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#WomensMonth: women's economic empowerment is a human right, not a crisis management allowance

11 August 2023 | Story Prof Pearl Sithole | Photo Supplied

Opinion article by Prof Pearl Sithole, Social Scientist and Vice-Principal: Academic and Research on the Qwaqwa Campus, University of the Free State.

It is August and I want to bury my head in the sand to avoid being part of what is turning out to be a condescending South African ritual against women – ‘speak justice in August, and practise injustices for the rest of the year’. The requests to feminists to rise up and give talks to dignify yet another August with sophisticated speak about quite a simple moral matter – women are as human as men. The ritual is tiring and it is creating despondency. How difficult can it be to switch to action on equality and fairness towards women as human beings too? How difficult can it be to be fair? How difficult can it be to see that while the unfairness is structural and cultural, it is social will and moral agency that is called into test? And how difficult is it to realise that in fact not attending to this matter of social justice is keeping all the other architecture of inequalities and unfairness intact?

August in South Africa is used to pour out pity in the name of physical gender-based violence (GBV) and other social strains women experience – pity poured out by people who are in positions of power with voices that merely acknowledge what needs to be done. The same voices will then go to various corners where they practise professional GBV, and thus endorsing women as ‘secondary beings’ used to shoulder a patriarchal and capitalist societal agenda.

Economic empowerment of women

This year the focus is economic empowerment of women. In a government blog published in March 2023 that was written partly to cast a celebratory tone for International Women’s Day, the President could not resist twinning economic empowerment with the potential to escape GBV:

“The economic empowerment of women is an important pillar of our struggle to end gender-based violence and femicide. We have recognised that unequal access to resources and economic opportunity makes it more difficult for women to escape situations of abuse and violence.”

Clearly this is a much-needed spanner in the works to escape GBV. But the fact is that this society still laments a wage gap and pleads for narrowing gender economic differences in order to escape GBV, speaks volumes about the kind of society South Africa is. The institutional culture that sees women as secondary, almost like pets, must be given reprieve from violence even if it takes ‘giving them some economic empowerment’. The lack of transparency on pay scales across work categories; no women ever in certain leadership positions; and more women being unemployed – are not cited as a violation in themselves. Basically, South Africa is an abusive society to women that avoids the mirror by pretending to attend to physical violence through relaxing the rest of the violations.

Yet the more tokenistic the talk on inequalities every August and thus the endorsement of structural and cultural injustices, the firmer the country proclaims its affinity with inequality. If the maxim “actions speak louder than words” has been promulgated as useful with regards to socialisation and bringing up decent human beings, the current generation of leaders has failed dismally to use it in terms of political and social will to fight injustices.

Instead they have exercised a practical display that men are the superior species and that women must take charge of the menial affairs of society in daily life. The uproar against physical GBV masks the major omissions on the kind of society South Africa is while it continues to modernise gender inequalities:

Leadership is a male affair, with the top and resource-management positions exclusively male through history. The Presidency is a male affair, as well as the portfolios of Economic Development and Finance.
The business sector also continues to have higher pay grades for men and not for women.
In sport, women’s teams are paid less, with public scrounging just to lull the complaints for every major event.
Committees can recommend women into positions and authorities can exercise the right not to endorse those recommendations.
Institutions, including civil society, can legitimise their existence over the concept of social justice and sustain glaring imbalances on gender in leadership positions.
Funders continue to have gender and racial leadership preferences in agencies they fund – the rest of the profiles being the subject of never-ending training on funding proposals.
Intersectionality of identity becomes visibly toxic when certain members of ‘the inferior groups’ are given a special place on the ladder within the unequal society – like the conspicuous place of white women in the property sector, and the convenient tallying of all women to generate a good transformation profile for institutions.

Society has modernised inequality

In essence society has modernised inequality – and highlights ‘shallow permits’ as women’s rights achievements. South Africa may shout shallow things like: ‘our women can be car drivers’ and ‘women feature in the Constitution’, but the total lived experience of women at all levels of society leaves little to be desired. Men continue to hover over the prerogative to place women or ‘allow’ them in spaces where it makes strategic support to their own positions or to make institutions look good in terms of quotas.

In professional spaces in South Africa it is not uncommon to see very capable women doing menial tasks designed to hand over professional products for men to shine in leadership. It is almost like the domestication of professional spaces through importing culture and religion – to underpin institutional chauvinism. And yet policies and strategies make a clear and tacit association of culture and religion only with society out there. Beside gender mainstreaming, which is largely grounded on mere inclusion of women, the damaging role of culture and religion on professional relationships is not on the radar of attention within institutions. Thus, a country can marginalise women’s national teams on the issue of remuneration at the back of what is cited as “the best constitution in the world”, and still talk about the importance of women every August.

The most disappointing stakeholders in all this are the women’s political formations. In the context of South Africa, ageism within these formations is a huge factor. Those senior women are kingmakers of note. They believe in women as living to support men and are afraid to rock the boat for their own placement in professional peripheral positions. It would be interesting to hear them articulate their status of bondage and why it has been sustained.

For now, one thing is clear: just like other hegemonies that used ideology and culture to root themselves (i.e. imperialism, capitalism and racial inequalities), patriarchy is not going to disintegrate just because those it serves have suddenly developed a conscience and realise they are not ‘better beings’. Agency, advocacy, and political will are key in fighting for justice. No piece of paper implements itself, not even the Constitution.

News Archive

Inaugural lecture: Prof Robert Bragg, Dept. of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology

2006-05-17

Attending the inaugural lecture were in front from the left Prof Robert Bragg (lecturer at the Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology) and Frederick Fourie (Rector and Vice-Chancellor). At the back from the left were Prof James du Preez (Departmental Chairperson: Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology) and Prof Herman van Schalkwyk (Dean: Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences). Photo: Stephen Collett

A summary of an inaugural lecture delivered by Prof Robert Bragg at the University of the Free State:

CONTROL OF INFECTIOUS AVIAN DISEASES – LESSONS FOR MAN?

Prof Robert R Bragg
Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology
University of the Free State

“Many of the lessons learnt in disease control in poultry will have application on human medicine,” said Prof Robert Bragg, lecturer at the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Department of Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology during his inaugural lecture.

Prof Bragg said the development of vaccines remains the main stay of disease control in humans as well as in avian species. Disease control can not rely on vaccination alone and other disease-control options must be examined.

“With the increasing problems of antibiotic resistance, the use of disinfection and bio security are becoming more important,” he said.

“Avian influenza (AI) is an example of a disease which can spread from birds to humans. Hopefully this virus will not develop human to human transmission,” said Prof Bragg.

According to Prof Bragg, South Africa is not on the migration route of water birds, which are the main transmitters of AI. “This makes South Africa one of the countries less likely to get the disease,” he said.

If the AI virus does develop human to human transmission, it could make the 1918 flu pandemic pale into insignificance. During the 1918 flu pandemic, the virus had a mortality rate of only 3%, yet more than 50 million people died.

Although the AI virus has not developed human-to-human transmission, all human cases have been related to direct contact with infected birds. The mortality rate in humans who have contracted this virus is 67%.

“Apart from the obvious fears for the human population, this virus is a very serious poultry pathogen and can cause 100% mortality in poultry populations. Poultry meat and egg production is the staple protein source in most countries around the world. The virus is currently devastating the poultry industry world-wide,” said Prof Bragg.

Prof Bragg’s research activities on avian diseases started off with the investigation of diseases in poultry. “The average life cycle of a broiler chicken is 42 days. After this short time, they are slaughtered. As a result of the short generation time in poultry, one can observe changes in microbial populations as a result of the use of vaccines, antibiotics and disinfectants,” said Prof Bragg.

“Much of my research effort has been directed towards the control of infectious coryza in layers, which is caused by the bacterium Avibacterium paragallinarum. This disease is a type of sinusitis in the layer chickens and can cause a drop in egg product of up to 40%,” said Prof Bragg.

The vaccines used around the world in an attempt to control this disease are all inactivated vaccines. One of the most important points is the selection of the correct strains of the bacterium to use in the vaccine.

Prof Bragg established that in South Africa, there are four different serovars of the bacterium and one of these, the serovar C-3 strain, was believed to be unique to Southern Africa. He also recently discovered this serovar for the first time in Israel, thus indicating that this serovar might have a wider distribution than originally believed.

Vaccines used in this country did not contain this serovar. Prof Bragg established that the long term use of vaccines not containing the local South African strain resulted in a shift in the population distribution of the pathogen.

Prof Bragg’s research activities also include disease control in parrots and pigeons. “One of the main research projects in my group is on the disease in parrots caused by the circovirus Beak and Feather Disease virus. This virus causes serious problems in the parrot breeding industry in this country. This virus is also threatening the highly endangered and endemic Cape Parrot,” said Prof Bragg.

Prof Bragg’s research group is currently working on the development of a DNA vaccine which will assist in the control of the disease, not only in the parrot breeding industry, but also to help the highly endangered Cape Parrot in its battle for survival.

“Not all of our research efforts are directed towards infectious coryza or the Beak and Feather Disease virus. One of my Masters students is currently investigating the cell receptors involved in the binding of Newcastle Disease virus to cancerous cells and normal cells of humans. This work will also eventually lead to a possible treatment of cancer in humans and will assist with the development of a recombinant vaccine for Newcastle disease virus,” said Prof Bragg.

We are also currently investigating an “unknown” virus which causes disease problems in poultry in the Western Cape,” said Prof Bragg.

“Although disinfection has been extensively used in the poultry industry, it has only been done at the pre-placement stage. In other words, disinfectants are used before the birds are placed into the house. Once the birds are placed, all use of disinfectants stops,” said Prof Bragg.

“Disinfection and bio security can be seen as the ‘Cinderella’ of disease control in poultry. This is also true for human medicine. One just has to look at the high numbers of people who die from hospital-acquired infections to realise that disinfection is not a concept which is really clear in human health care,” said Prof Bragg.

Much research has been done in the control of diseases through vaccination and through the use of antibiotics. “These pillars of disease control are, however, starting to crumble and more effort is needed on disinfection and bio security,” said Prof Bragg.

Prof Bragg has been working in close co-operation with a chemical manufacturing company in Stellenbosch to develop a unique disinfectant which his highly effective yet not toxic to the birds.

As a result of this unique product, he has developed the continual disinfection program for use in poultry. In this program the disinfectant is used throughout the production cycle of the birds. It is also used to ensure that there is excellent pre-placement disinfection.

“The program is extensively used for the control of infectious diseases in the parrot-breeding industry in South Africa and the product has been registered in 15 countries around the world with registration in the USA in the final process,” said Prof Bragg.

“Although the problem of plasmid mediated resistance to disinfectants is starting to rear its ugly head, this has allowed for the opening of a new research field which my group will hopefully exploit in the near future,” he said.

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