Pretoria - The concept of establishing a Government Ministry for Women will be one of the agenda items to be discussed at the National Gender Machinery (NGM) meeting to be held next week.
The Minister in the Presidency, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, will lead the discussions on the possibility of establishing a Women's Ministry to enhance institutional mechanisms for women's empowerment and gender equality in South Africa.
The two-day meeting, to be held in Pretoria, will start on 2 February, with the discussions on the concept to be presented at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, scheduled to take place on 2-13 March in New York.
A progress update on the work undertaken by a task team on Engendering the Anti-poverty Strategy and report-back on the outcome of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Workshop on the 50/50 quota in political and decision-making positions will also be presented during the meeting.
Speakers from the Joint Monitoring Committee on the Improvement of Quality of Life and Status of Women in Parliament, Departments of Foreign Affairs and Social Development, South African Commission for Gender Equality and South African Law Reform Commission, have been lined up for both days.
Speaking at the Gender Machinery consultative meeting in December last year, Dr Tshabalala-Msimang said women constituted the majority of the population and therefore they should be included when decisions concerning economic, social, political or developmental issues are made.
The meeting was held by the minister to encourage debate around sustaining South Africa's drive for equal representation of women in decision-making positions in politics ahead of the country's 2009 elections.
"Women constitute the majority of the population and this is sufficient to dictate women's inclusion in all decisions concerning them whether it is economic, social, political or developmental," said the minister at the time.
Ms Tshabalala-Msimang said currently the numbers did not guarantee in terms of women's empowerment and gender equality in South Africa.
Women make up only 42.8 percent of the positions at Cabinet level, 33 percent at the legislature level and 34.4 percent at the Public Service level.
South Africa is seventh in the world in terms of representation of women in the legislature.
"Increasing the number of women in decision-making positions can contribute to the upliftment of women in general," said the minister, adding that one should rather speak of gender parity, which goes beyond merely the number of women in decision-making positions.
