RIAH PHIYEGA | The real impact of Women’s Month is found in rural villages

Women’s Month links two historic struggles across the continent, though one remains largely ignored in South Africa.

On July 31, Pan-African Women’s Day honoured the women who organised against colonial rule in 1962. On August 9, South Africa marked the 1956 march when more than 20,000 women defied the apartheid regime.

Together these milestones should anchor modern observances. Celebrating Pan-African Women’s Day more visibly could help counter the anti-immigrant sentiment currently pitting South Africans against the rest of the continent.

However, commemorating these events becomes meaningful only when we include women in rural communities, where a very different reality plays out.

Women in rural areas wake before dawn. For them, August brings no celebration, only the physical weight of daily survival. Corporate and policy elites talk about progress while rural women carry the burden of poverty and neglect.

We cannot address gender equality on this continent while ignoring rural inequality. The numbers make this neglect clear.

Stats SA data shows poverty remains female-dominated: 58.6% of South African women live in poverty, compared to 54.9% of men. In rural regions, women head 47.6% of households.

Stats SA’s General Household Survey highlights 71.3% of children in female-headed households live in multidimensional poverty. That number rises above 82% in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape.

Lack of basic infrastructure drives much of this hardship. Unicef reports women and girls globally spend 200-million hours every day collecting water.

In rural sub-Saharan Africa, fetching water is a daily burden that falls almost entirely on women and girls. A single trip takes more than 30 minutes on average and often takes hours on foot.

When water collection takes hours, education suffers. The World Health Organisation and Unicef report half the schools in sub-Saharan Africa lack clean running water or adequate toilets.

Unesco data shows one in 10 girls in sub-Saharan Africa misses school during her period. Many drop out completely between ages 11 and 15. Forcing a girl to choose between carrying water and attending class cuts off her future before it starts.

Keeping rural girls in school breaks the cycle of poverty. A girl who finishes secondary school earns significantly more over her lifetime. Rates of early marriage drop.

Child mortality falls, and her children end up healthier and better educated. Yet rural schools frequently lack running water or internet access. Expecting rural students to compete with urban peers under these conditions is unrealistic.

Real change requires more than social grants or short-term relief. It requires direct paths to financial independence. Two sectors matter most here, where I believe we can make an impact fairly quickly: agriculture and technology.

Rural women produce most of Africa’s local food, yet they remain trapped as subsistence workers. They lack land titles or commercial credit. Giving rural women secure land rights and commercial capital shifts them from informal workers to agribusiness owners who feed communities and hire neighbours.

The global economy is shifting towards digital trade and automated services. Rural women cannot be left out. IT training and reliable internet access are basic necessities. A village girl with coding skills and digital business tools can build an enterprise or work remotely without leaving home.

Rural women do not want charity. They need capital and practical business training to run their small businesses.

At a recent colloquium hosted in collaboration with Nelson Mandela University, a central theme was the profound societal impact of investing in women.

Progress requires looking at actual conditions on the ground. Does a rural schoolgirl have running water and a working toilet at school? Can her mother secure a micro-loan and transport her produce on a paved road?

Until economic planning places rural women at the core of national strategy, August observances remain an empty annual ritual.

• Phiyega is CEO of the Women’s Development Bank (WDB) Trust.

Sowetan