The year 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the 4th United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, which was regarded as a turning point for the global agenda on gender equality.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) adopted at the conference is said to be the international "Bill of Rights" for women, defining women's rights as human rights and setting goals across a range of issues affecting women and girls and committed to working towards gender equality and empowering all women and girls.
The BPfA is considered to be the most comprehensive global policy framework for the rights of women. It explicitly recognises women's rights as human rights, and sets out how the world will go about achieving equality between women and men.
This includes concrete goals and targets in 12 inter-related critical areas where urgent action was needed, namely poverty, unequal access to education and training, inequalities in health care, violence against women and girls, effects of armed conflict, economic empowerment, power and decision-making, mechanisms to promote women's advancement, women's human rights, the media, the environment and persistent discrimination and violation of the rights of the girl child.
When the Beijing conference happened there was a sense of hope and optimism. A lot of women who congregated in the Chinese capital felt that this was a period that would usher in an era that would deal decisively with misogyny and patriarchy and speak materially to the structural barriers women and girls face.
A conference that many men, at that time, felt was emasculating because it threatened a lot of us, as many felt that here are a group of women who are taking over the world at the expense of men.
Many men felt despondent and dejected because we see the challenge on patriarchy as an antithesis of a civilized world, despite obvious problems such as misogyny, rape, gender-based violence, femicide and lack of equal opportunity.
Recently the world converged in France to look at the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, to review this plan of action and ask the difficult, yet necessary questions on the progress: what are the gaps, has enough been done in the pursuit of this plan, can we proudly look back at it and say it is uhuru?
Any South African reading this knows that this is a no brainer, and for many other countries too. It is not yet uhuru for women. Not only are we lagging behind, reality looks bleak...largely because the pace of transformation is very slow.
I am reminded of the story of Aphiwe Nxusani-Mawela, SA's first female brewster, having to close shop due to the lockdown alcohol ban and its effects on her business. Hailing from Butterworth in the Eastern Cape, she worked the ranks and qualified academically too, which all lead to the moment where she could own her own brewery and craft her own beer.
She had to close shop due to payments that were outstanding to the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC). A corporation fully owned by the government could not safeguard this woman from closure despite her failure to pay being hugely due to the alcohol ban by the state.
“Government made noise about how they were helping entrepreneurs but on the ground none of that was happening,” she said in frustration.
I believe she and many others are part of the tale that exposes government for being a talk shop when it comes to supporting the advancement of women in pursuit of equality and breaking barriers. She entered an industry dominated by men. She faced hurdles, and instead of support, she was met with red tape and bureaucracy.
This is not to say government shouldn’t not expect accountability from those it has agreements with. This is to say Covid-19 presented many businesses with unprecedented circumstances. This requires extraordinary understanding, empathy and interventions.
I want to go as far as saying, because of the status of women in our country, government should in fact be going above and beyond to ensure the saving of businesses wholly owned by women, if we are serious about the development and advancement of women as we say we are.
The story of Nxusani-Mawela is just one out of many that show just how badly we are doing 25 years post that UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. The story becomes even more bleak when we enter the realm of GBV, femicide and rape.
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