A QUESTION and answer session with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women executive director and co-chair of the World Economic Forum on Africa 2015 meeting.
Were you surprised by the impact your HeForShe campaign has had?
This was an ambitious campaign; I am pleased with its traction. The role of men in the women’s movement is critical. This campaign is among many ways we are challenging the status quo and supporting transformative change for women, men, boys and girls.
What has been happening in the campaign since then?
Since the launch in September 2014, more than 300 000 men and boys all over the world have made commitments to gender equality through the HeForShe website. In Davos this year we launched HeForShe’s Impact 10x10x10 programme, a pilot initiative for governments, corporations and universities to achieve gender equality.
Partners include the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Sweden, and the president of Sierra Leone; the chief executives of Unilever and Tupperware, and the chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers; and university leaders, including the vice chancellor and principal of the University of the Witwatersrand.
Their commitments are tangible, time-bound and bold: corporate commitments range from achieving equal pay to reaching parity in leadership by 2020; university commitments include increasing the representation of women across academia.
Why is 2015 important for improving the lives and prospects for Africa’s women?
This is an historic year for gender equality, both in Africa and around the globe, as we finalise our post-2015 development agenda. Women are more than half the world’s population; ensuring gender equality is not a luxury, it is a human rights imperative. The empowerment of women and girls also has the potential to boost economic growth and aid in Africa’s quest for inclusive, sustainable development. The total potential annual economic losses due to gender gaps in labour force participation have been estimated to exceed $255 billion (R3.08 trillion) for the sub-Saharan region alone, and to cost an equivalent of 9 percent of Africa’s overall gross domestic product growth.
In South Africa, women’s participation in the labour market stands at just 45 percent, with the ratio of women to men in the labour force falling from 74.3 percent to 72.4 percent between 2005 and 2011. We need to bridge these gaps through decent jobs for women, along with equal pay and better social services.
You are a co-chair at the Forum’s Meeting in Cape Town: how will you be using this role to move your agenda forward?
I will be working with leaders and participants to keep gender equality central to their thought-processes and policy-making at every level. It is key to releasing vital growth potential for the continent, and to moving towards more inclusive and sustainable societies.
If you could achieve one outcome from the meeting, what would it be?
My intention is for businesses, government leaders and all Forum participants to embrace gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. This means committing to paying equal wages, providing decent jobs, removing glass ceilings, and implementing social programmes that will reduce and redistribute unpaid care work. We know we have a long way to go – in sub-Saharan Africa the 30 percent average gender pay gap is even higher than the global average of 24 percent, while in South Africa, despite an increase in the average income for females, households headed by women still earned less than 50 percent of households headed by men.
This WEF Africa Leader Series conversation is brought to you in association with the World Economic Forum. Follow WEF Africa on Twitter: #AF15 and via Business Report’s Twitter stream: @busrep. Independent Media, publisher of Business Report, is a media partner for WEF Africa 2015 (#IndyAF15) in Cape Town on June 3-5.