The Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Parks Tau, has emphasised the importance of having 50/50 gender representation in local government.
"As we prepare for local government elections next year, our deliberate and conscious focus should be progressively targeted at 50/50 representation,” the Deputy Minister said.
Although South Africa has made significant strides towards the empowerment of women, particularly in positions of leadership both in Parliament and local government, women occupy an accumulative 33% of the positons of mayors.
Tau and the President of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), Thembi Nkadimeng, on Saturday co-hosted a virtual dialogue with 'Women in Local Government' as part of Women's Month commemorations.
"In our pursuit for Generation Equality, we need to reflect on the role of women as catalysts towards pervasive community empowerment. We should create enabling workplace environments that protect and advance the socioeconomic standing of women in society,” Nkadimeng said.
The dialogue was held under the theme ‘Leading in the face of COVID-19 and Gender Based Violence’.
“Women are disproportionately affected by COVID-19 and perennial socioeconomic challenges, which compels us to contrive sufficient mechanisms to affirm the rights of women in respect of universal access to education, reproductive health and basic services, by employing gender responsive policies and programmes, especially gender responsive budgeting.
“As a people and as men, particularly, we have a collective responsibility to champion women emancipation through our activism to unleash the economic potential of women, which directly translates into unleashing the economic potential of society, holistically,” a joint statement by CoGTA and SALGA said. – SAnews.gov.za
