Gender

In his Budget speech, Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan made specific reference to creating safer communities.  While we welcome the increases to the budget allocation, we await to see how the department of Police and Justice and Constitutional Development will spend it. With the technological revolution, we are fast becoming “online communities” and we are also seeing more crimes perpetrated using advanced technology. As  online spaces are also becoming unsafe (a reflection of what is happening in our society), especially for young girls and women, we need our police and justice system to respond to the challenges. Perpetrators of gender based violence are increasingly using technology to lure, track, monitor and stalk women and girls.

Justice Minister Jeff Radebe acknowledged on Wednesday that racial representivity on the Bench had made huge strides since 1994 but that he remained concerned about gender, pointing out that there was not a single female judge president in the country.

Amy Siskind, the president of The New Agenda says feminists in the United States remain silent when conservative women are attacked. 

Kathleen Mogelgaard a Senior Program Manager of the Population and Climate Change Program says "there is no quick fix to overcoming climate change's sexist tendencies".

The National Gender Machinery (NGM) met in Pretoria two months ago to discuss the possibility of establishing a Ministry for Women and Gender Affairs to advance the empowerment of women.

The Copperbelt provincial Gender Sub-Sommittee has called on departments to include gender activities in their annual departmental budgets. 

The United Kingdom (UK) government has published its proposals for new equality legislation however a law expert warns that the 'u-turn' could result in an "deluge of equal pay claims". 

Women are going to be premiers in five South African provinces but men still dominate national politics.

The struggle for gender justice will not be won solely by appointing women to influential positions. It would also be to straightjacket these women to expect them to forever represent the views of women - Sowetan 

"The 2009 elections present several political players with the opportunity to harness new ideas and create a new imagination. The extent to which this imagination is visible is disappointing. A glance at the various manifestoes presents us with the coded language of victimhood, rhetoric or the objectification of women and their unique social, economic and cultural circumstances" - Liepollo Lebohang Pheko