[T]he effectiveness of the translation of the theory of equality and non-discrimination into the practice of empowerment and socio-economic upliftment of women and the poor will be one of the main criteria determining success or failure of South Africa's transformation process (Kehler, 2001).
A decade down the road of democracy, economic inequality remains one of the greatest challenges to fulfilling South Africa's commitment to human rights. According to the most recent Human Rights Watch World Report (2003),
South Africa's vast internal economic disparities continued to generate human rights abuses. It was estimated that twenty-two million people lived in abject poverty and went hungry almost every day.’
Patriarchy, present in all races and cultures in South Africa, has endured in the post-apartheid era but, as it has to exist alongside a regime of human rights and equality before the law, which it previously did not, has taken on new guises. And one of the most effective of these is the claim that gender inequality is a feature of ‘culture’ and tradition and, therefore, to challenge it is to tamper with the fabric of society in a way that violates the right of groups to self-determination. What these claims in fact do is perpetuate the unequal treatment of women – in the home, the family and the mainstream economy.
The issue is often portrayed as culture versus rights, and it is at the heart of that debate – multiculturalism and the ‘right’ treatment of individuals – that this analysis is situated. It is argued that the unequal status of women culturally is what underlies a national culture of discrimination against them, reflected in both their economic disenfranchisement and staggering levels of violence. Women's de facto treatment as human beings of lesser value is not mitigated by their de lege equal status. As Frene Ginwala (1991:62–63) remarks:
Discrimination is more a symptom than a cause. It is the product of the whole way society works. To attack it, then, we have not only to legislate and act against it itself, but also to work for shifts in the deeper causes which underlie it … What we must address therefore are the power relations in society. Given that gender oppression is socially constructed, we must examine and aim to change the social relations which construct it. Our main aim must be to reform gender relations so that they exist on a more equitable foundation and provide the basis for the full and free development of both men and women.
the issue of human rights of women is perhaps one of the more difficult ones to deal with because it is shrouded in deeply entrenched and rigid attitudes and practices that militate against positive change of legislation or practice in favour of women [sic]. They are experienced as emotive issues that could easily destroy the whole social fabric. Often the bottom line is power and having to share it with women or to even recognise them as having equal rights to resources or to a different perspective of life.
Women's rights: constitutional, international & domestic law
As noted above, South African legal provisions – constitutional, international and domestic – provide a robust commitment to the protection of the basic rights of women. Furthermore, much of this law is intended to redress the marginalised and subordinate role to which women have traditionally been consigned. Thus, while it is a cause for concern that these laws still exist mainly on paper, their existence is also a cause for optimism in the sense that the state's commitment to the rights of women is clear and unequivocal, and also in the sense that the state's duties correlative to those rights are clarified as a result. The challenge is to make them a part of everyone's lives, not just women's. However, these provisions are undermined, often paralysed, by deeply entrenched cultural norms of patriarchy.
According to Human Rights Watch: Women's Human Rights:
Arguments that sustain and excuse these human rights abuses – those of cultural norms, ‘appropriate’ rights for women, or western imperialism – barely disguise their true meaning: that women's lives matter less than men's. Cultural relativism, which argues that there are no universal human rights and that rights are culture-specific and culturally determined, is still a formidable and corrosive challenge to women's rights to equality and dignity in all facets of their lives.
The human rights of women and the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. The full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life, at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on the basis of sex are priority objectives of the international community(cited in Hodgson, 2002:3).
The South African constitution & the national action plan
South Africa's constitution developed out of a process of negotiations in the progression towards democracy. As a result, it contains many provisions that reflect the spirit of compromise of the negotiation process as well as an extensive set of rights. It is worth exploring briefly the rights (and their limitations) set out in the Constitution.
Chapter 2 of The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (Act 108 of 1996) contains the Bill of Rights. Section 7(2) outlines the duty of the state to ‘respect, protect, promote and fulfil’ the rights there enshrined, and Section 8 deals with the application of the Bill of Rights in terms of its extent and who the subjects of rights are. It is significant that the Bill of Rights applies to all laws, as well as binding all branches of government and organs of the state because the intention is clearly to give human rights overriding importance as a matter of policy and law. This reinforces Section 7(1) which states that:
This Bill of Rights is the cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.
Section 12 deals with the freedom and security of the person, and in particular Section 12(1)(c) establishes the right ‘to be free from all forms of violence from either public or private sources’. This is significant as it would seem to indicate that the domain of the home and family, which are traditionally regarded as ‘private’, and therefore beyond the reach of the law, are for the purposes of this right a matter for public enquiry and policy. However, it is interesting to note further that this section is not included in the table of non-derogable rights included in the Constitution, and it is therefore implicit that this right is subject to limitations.
One such limitation would be the right to privacy, in particular within the home, which is enshrined in Section 14 and possibly Section 15 which establishes freedom of religion, and the potential legislative recognition of ‘systems of religious, personal or family law’ – although this would be subject to the limitations of Section 9.
Other possible limitations in this regard could be the rights enshrined in sections 30 and 31 which recognise linguistic, cultural and religious communities. Again these are subject to the limitation that they do not violate any other provision of the Bill of Rights, but it could be argued that by omitting section 12(1)(c) from the list of nonderogable rights, a loophole has been left in the constitution itself forming the basis upon which to argue that the treatment of women within the home is not a matter for intervention, and that there is a cultural ‘right’ to mete out unequal treatment free from outside scrutiny.
Most importantly from the perspective of women's economic status, Sections 23 and 25 establish the right of equal treatment with regard to labour conditions and property. Again, the extent to which these may be challenged or limited by sections 14, 15, 30 and 31 is uncertain. In particular the right of women to inherit property has been challenged in the courts on the basis of the rights enshrined in sections 30 and 31.1
Chapter 9 of the Constitution establishes the State Institutions Supporting Constitutional Democracy. Section 181(1) establishes the Human Rights Commission, the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Linguistic and Religious Communities, and the Commission on Gender Equality. The Commissions are independent and are charged with promoting respect for the relevant rights outlined above, as well as having a monitoring role. In addition they have the power (if not always the capacity) to carry out research and make recommendations as legislation and the establishment of other bodies they regard as useful to the task of protecting and promoting the rights in question. In terms of section 181(1)(5): ‘These institutions are accountable to the National Assembly, and must report on their activities and the performance of their functions to the Assembly at least once a year.’
The constitutional establishment of these Chapter 9 institutions is therefore intended to give the declared rights in Chapter 2 ‘teeth that can bite’ to use Hoebel's phrase (cited in Riddell, 1999:17). The intention is clearly to carry them out actively, rather than merely declare them passively. However the Constitution contains other provisions that may be seen as a challenge to the enforcement of the declared rights, most importantly the equality clause.
One of the compromises agreed to in the negotiation process leading up to the drafting of the Constitution was the recognition of traditional leaders. South Africa has a dual system of law, which recognises alongside the ordinary ‘western’ law (a combination of Roman Dutch common law, with Anglo-American law superimposed, all subject to the constitution) traditional African customary law. The latter applies only to black South Africans and only in certain instances, and only applies in respect of civil matters, primarily those in the domain of family law (see Bennett, 1991).
To a large degree, the sustenance of customary law was a product of the apartheid system, as it was maintained and shaped to fit the complex discriminatory laws intended to separate the races. As a result, there was an appeal to traditional authorities to assist in maintaining the parallel system of law, and it is these – unelected, usually male, senior members of cultural or linguistic groups – that today make the claim to retain their ‘traditional’ powers and authority (Nhlapo, 1991:112–3). And that claim is rooted in the right to cultural determination. It is no great leap from acknowledging this traditional patriarchal authority to tolerating patriarchy as a national institution. It may be politically unpopular to argue that the retention of these hierarchical norms, formalising the role of traditional leaders, undermines democracy and human rights but, it is argued, doing so contributes to entrenching the unequal status of women in South Africa.2
Chapter 12 of the Constitution deals with the recognition of traditional leaders and outlines their role but, most importantly, it allocates to them the power to deal with matters pertaining to African customary law and the communities which observe this law. This allocation of power to those whose authority does not derive from democratic processes underscores the unequal treatment of women, and serves to promote the idea that this inequality is tolerable, because it is ‘traditional’. In particular this may serve to reinforce the limited proprietary rights of women in traditional African culture, and so the retention of these hierarchical norms creates the backdrop to the continued economic subordination of, in particular, rural women.
These ambiguities are even more marked in the National Action Plan for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (NAP) of 1998 which was drafted in response to the recommendations of the World Conference on Human Rights of 1993, which resulted in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. Article 71 of Part 2 of the Vienna Declaration recommends such a national action plan in order to identify the steps the state ought to take in order to promote and protect human rights.
It is significant that while the NAP reinforces the constitutional grounds for equality and non-discrimination in the section on Civil and Political Rights, it does not focus specifically on either gender or the rights of women. Moreover, the historical factors it identifies as contributing to South Africa's past poor human rights record are colonial domination, racial discrimination, political oppression and economic exploitation; gender oppression does not make it onto the list. Furthermore, racial and socio-economic inequalities are cited (following the 1995 World Bank report) as the main causes for concern and action in terms of Section 9 of the Constitution, but gender-based inequalities are again taken to be implicit.
In the section on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the NAP, again it is interesting to note that Freedom of Culture, Religion and Language merits special attention (including a reiteration of the powers of traditional leaders), and the rights of children and young people are also singled out as requiring further attention. However the social and economic rights of women are not identified specifically.
These two key documents therefore seems to acknowledge the gender inequalities that riddle South African society but do not go far enough in ameliorating this situation. The bias seems to be strongly in favour of the retention of traditional power hierarchies, and certainly this is borne out in fact. I do not mean to suggest that the South African constitutional dispensation condones this inequality and discrimination. I do want to argue that by leaving the basic human rights norms deliberately so ambiguous, they create room for the tolerance of inequality and discrimination on the basis of cultural norms and traditions, and it is this implicit tolerance that undermines the implementation of the specific international and domestic laws, outlined below, which are aimed at equalising the status of women.
International law
Since 1994 there has been a concerted move towards accession to the major human rights treaties and conventions in keeping with the avowed priorities of the government in promoting and protecting human rights. The provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) are sufficiently well established that they do not need to be recounted here, except to comment that the UDHR has as its core the belief that human rights are informed by the norms of equality and universality. The former rests on the belief that human rights are normatively those of all people, and all people are regarded as being of equal worth and dignity; and the latter rests on the assertion of a ‘common standard of achievement for all people's and all nations’ as, while the UDHR recognises cultural diversity, it does not conceive of this as being in conflict with basic human rights norms. South Africa is also a party to the two 1966 covenants on Civil and Political, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.3
As far as regional human rights instruments are concerned, South Africa is bound by the African ‘Banjul’ Charter on Human and People's Rights of 1985. The Banjul Charter retains all the standard basic human rights clauses, but it also has a distinctly ‘liberationist’ flavour in that it emphasises the struggle against colonialism and apartheid in its preamble. It is also mindful of the more collective conception of rights which is often associated with non-western cultural traditions in that it includes the rights of ‘peoples’ (as collectives) as well as the rights of ‘humans’ (as individuals).
Article 18 of the Banjul Charter also emphasises the family as ‘the natural unit and basis of society’ and as ‘the custodian of morals and traditional values recognised by the community’ (Sections 1 and 2). However article 18(3) goes on to indicate that the state also has a duty to ensure that discrimination against women is eliminated, and to protect their rights. The Banjul Charter also differs from other human rights instruments in that it contains a chapter on the duties of the individual, in particular duties towards the family, and in the case of children, a duty to respect their parents. There is thus implicit within the Banjul Charter the idea of the retention of ‘traditional’ norms, including hierarchical ones.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women(CEDAW) of 1979 was intended to overcome the ongoing ‘extensive discrimination that continue[d] to exist’ in spite of the numerous human rights instruments that preceded it that held the equality of women to be an implicit facet of human rights.
Two articles are particularly worth noting with reference to the present discussion. Article 5 places on states the responsibility of taking measures to ‘modify social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women’; and Article 16 places a duty on the state to act against discrimination against women within marriage and the family, and to ensure that men and women have equal rights within marriage and the family.
Furthermore, CEDAW commits state parties to equalising the role and status of women in all areas of social and economic life (article 13), and in particular employment (Article 11). Article 14 recognises the particular difficulties faced by rural women in terms of their economic position as supporters of dependents and their activities within the informal economy. It commits states to incorporating women in decision-making about rural development and economic planning, as well as to ensure their access to basic services and benefits. This has resonance in the South Africa context as rural women bear the brunt of the burden of poverty and inequality, usually have the least access to social services, and are most vulnerable to exploitation.
South Africa signed and ratified CEDAW without reservations in 1995, and since then efforts have been made to equalise the position of women in law. However, the role of the family, and the customary inequalities therein has not been entirely resolved. As Tomasevski (2000:234, citing UN Doc. RS/CEDAW/1992/WP.1, 24 March 1992) notes:
[CEDAW], as much as any other human rights treaty, lays down human rights norms which are necessarily worded in abstract terms. Human rights treaties are negotiated during protracted and sometimes conflictual intergovernmental meetings. In the case of the Women's Convention, ‘the drafters had to face the difficult task of preparing a text applicable to societies of different cultural characteristics and traditions. The ways in which discrimination against women manifested itself varied from one culture another. The Convention therefore represents a constructive compromise’.
South Africa reported for the first time to CEDAW in 1998. The report noted the establishment of the Office on the Empowerment of Women in the Office of President, the Office on the Status of Women located in the Office of the Deputy President and the Commission for Gender Equality, all of which are aimed at gender mainstreaming and giving effect to the equality of women. However, South Africa's representative also noted,
that continuing deep entrenchment of patriarchy and customary, cultural and religious practices contributed to widespread discrimination against women in South Africa. She informed the Committee that violence against women and children was increasing, including domestic violence, sexual violence and sexual harassment (Report of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, 1998:59).
The Committee, in responding to the South African delegation's report, noted stereotypical attitudes towards women and emphasised that these attitudes needed to be addressed. The Committee further noted that ‘the legacy of apartheid for women includes widespread discrimination and underdevelopment, and is visible in areas such as women's high levels of unemployment, illiteracy and poverty and in the violence against women’ (Ibid. p.60). The Committee also reiterated its concern for the plight of rural women who are especially vulnerable to poverty as a result of low levels of education and literacy, unemployment, and lack of access to in particular health and fertility services. The Committee further emphasised that women needed to be included in land reform programmes (Ibid. p.61). South Africa's international law obligations with regard to the equal rights of women and, in particular, women's rights to economic equality are therefore extensive. Furthermore, in accordance with these obligations, the domestic law of the country is rapidly evolving to meet these obligations. The most relevant legislation is briefly presented here.
South African domestic law
The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, (4) (2000), and its amendment by Act 52 of 2002 includes, inter alia, the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of gender. The act identifies ‘the system of preventing women from inheriting family property’ as one prohibited form of ‘discrimination’ [section 8(c)] as well as ‘any practice, including traditional, customary, or religious practice, which impairs the dignity of women and undermines equality between women and men, including undermining the dignity and well-being of the girl child’ [section 8(d)]. Furthermore, the Act prohibits ‘any policy or conduct that unfairly limits access of women to land rights, finance and other resources’ [8(e)]; ‘limiting women's access to social services or benefits, such as health, education and social security’ [8(g)]; ‘the denial of access to opportunities’ [8(h)]; and ‘systemic inequality of access to opportunities by women as a result of the sexual division of labour’ [8(i)]. The framers of this law were clearly mindful of the obligations created in this regard by the Constitution and South Africa's international law obligations.
These provisions are supported by the Domestic Violence Act (116) 1998, section 1 of which recognises economic abuse as a form of such violence. This can take the form of withholding resources to which the complainant is entitled by law (such as maintenance or child support), or disposing unreasonably of property in which the complainant has an interest. Furthermore, the Act created the duty on the part of police attending an incident of domestic violence to assist complainants (for example, in finding shelter, or obtaining medical treatment) and inform them of their rights.
Also worth noting is the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act (120) 1998 (amended by Act 42 of 2001). This act was designed not only to formalise the law with regard to marriages entered into in accordance with African customary law, but to ‘provide for the equal status and capacity of spouses in customary marriages’. The Act seeks to equalise women's proprietary status within customary marriages but marriages entered into under customary law before 2000 remain unaffected (and so women in such marriages remain legally minors) and customary marriages which are not registered also do not fall under the Act. The protection it offers to women is therefore contingent upon the goodwill of their partners in co-operating in following the legal steps required to formalise the union.
Yet, despite the recognition of women's rights in law they still need to be mirrored by women's emancipation in fact, and this remains the greatest challenge to the ‘right’ treatment of women in South Africa today. The following statement, made by Susan Bazilli in 1990 prior to the drafting of the post-apartheid interim constitution, continues to be the context in which women's entrenched poverty in South Africa today should be seen:
When ‘rights’ intersect with ‘law’ the real issue is ‘power’. Who has the power to demand and who has the power to cede these rights? How do we attain our rights in the face of structural and systemic inequality? And in South Africa, the legacy of the legislated and instituted inequality of apartheid is legion. The history of ‘rights’ has developed from the liberal notion of equality under the law in an individual capacity, and not from the structural inequalities of race, class and gender. But the extension of ‘rights’ is associated with the foundations of democracy and freedom: the protection of the weak against the strong, the individual against the state … Where we must be vigilant is to recognise that if the gender power relations remain the same, legal individual rights do not resolve problems, but rather transpose the problem into that which is defined as having a legal solution (Bazilli, 1991:13–14).
Inequality & the feminisation of poverty
As was noted in the introduction, poverty affects women differently than men. According to UNECA's Report on the Status of Women in Africa, which cites the UNDP Human Development Report of 1997 in this regard,
the problem with the feminisation of poverty is not so much the numbers of women who are poorer than men, but rather with the severity of poverty and the greater hardships women face in lifting themselves and their children out of poverty … In addition they are likely to have fewer job opportunities. If they are the heads of households under these conditions, probably without access to land, or if they do, it is user rights that they have no control of, they are more likely to find themselves on the margins of society than men.
When the data are further broken down to consider gender disparities, these inequalities are even starker. According to the Gender-Related Development Index which is included in the overall report, there is no remarkable difference between women and men in South Africa in terms of life expectancy (slightly higher for women), literacy, and enrolment for primary, secondary and tertiary education (78% for both men and women). However, what is remarkable is that despite women and men being at similar levels of development of their skills in this regard, women's estimated average per capita income (US$7,047 per annum) is less than half that of men (US$15,712 per annum).
This would support the contention that women are marginalised in terms of their access to the mainstream economy and employment opportunities, which in turn is consistent with the position that there is an enduring patriarchal cultural bias in this regard. As the World Bank's Report on Gender, Equality and the Millennium Development Goals (2003:3) notes:
While achieving equal access to education is an important step towards gender equality, it is by no means sufficient. Even as gender disparities in education are reduced, other gender differences tend to persist – in labour market opportunities, legal rights and the ability to participate in public life and decision making.
As far as women's political representation is concerned, South Africa's levels are relatively high. Women comprise 30% of parliamentary representatives, and 38% of posts at ministerial level are occupied by women. This is good news for the empowerment of women, as overall the HDI figures reveal that a higher human development ranking is in proportion to more equal political representation between men and women. This is supported by the World Bank Gender and Development Group's Report Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals, which argues that gender equality is a sine qua nonfor sustainable development. The Report states that:
[t]here is now a shared understanding within the development community that development policies and actions that fail to take gender inequality into account and fail to address disparities between males and females will have limited effectiveness and cost implications … an approach to development that strives to increase gender equality has high payoffs for human well-being (2003:4–5).
Furthermore, women who are marginalised in this way are more vulnerable to the effects of HIV/AIDS, which is inextricably linked to poverty in South Africa. As Wayne Ellwood (2002:12) observes:
Poverty doesn’t cause AIDS. But it is the ideal incubator. And gender and poverty are inextricably combined: 70 percent of the world's poor are women and poor women are most susceptible to HIV. Violence against women and sexual assault are cornerstones of the AIDS epidemic.
In turn, vulnerability in this regard cannot be separated from the poverty and exploitation faced by rural women. Burnett (2002:28) argues that patriarchy in South Africa is a unique hybrid of indigenous and settler cultures. This has been influenced and exacerbated by other forms of inequality, particularly imbalances in power ‘organised around social, political and economic hierarchies of race and class’ which has in turn produced ‘unique forms of gender oppression for women who have been divided along racial lines, being products of their circumstances and coerced by national loyalties to struggle for national freedom prior to freedom for women’.
It is not being suggested that the socio-economic context described here, and the attendant cultural norms of gender inequality that underlie it, are appropriate to all women in South Africa. It is acknowledged that the experience of women who find themselves on the sharpest edge of poverty is not one that is shared by most white women (urban or rural), nor indeed women of other races, cultures, and class who live under very different circumstances. What needs to be emphasised is that the strongest argument for retaining patriarchal inegalitarian norms – that presented by the challenge of traditional African custom – is one which is constitutionally entrenched, and which thus creates the confusion of pitting women's rights against‘culture’, and makes it at least arguably tolerable to afford them a lesser status in both the private and the public spheres. Thus by allowing this ambiguity at the level of the constitution, gender discrimination can be justified, as ‘culture’ in a way that, significantly racial discrimination would not. As argued, the Constitution leaves room for tolerating gender inequality on this basis, and so contradicts the egalitarian foundations of the notion of human rights.
These divisions between women can disguise the particular burdens faced by rural women. Of the overall population who live in poverty in South Africa, 72% live in rural areas. Of these, women comprise the majority, not least because women are ‘lower on the social hierarchy’ (Burnett, 2002:29). According to Kehler, citing the UN Human Development Report of 2000, African rural women comprise 49% of the poorest of the South African population as a whole (Kehler, 2001). As many as 60% of female-headed rural households are below the poverty threshold because the gender element to poverty ‘finds expression in the lack of facilities, energy and time-consuming domestic work, lack of time, transport and unequal access to market-related employment, education, mobility and security’ (Burnett, 2002:30).
Kehler (2001) is also concerned with the plight of poor rural women in South Africa. She emphasises that women's inferior economic status is a reflection of ‘prevailing cultural and social norms which regard women as less “valuable” members of society’ and this not only affects the way they are treated, but also fuels the belief that women's contribution to sustaining the family is less valuable than men's. Kehler furthermore argues that the privatisation of social services in South Africa has a greater impact on poor women, as it is primarily women as caretakers who are the recipients of those services. This additional dimension of the ‘feminisation of poverty’ has particular resonance for rural women. As Kehler describes it:
African rural women's lack of access to resources and basic services are combined with unequal rights in family structures, as well as unequal access to family resources, such as land and livestock. This explains further why African rural women are not only poorer in society as a whole but also in their own families, and defines why their level and kind of poverty is experienced differently and more intensely than that of men. This translates into reality where African rural women are not only burdened with multiple roles concerning productive and reproductive responsibilities, but also subjected to discrimination and subjugation both in and out of their homes.
The conclusion to Kehler's study of women farm labourers in South Africa is that while the laws in South Africa aimed at protecting women are adequate (she refers in particular to the laws on employment standards and equity), the problem is with their enforcement in the face of deep, culturally embedded, resistance to the ‘right’ treatment of women:
For the majority of women in South Africa, existing socio-economic rights, as guaranteed in the constitution, remain inaccessible resulting in the perpetuation and increase, as well as the feminisation of poverty. Furthermore, especially for rural women and women on farms the constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination remain merely theoretical rights that lack practical implementation. What remain are women's day-to-day realities marked by the struggle for pure survival that is additionally determined by deteriorating socio-economic conditions and lack of development (Ibid.).
Conclusion
Women's economic marginalisation reflects a broader culture of gender inequality in South Africa. By way of conclusion, some possible ways forward are suggested in order that women's basic human rights might be honoured in reality and not just declared in law. Economic inequality and endemic violence against women are symptoms of a deeper inequality. The idea of women as human beings of equal worth and dignity is one that has still not taken root in South Africa. Women's lives, agency and well-being are regarded as being of less value than men's.
One way of redressing this imbalance would be to create greater options and choices for women, by facilitating their access to resources. The possibility of a Basic Income Grant (BIG) in South Africa has been mooted,4 and even a small allocation of such resources that was placed beyond the reach of traditional patriarchal power and authority would go some way towards allowing women to choose their circumstances, rather than keeping them as economic hostages of particular situations. An additional method of enforcing women's equal access to resources and property is to ensure that court judgements on matters that have traditionally disenfranchised women (such as the traditional law of succession) are consistent and unequivocal in their insistence on the equal rights of women and girl-children to such property and resources.
Another powerful source of change in this regard is women's participation in decision making, especially about development policy. While this complex subject needs more treatment outside this discussion, it is worth noting that participatory approaches to poverty reduction and development are themselves now widely accepted but that often women's voices in these initiatives are nevertheless lost. The way forward has been suggested is to move away from the ‘add women and stir’ approach and take into account the power inequalities that arise out of gender difference (Cornwall, 2003:1338). Entrenched poverty and gender inequality in South Africa is a glaring example of this assertion, and provides an opportunity to devise strategies of participation designed to overcome the impasse.
Finally, as long as attitudes towards women in South Africa remain as they are, there will be a continued tolerance of cultural inequality and denigration and abuse of women. Changing people's attitudes is difficult, but change they must. Those who are in power bear the responsibility for leading the way in this regard, but another strategy would be to increase both the likelihood of a remedy in the event of abuse of women and the sentences for such abuse. Here again the courts have a role to play in unequivocally striking down claims of culture and tradition that violate the equal rights of women and children.
The issue of women's substantive equality and access to economic resources is critical to sustaining democracy in South Africa. Inasmuch as democracy rests on assumptions about equal entitlement to the running of the state, it is contingent on the acknowledgement of the equal worth of all citizens. This is why democracy and human rights are often regarded as being inextricably linked. The basic ethos underlying a human rights dispensation is also that every person in the state counts for as much as everyone else. South Africa's declared policy priorities according to the Constitution, international and domestic law, make it an imperative of the democratic dispensation that the human rights of women are honoured in fact as well as law. And these cannot proceed from the assumption that women have lesser claims to a share of basic economic goods and services from which they have been traditionally excluded.