Cape Town - The Women’s Legal Centre celebrated its 20th anniversary with a feminist conference at the District 6 Museum.
At the event, held on Thursday, there were panel discussions about issues such as female sexual reproduction, abortion, women at the forefront of spatial injustice and tenure security, and challenges for economic independence.
Lindelwe Nxumalo, women’s rights manager at NGO ActionAid South Africa, spoke passionately about women largely being seen as care workers in communities and in the home, which limited their access to opportunities to liberate themselves economically and be in the workforce.
“Unpaid care work is something that has not been addressed in society. Data from 64 countries shows that two-thirds of the world’s women who are of working age spend 60.4 billion hours in a day (between them) doing unpaid care work, such as washing dishes or caring for children or the elderly. If we translate those numbers to the capitalist way of thinking about what a working day is - eight hours - that’s billions of hours of working that is not paid, acknowledged or recognised for its value.”
Meme Makhaula, from the Community Workers Advice Office, said: “The difficulty of dealing with cases of women being sexually exploited is that these ladies are often vulnerable and don’t want to speak about the sexual abuse they face.”
Philisiwe Tamari, a representative from Sisonke, an arm of the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force (Sweat), said it was often difficult for sex workers to access basic rights.
“The sex workers in our country are being killed, raped and tortured, and yet nobody seems to do anything about it because what they do is seen as unholy.
“At Sweat, we want to decrease the discrimination sex workers face in their communities. That’s why we have created our own community through the Sisonke group.”