Speech by DA National Spokesperson, Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, at the BMF Women's Leadership Conference in Cape Town, August 20 2011:

As we commemorate Women's Month this August, there still remain some misunderstandings amongst many South Africans about just what the significance of this month and the day that accompanies it really are. One often hears people wishing all the women in their lives a "Happy Women's Day", as though it were similar to Mother's Day or Father's Day. Well-worn platitudes about women's role in society are casually bandied about: "Behind every great man, there is an even greater woman".

In amongst this confusion, the commemoration of the women of 1956, who marched on the Union Buildings to protest against the extension of pass laws to women, is lost. We forget to pay adequate tribute to the efforts and the courage of women such as Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph and Albertina Sisulu, because of whom we are able to live in a society today in which women are free to access the opportunities which were so long denied them.

I myself am mindful during a month such as this, of the trail-blazing women parliamentarians who laid the foundations for young women like me to participate in representative politics in South Africa. Women such as Helen Suzman, whose vigorous opposition to apartheid as the lone liberal voice in Parliament for 13 years was one of the foundation stones of the party I represent today.

Indeed all of us here this morning are privileged to be standing on the shoulders of giants like these; women who made it possible for us to live in a society in which women can even dream of becoming leaders of men.

So when I was asked to speak to you about "Challenges facing women in leadership", I have to say that the timing of the request gave me pause. I would be addressing a room full of women who, like me, are some of the fortunate few who are able to taste the fruits of the hard-won freedom our predecessors fought for. But I was being asked to talk about the difficulties this poses for us.

Now there is no question that the struggle for the full emancipation of women in South Africa continues today, and that there are a myriad insidious ways in which barriers continue to be put in our way as we go about our business in an essentially patriarchal society.

In my own experience, these range from the new fad for calling black women who challenge the authority of those in power "puppets of white capital" rather than thinking, independent people; to the casualisation of sexism and misogyny in public political discourse (Not long ago, the leader of my party was referred to in a press statement issued by the ANC Youth League as a woman with a "wild whore libido").

The challenges are many, and they are certainly not trivial. But it is surely more important that we recognise the immediate struggle before us: the need to ensure that more and more South African women are able to exercise the same choices and enjoy the basic freedoms that we do.

For the vast majority of women in this country today, challenges such as the scourge of sexual and family violence are their reality. Women still lack satisfactory access to the jobs and economic opportunity that flow from having equal access to education, skills development and training; they remain more at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS than men - particularly as a consequence of being denied rights over their own bodies in a deeply patriarchal society; and in rural South Africa, many women remain at a huge disadvantage compared to their urban counterparts as a consequence of customary systems and laws that deny them access to the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

In my view, this is the real challenge that lies before women in leadership positions in South Africa today. Not only must we be at the forefront of the battle to ensure that more opportunities are made available to more women, but we should also be leading the campaign to see South African men fight as hard to defend and protect women's rights as we do.

We can choose to pull together by harnessing our collective victimhood, and bemoaning the challenges we faces as the few privileged women in South African society, or we can harness our collective influence and do what we can to ensure that more and more women are afforded access to opportunity, so that they too may join our ranks and add momentum to the fight for gender equality in South Africa.

Issued by the Democratic Alliance, August 21 2011

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