Today we made our way to the Commission on Gender Equality. The commission is an organization that works with the government of South Africa and mainly the constitution to make sure all laws are fair and equal for both men and women. They also spend a lot of time educating the general public on gender issues affecting the general public of South Africa. While there, we talked about a number of things and we spent much of our time discussing young girls and their access to education.
According to the lady we spoke with, many girls in South Africa are not performing as well as boys in school. This is due to many parents not being able to afford consistent education for their children and since boys are often sent to school before girls are, some girls can go to school one year and not the next. Also, young women and girls are usually the first to miss school when their younger brothers/sisters or parents are ill. These girls are expected to care for the sick and make sure the home is kept neat and clean instead of going to school. Then there are those parents who don’t want to send their girls to school because they worry about the safety of their daughters as they walk such long distances to get to school.
Once young ladies make it to school they are not always treated fairly; teachers are not always sensitive to their needs and don’t give girls in the classroom the same amount of attention as boys (sounds familiar?). Even the text books used in class fail to be progressive and continue to place women in domestic roles.
So, what is the Commission on Gender Equality doing to help these girls now that they have identified many of the problems? They are working on setting up training programs to help teachers be more aware of gender issues and various gender inequalities in the classroom. They also want to help keep single-sexed schools stay open since most of them are in jeopardy of closing; women often do better in single sexed schools (but this doesn’t help boys since they often do better in co-ed schools). Lastly, they also shared their desire to help teachers and schools accommodate to the learning styles of women and girls, which I wasn’t really clear as to what they meant by that and I don’t remember why I did not ask.
Most of these sound like wonderful ideas. To me, some of them are a little vague but how detailed can you get in a short briefing? I just hope these ideas really materialize into programs that really will help young girls and women.
Some other gender issues discussed include:
- The few number of women in positions of corporate power
- Domestic Violence (women not being able to get out of abusive relationships and some women going as far as murdering their spouses and their children then become orphaned)
- Gender and AIDS/HIV
- Gender, Culture and Religion (This deals with issues of witchcraft, and cultural expectations of women to be quiet and submissive. The commission is working with traditional leaders to educate the community.)
- Widowhood (Which is a fascinating topic dealing with how women are treated by the families of the deceased and how widows are accused of witch craft and lose their children and property)
As I reflect on my time there and having read about Saartjee Baartman (African/Hottentots Venus), I realized it was the Commission on Gender who was behind the move to return her remains to South Africa. Read more about her story at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saartjie_Baartman, and then do your own research. Be careful though, you may see some things you were not expecting.
We had a wonderful yet brief time there and soon we were back on the bus headed for Lesotho.
Here are two books I picked up from the Commission. The one on widowhood was quite fascinating to me.
Will continue tonight with the drive to Lesotho.
-Monique
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