for their bursaries and NSFAS grants to arrive and unable to sustain their lives at university. In this regard, the digital platforms forged by students and the academic staff and leadership of the university should seek to produce practical solutions that address
24 the persistent material challenges stemming from gender and other inequalities that young women students face.
Those seeking progressive change at CPUT and in South African society more generally may be well advised to adopting an anti deficit lens in an effort to explore and replicate the conditions that can generate success, rather than merely focusing on the constraints that prevent transformation In this respect, there is a need to celebrate the successes, while acknowledging the challenges. American author Shaun Harper, who wrote An anti deficit achievement framework for research on students of colour in STEM, noted that while STEM fields remain predominantly occupied by men and while women remain under represented in entrepreneurship in many countries, it is important to consider the factors that have enabled women to succeed in STEM subjects and entrepreneurship. The aim should be to identify how women became resilient enough to succeed in these hostile spaces. So, for example, in relation to the issue of women’s performance in post graduate studies in STEM subject, the deficit oriented question would be: Why do so few women continue beyond undergraduate degrees to undertake such scholarship? However, an anti deficit reframing would be: What are the common aspects of women students’ pathways from high school competition through to the attainment of doctoral degrees in these fields? Thus, universities and society at large would know how to promote such achievement against the odds. In this regard, it seems that the adoption of an anti deficit lens may already be producing benefits at CPUT.
Another common thread running through the approaches adopted by the university and its partners to promote women’s rights is that of agency, that is, the ability and commitment to take action for gender transformation. The programmes forged by UN Women and Ilitha Labantu around gender equality and women's empowerment provide strong examples of such agency; as does CPUT in its adoption of innovative approaches, including in relation to using the new technologies. The university’s support for the student hackathon, which is a novel idea to liberate the transformative power of digital technology to promote inclusivity, is a case in point.
19 This section is based on remarks made by George Mvalo, Chairperson, Transformation Managers Forum (TMF) of Universities South Africa (USAf), as well as remarks made by Nkhabele Marumo, Chairperson, Ilitha Labantu, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
13. Responding to the presentations: An overview 19
A further crucial aspect of CPUT’s work in forging and implementing programmes for gender equality and women’s empowerment has been its engagement in partnerships with like minded organisations and stakeholders. A number of the key initiatives produced by the university and its collaborators in this field have been founded on forging partnerships and producing and leveraging networks. These have included: the Vice Chancellor’s Prestigious Awards; CPUT’s STEM programme; the Think tank on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment established with UN Women; Ilitha Labantu’s Women's Hub; the university’s efforts to foster more effective student governance, including in the partnership between the SRC and Snake Nation; and CPUT’s work to foster the next generation of academic supervisors
It has also been evident that, in relation to its community service mandate, CPUT should strengthen its partnerships with local communities both in order to reconfirm the contents and findings of academic research about local residents and places and also in order to produce different forms of research, data collection and collation that may be nurtured and owned by the community. The goal should be to foster beneficial community owned research and other responses to the challenges they are facing.
Considering CPUT’s efforts to promote for gender equality and women's empowerment in the context of its deployment of an anti deficit lens, the power of agency and the multiplier effect of partnerships, a number of models of good practice can be identified. For example, in exploring the gender divide in ICTs and entrepreneurship, there has been acknowledgment of the gaps but also a focus on identifying the factors that have contributed to women’s successes in the entrepreneurship and digital spaces, which may then be replicated
• Ensuring the integration of gender equality concerns into CPUT’s research focus areas; 20 This section is based on remarks made by Nonkosi Tyolwana, Director: Centre for Diversity, Inclusivity and Social Change, CPUT, at the celebration of International Women’s Day convened by the university on 8 March 2022.
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CPUT’s institutional commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment has been indicated by the presence at the International Women’s Day celebration of the university’s leadership including the chancellor, the vice chancellor, the executive director of the vice chancellor’s office and the chief financial officer, who can consider issues of gender responsive budgeting. At the same time, while reflecting on the level of commitment shown by CPUT, it is also important to emphasise that, as Chancellor Thandi Modise has noted, the university’s best has not been good enough. In this regard, the effectiveness of future efforts depends largely on the adoption of an appropriate strategic approach as much as it does on the plethora of initiatives that may be undertaken In this regard, a number of key issues have emerged that should be considered in the production and adaptation of this strategy. These include:
In general, efforts to produce gender equality and women’s empowerment may be most effective if they deploy a mission oriented approach which appreciates the importance of deploying private resources in the service of the public good and the need for both the business and government sectors to collaborate to produce innovation if they are to achieve a better future. In this respect, there is a need to be bold in order to overcome the constraints that characterise many of the present efforts. As Italian US economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote in her 2021 volume Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism: “Today, a ‘mission oriented’ approach partnerships between the public and private sectors aimed at solving key societal problems is desperately needed … we must believe in the public sector and invest in its core capabilities ... and design contracts that work in the public interest … ‘moonshot’ thinking is about setting targets that are ambitious but also inspirational, able to catalyse innovation across multiple sectors and actors in the economy … It is about imagining a better future and organising public and private investments to achieve that future.”
14. Closing remarks 20
Similarly, the CPUT student hackathon and its goal and vision of producing the safest campus in the country can be an example to other SRCs across South Africa and could be replicated nationwide. The establishment of campuses as safe spaces is crucial. Parents need to be able to sleep soundly in the knowledge that the girl children they have sent to university are safe. Unfortunately, however, this is not always the case and so, there are a number of outstanding issues in relation to GBV that must still be tackled. In this context, the hackathon is an important mobilising tool that may be exported to other institutions. Similarly, the university’s plans to help produce respectful, inclusive and safe digital spaces in which girls and women can participate with confidence addresses the need to produce equity in access to the 4IR, as well important concerns about objectification in the representation of women
• Continuing to foster local, regional, continental and international collaboration and solidarity among the relevant stakeholders in support of gender equality and women’s empowerment. This work continues to be undertaken in order to meet a range of goals, including CPUT’s institutional targets for 2030 and the AU’s targets for 2063. This is an important aspect of the university’s relationship building, particularly given that many of its students hail from other African countries. On the international stage, the collaboration has led to an invitation from Ilitha Labantu and UN Women for CPUT to participate as a partner at the Commission on the Status of Women.
• Fostering the engagement of girls and women in STEM subjects at all levels from pupils to senior academics. This programme should be pursued with the support of women anchors in each STEM department;
• Addressing the ethical question of authorship and the ownership of research conducted in local communities;
• Integrating 4IR in communities so that women and girls can benefit properly from the new technologies;
• Establishing appropriate networks to care for CPUT’s students in the understanding that the university staff has a duty to act in loco parentis. Such care may be offered through a system of mother to mother twinning and also by fostering greater food security for the student cohort;
• Campaigning at all levels from the institutional to the international for procurement policies that support women owned and managed enterprises, with an initial target that at least 40% of procurement should be from such businesses; and
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• Taking action to preserve and promote African women’s indigenous knowledge;