SOUTH AFRICA: Closing the Gender Gap

SA RANKS highly on the World Economic Forum's latest global gender gap index, coming in at number 12 out of 134 countries. Alas, this does not mean the battle of the sexes is over.

As its name suggests, the index is not an absolute measure of gender equality and comparison with other countries, but of efforts to close the gap between men and women. SA does well mainly because of factors such as the number of women in Parliament and the fact that as many girls as boys go to school, rather than because we are a less sexist society than, say, the US, which only just makes the top 20.

To provide further perspective, it is instructive to note that paternalistic Lesotho is the top African nation in the index at number eight, due mainly to its high female participation in the labour force and the fact that more girls than boys are in school. That does not mean Basotho women are better off than their South African counterparts when it comes to their place in society, just that they are playing catch-up faster off a low base.

Other apparent anomalies arise from the fact that the index focuses on the gap between men and women. In the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, few would argue that South African women are in a favourable position when it comes to health and survival, for instance, but since that applies equally to many men it does not have much of a negative effect on our position.

While it comes as something of a relief for SA to rank towards the top of a development index — we've been moving in the wrong direction on most others — our gender gap position may flatter to deceive. The number of women in Parliament is partly a product of African National Congress gender quotas, for instance, and so does not necessarily equate with real political power. And the existence of a constitutionally mandated institution such as the Gender Commission is of little benefit to women when it is being run into the ground by incompetent and corrupt staff.

Still, there is no denying that SA is headed in the right direction when it comes to matters of gender, and that is to be celebrated