DIVERSITY Trade as a catalyst for board gender diversity

women’s access to land was also reflected in the

Women's Charter of 1954 before the drafting and adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955. This was highlighted by the Honourable Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development in a webinar hosted on 12 August 2021.

Enabling women farmers to control their resources is important to achieving not only the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 – gender equality and empowerment of women and girls but also many others, including eliminating poverty (SDG1) and ending hunger (SDG2).

When Africa’s female farmers thrive, everyone benefits: the women themselves, the children in whom they invest, the communities that they feed and the economies to which they contribute. With the right investments and policies, Africa’s women-run farms could produce a bumper crop of development.

Moses Rannditsheni, Director: Media & External Communications, Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development

• CASP and Ilima/Letsema, 2004; • Jobs Fund (2019); • Presidential Employment Stimulus (2020); and • Farmer entrepreneur awards.

These programmes have the long-term ambition of leveraging women entrepreneurs from being subsistence and smallholder producers to commercial entrepreneurs who also venture into export markets.

What resources does the government make available to empower female farmers?

The government of South Africa continues to play an important role in agriculture for female farmers because of their effort to fight food insecurity and poverty. Several policies, programmes and strategies have continuously been developed to acknowledge, encourage and increase the participation of women, young women and women with disabilities in the agricultural sector.

The major thrust of these programmes was to underline the fact that women play a significant role in food security, job creation, economic growth and poverty alleviation. Therefore, investing in them will promote sustainable agricultural production in the country and unlock enormous economic growth. Some of the agricultural programmes implemented include:

Allocated farms 2015 – March 2021

PSSC Farms Hectares allocated

The department made land available by lease to females. What has been the impact, challenges and opportunities?

The department had acquired allocated PLAS land to women from 2015 as follows: • For the past six years, the department allocated 440 331 hectares from 292 farms. Allocations range from commercial, smallholders, farm dwellers to labour tenants’ categories. • Of the 440 331 hectares, 190 169 hectares were allocated to women. • There are 1 669 beneficiaries of which 414 are women: o 190 169 hectares (43%) allocated to women. o 414 women beneficiaries (25%).  Number of beneficiaries Hectares allocated to Individuals Women women TOTALS 292 440 331 1 669 414 190 169

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Trade as a

catalyst for board gender diversity

South African companies seeking to expand into global trade and investment could become more attractive trade partners by adopting relevant corporate governance practices of countries in the European Union, South Africa’s largest trading partner in 2020, especially in enhancing gender diversity on their boards.

Trade as both an economic exchange and an exchange of corporate governance cultures could also assist European companies to learn from South Africa on bringing race and ethnic diversity into their boardrooms, says Prof Anita Bosch, the Research Chair for Women at Work at Stellenbosch Business School.

The Research Chair’s report Winds of change: Trade as a catalyst for board gender diversity, launched recently, is aimed at assisting European and South African businesses to do business responsibly and examines how board structure, size and directors’ terms of office influence the

gender composition of boards. The report is also a resource on board differences for executives intending to trade with European counterparts.

“Trade brings opportunity for change. As North-South trade intensifies, so too does the opportunity for progressive companies and countries to learn from one another about how to create systemic change, particularly so as to encourage gender parity on boards,” says Prof Bosch.

“This report should encourage more directors, institutional investors and shareholders to think deeply about how they use their influence to ensure that boards benefit from the richness

of thinking that comes with gender and racial diversity.”

She adds that many of South Africa’s trade partners in the European Union, and those in Iceland, Scandinavia and the UK had made great progress in diversifying and including more women on listed companies’ boards, with change in some countries, such as France and Norway, driven by legislated quotas, or voluntary targets in the case of the UK.

“Change in Europe has also been stimulated by generally widespread corporate governance reform promoting diversity and inclusivity on company boards,” she explains.

“In South Africa, institutional and other shareholder pressures, the B-BBEE Act, King IV Code revisions and the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE) listing requirements have all placed pressure on companies to address board reform and the country has seen promising progress in reversing gender and racial similarity with increasing levels of Black women at board level.”

Iceland’s two-tier board has produced near parity between women and men

Prof Bosch said learning from the two-tier board structure used by key trading partners such as Germany and the Netherlands could assist South African companies to enhance gender diversity on their boards. Iceland’s two-tier board structure has remarkably yielded near parity between women and men.

While South African board structure follows the UK example of a single, unitary board composed of executive and non-executive directors headed by a chairperson, dual-tier structures have a supervisory board elected by shareholders, which appoints and oversees a management board. The supervisory board is similar