CHARTERING A BALANCED OUTCOME The Women’s Charter sets goals and demands equality for women. TIISETSO TLELIMA finds out how far we’ve come
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ugust 2021 saw the launch of the new Women’s Charter for Accelerated Development, setting a 25-year vision and agenda to advance women’s equality, growth and development. Developed in consultation with women’s formations and civil society organisations across nine provinces, it seeks to build on the 1954 Women’s Charter and 1994 Women’s Charter for Effective Equality by accelerating women’s access to education, healthcare and land, developing policies and deconstructing patriarchy.
The first women’s charter, drafted by the Federation of South African Women in 1954, demanded that women be afforded voting and political rights, employment opportunities and equal pay to men, the right to own property and the removal of marital laws that subjugated wives to their husbands. “The charter was significant because it was the first time women mobilised and formalised their stance against the kind of prejudice women were experiencing and being treated as minors,” explains journalist and political analyst Khanyi Magubane.
“WE HAVE TO SET OUR OWN AGENDA AND SAY VALUE DOESN’T COME FROM MY AGE OR LOOKS – ALL THINGS MEN TRY TO IMPOSE ON US.” – KHANYI MAGUBANE 16
Forty years later (1994), a second charter was drafted by the National Women’s Coalition structures, which advocated for the inclusion of women in key sectors of the economy, provision for education and training, access to healthcare and social services, representation in media, decriminalisation of sex work and a rigorous fight against gender-based violence to name a few.
THE WOMEN’S CHARTER Adopted at the founding conference of the Federation of South African Women in Johannesburg on 17 April 1954, the charter expressed the philosophy and aims of the newly established Federation of South African Women.
PREAMBLE We, the women of South Africa, wives and mothers, working women and housewives, African, Indians, European and Coloured, hereby declare our aim of striving for the removal of all laws, regulations, conventions and customs that discriminate against us as women, and that deprive us in any way of our inherent right to the advantages, responsibilities and opportunities that society offers to any one section of the population.
I N T E R N A T I O N A L W O M E N ’ S D AY
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2022/02/28 9:10 AM
