Cape Town - In honour of Women's Month, the 2021 Western Cape Women’s Parliament was hosted over the weekend under the theme “Placing the dignity and innate rights of women in the spotlight”.
The live-streamed event had both local and international delegates discuss the gender remuneration gap, the adoption of a gender responsive budget and increasing enrolment of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) programmes at institutions.
The feedback from the discussions will be taken to the House for further action.
Western Cape Provincial Parliament (WCPP) deputy speaker Beverley Schäfer said they aimed to bring bold resolutions to the table that could assist in changing the crisis that women face in the country.
Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) and Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan international chairperson Shandana Gulzar Khan encouraged participants to join the social movement campaign, He-For-She, to accelerate women’s economic empowerment, their role in peace and security processes, advance their political participation and eliminate gender-based violence.
CWP Africa and Member of the National Assembly of Nigeria chairperson Zainab Gimba called for more women representation at public policy-making level, particularly in areas such as the national budget, which was where the empowerment of women started.
Since entering the CWP two years ago, Khan and Gimba have produced important policy and product-related initiatives to help the women of the Commonwealth. These included videos focusing on Sustainable Development Goal five (gender equality) targeted towards male parliamentarians to understand what it meant to advance women’s equality and empowerment in a political context.
In the discussion, WCPP member Nobulumko Nkondlo said an important consideration to look at was a yearly focus on employment equity reports, highlighting the extent to which the gender paid gap was shifted and whether there was in fact progress.
Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo said the Covid-19 pandemic had impacted not only the lives of women but also their livelihoods - most of the department’s employees infected by the virus were women health-care workers.
Mbombo said it was the responsibility of the department, government and society as a whole to address the many societal inequalities exposed by the pandemic.