NOMALUNGELO GINA
Durban — We are moving to the end of an August month that shines a spotlight on women. It can only be those who are naïve, who can contest the reality that gender disparity in our economy remains exceedingly huge.
Women remain at the (bottom of the) totem pole of the economy. The gloomy picture becomes even worse when we drill down to the details of disaggregating gender dimensions according to the race ratio.
Black African women remain at the worst and most unpalatable economic station in business ownership, compared to their white and Indian counterparts.
While the B-BBEE policy has made some difference, as a midwife to economic transformation and pathways for women’s emancipation, artificial stumbling blocks and a male-dominated environment has, and continues to be, a major inhibition to the faster rates of women ascendency to corporate bosses.
In August 2020, I had an opportunity to be invited to the B-BBEE Commission Webinar, which was jointly held with the Employment Equity Commission. The webinar was held under the theme, “Management Control and the Status of Women in Transformation”.
A presentation of a report, which is known as the National Status Report on B-BBEE (National Trends) depicted a gloomy picture. It illustrated how women in the economy, in the management control and ownership scorecard, are still far below acceptable levels in terms of companies’ agenda of inclusion.
The majority of women still don’t sit on company boards where decisions and votes are made; this is evident even where they have 50% shareholding or above.
Key to our responsibility as a government is to discourage women from accepting “silent control” in companies without decision-making.
We must fight against corporate patriarchy where women are bullied into inactive silent partners status, only good enough for receiving dividends without board participation.
To illustrate this with one sector, research shows that only 10% of women in South Africa are involved in executive decision-making within the financial sector.
These areas of concern have been and continue to be a source of concern for many women in the corporate environment.
In this context, we applauded Nissan SA last year when it announced that it intends to change the narrative by committing to an increase of its women executives in leadership to 25% by 2025.
This is an important step in the context of the automotive sector that is male-dominated and our Automotive Master Plan is very strong on the transformation agenda; we anticipate that this will inspire the industry-wide trajectory.
The government remains committed to the empowerment agenda for women.
As an example, in 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa during Women’s Day announced that 40% of public procurement would be reserved for women-owned businesses.
This is a huge opportunity by any stretch of the imagination considering the government’s buying power. Of course, it has been difficult to make any assessment since last year as Covid-19 limitations have stalled a lot of things for us.
The critical question is, how do we use this opportunity to galvanise many women businesses for various government procurements? But also, how do we avoid the demon of fronting by males, using women as cannon fodder in the processes, thereby defeating the very intentions of the government in breaking the glass ceiling of women’s economic empowerment?
The Gender Commission, the B-BBEE Commission and the Department of Women and Children will have to play an activist role in ensuring that women really take these opportunities without being frustrated at all levels of government.
With the above being the case, in the end, it is not all doom and gloom. There are positive movements albeit at a slower pace than desired. The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, (Dtic) for the longest time, has been driving the implementation of the policy framework on Gender and Women’s Economic Empowerment whose core imperatives have been to increase the number of enterprises that women control, have ownership and management. This included access to finance, local and international markets. Admittedly, we have fallen short in this area as the government and we are working on raising the implementation tempo.
Women are found largely in the small, micro and medium enterprises sector because it is difficult for them to scale up their businesses and break into the larger corporate value chains as suppliers.
This is a generalised state of affairs found across all sectors of the economy, without one that can be pointed out as dominated by women.
The Dtic in partnership with the National Empowerment Fund (NEF), established a Women’s Empowerment Fund, aimed at enhancing the participation of black women-owned businesses in the South African economy. Funding is provided in the form of concessionary loans or equity with a maximum interest rate of 2% to support projects that assist in creating jobs and increasing production capacity. Implementation of this fund commenced in March 2021.
Over the past 10 years, the NEF had more than 40% of funding accruing to black women entrepreneurs. As part of the determination to grow its funded portfolio of businesses that are owned and managed by black women, the NEF will continue to work with organisations that represent women to mobilise deal flow.
According to the recent March 2022 study by MasterCard Index of Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE), South Africa is one of only 12 economies where women’s entrepreneurial activity rates increased, with 11.1% of working-age women engaged in early-stage entrepreneurial activities.
South Africa moved up one place from 2020 to rank 37th in 2021, with a score of 54.9.
According to MIWE women’s advancement still remains hampered by less supportive entrepreneurial conditions compared with other global economies such as the US, which ranked first, with a score of 69.9; New Zealand, ranked second, with a score of 69.8; and Canada in third place, with a score of 68.6.
The 2021 MIWE reflects the challenges of a persistently uncertain global entrepreneurial landscape, as well as a marked rise in both female and male necessity-driven entrepreneurship as many had lost their jobs arising from lockdown and restriction measures.
According to Gabriel Swanepoel, the MasterCard manager for southern Africa: “The fact that women entrepreneurial activity rates in South Africa grew in a year when many other economies did not, together with the fact that female necessity-driven entrepreneurship surpassed that of males, indicates their strong will, resilience and determination to survive.”
It has been found, through research bodies, that SA’s women-owned businesses present a lower statistical risk for business financiers.
Women-owned businesses account for a lower percentage of non-performing loans, according to Business Partners. The growth of entrepreneurship among women in the country has been encouraging.
It goes without saying that the growth of women in trade and investment will herald a sustained upward trajectory for business confidence in our country and the soul element of South African commerce.
We urge women in business to take up the cudgels and push back against all efforts to stunt their multiplication in all industries. Women must live up to the words of world-renowned, late American poet and feminist Maya Angelou’s words when she once said: “Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.”
Nomalungelo Gina is the Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition. She serves as an ANC PEC Member in KwaZulu-Natal.
Daily News