OPINION | Women still carry heaviest burden of underfunded education system

It’s Women’s Month again – a time for flashy campaigns, big speeches, and emotional tributes to the resilience of South African women. But what do these celebrations mean, when women are holding together an underfunded education system: stretching child support grants to cover transport and food, while working in low-paid or unpaid roles to keep classrooms and households running?

In a country where women carry so much, it’s no wonder these tributes often ring hollow. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With real political will and investment in education, we can break the barriers that have weighed women down for generations.

This Women’s Month, let’s do more than celebrate resilience – let’s invest in what restores dignity. Education doesn’t just lift the learners in the system, but also the women who work in that system and support their children through it. With real commitment, the education system can become a place of growth and freedom even beyond the classroom. The budget can be a tool to build the future these women deserve.

For the first time in years, government has given education a real boost – a 2.6% increase after inflation. It is a rare win for the vulnerable, in line with finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s admission that budget cuts haven’t worked. Other wins included a 17.7% boost for early childhood development and an 8% increase for the Education Infrastructure Grant. Still, the budget remains too small to undo years of cuts, underspending, and corruption. And as always, it is women in classrooms, kitchens, and care work who carry the heaviest cost.

One of the clearest examples of education budgets hurting women the most is the ongoing scholar transport crisis. In May the South African Human Rights Commission launched an investigation into a scholar transport crisis in the North West, where more than 8,000 learners were left stranded after service providers stopped working, owing to non-payment for five months.

The North West provincial legislature publicly conceded that the scholar transport system was underfunded by R150m – enough to leave thousands of children stranded. Similarly, in April, 60,000 learners in rural and farming communities in Mpumalanga were left stranded after service providers stopped working, also because of non-payment.

Such cuts or delays, paired with an increased fuel levy, mean mothers must mask fiscal failure by stretching already-thin child support grants just to get their children to school. This is not just about broken transport systems, but about who picks up the pieces when the state underfunds the future.

It is overwhelmingly women, especially those living in poverty, who absorb the cost of state failure. From finding alternative transport to making up shortfalls with child support grants, it is mothers who carry these burdens, often with neither recognition nor support. This burden of inadequate education budgets on women extends to those on the front lines of education and care.

For example, in the Western Cape, nearly 2,400 teaching posts are being cut due to budget shortfalls – a decision that forces teachers, the vast majority of whom are women, to deliver quality education under near-impossible conditions. Overcrowded classrooms with up to 60 learners demand extraordinary effort and emotional labour from already-stretched teachers.

These women are holding up a collapsing system. In return, they are rewarded with precarious working conditions, overburdened learning spaces, and the unspoken expectation to carry on regardless. Many remain in temporary posts with no job security, all while being underpaid and overburdened. We cannot keep asking them to bear the cost of systematic failure, only to applaud their resilience in August as though sacrifice were empowerment.

Still, it would be unfair to ignore signs of progress. This Women’s Month coincides with National Treasury’s first Gender Budget Statement – the furthest step yet in recognising women in budgeting. Yet, education was excluded from the pilot, despite its power to uplift both girls and the women who keep the system going.

The statement is a welcome start, but including education in future iterations would take it even further, turning Women’s Month promises into action. That includes recognising that fuel hikes hit poor women hardest, raising the cost of transport, food, and care, while expecting them to stretch shrinking grants even further.

A wise and just government builds its house not on speeches, but on support for those whose invisible labour in homes, classrooms and communities is what keeps our education system standing. The ball is in the government’s court. If the government is serious about empowering women, it must show in the budget.