According to President Cyril Ramaphosa, efforts are being made to create a gender collaboration fund to assist female business owners in growing their enterprises.
“The automotive sector has also joined in,” the President said on Thursday. He stated that the Automotive Industry Transition Fund has committed to allocating 30% of its entire budget to driving gender transformation in the industry, equivalent to around R1.6 billion over a five-year period.
Meanwhile, eight of the thirteen transformation enterprises financed by the fund in 2022 were owned by women.
“The automobile industry has emphasized its commitment to genuine capacity building in order to produce a pipeline of female leaders and owners, including a dealership development program.”
The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) committed R9 billion to gender lens investing during the Gender Lens Investment Summit in July, while the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) contributed R12.5 billion.
“Gender lens investing, as the name suggests, is a method that incorporates gender-based aspects throughout the investment process in order to improve gender equality and better inform investment decisions.”
The President was addressing at the second Women Economic Conference (WECONA), which had the topic “Unlocking gender-responsive value chains for a resilient economy.”
President Ramaphosa announced the inaugural WECONA in October 2021 as one of the pillars of the National Strategic Plan (NSP) on gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF), which advocates for economic empowerment of women as a means of eradicating GBVF in South Africa.
He also singled out agriculture as a valuable partner, pledging to construct a localized manufacturing infrastructure to promote women-owned enterprises and build capacity and skills through training programs.
“We are dedicated to addressing the gender wage gap and improving women’s participation in executive leadership by utilizing the policy and legislative tools at our disposal, such as employment equality legislation and anti-discrimination statutes.”
Poverty
He informed the women that the meeting was being held while the government pursues the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, which aims to strengthen the economy, support livelihoods, generate jobs, and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact.
“And, while the pandemic may be over, unemployment is not,” he emphasized.
He stated that the pandemic’s terrible impact on lost lives, jobs, and livelihoods will be felt for some time, with women bearing the brunt of the burden.
“We know that women outnumber men in the labor force.”
According to the President, 47% of South African women aged 15 to 64 were economically inactive in the second quarter of 2022.
“This means that over half of South Africa’s working-age women are not in the labor force, compared to 36% of their male counterparts,” he added, adding that poverty is higher among women.
He urged WECONA to generate results that elevate, empower, and broaden women’s access to all economic levers.
Procurement
The Black Economic Empowerment Act, which has been in effect for 20 years, cannot be divorced from women’s economic empowerment, according to him.
“We cannot modify racial patterns of economic ownership without transforming gendered ownership and control.” This is the goal of the Women Economic Assembly: to change this.”
The President acknowledged that the country has regressed in several areas, particularly in matters such as black management control, skill development, and expanding procurement possibilities for black women.
“As a result, as a government, we established a target of 40% of public sector procurement for women-owned firms.” That is why, last year, the Women Economic Assembly was assembled for the first time.”
He urged the industries to pledge to purchasing more from women-owned enterprises.
“Creating gender-responsive value chains is vital to a resilient economy because no economy can flourish or prosper if half of its population is excluded from it.”
For long-term sustainability, the government has established and implemented goals for gender transformation and procurement of products and services.
He bemoaned the fact that South Africa has fewer female entrepreneurs than many other countries.
Since then, the government has taught approximately 6 000 women-owned enterprises in important business skills in order for them to compete in the bidding process.
The goal is to teach 10,000 female-owned enterprises.