By Lungile Ntimba
Despite decades of advocacy work, the gendered socio-economic gap remains both untenable and unsustainable, according to Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Sindisiwe Chikunga.
Speaking on behalf of the government, the minister addressed delegates at the G20 Conference on Global Innovative Approaches and Best Practices on Financial Inclusion on Sun City. in the North West.
“Women and girls continue to shoulder the global burden of poverty, which in turn deprives them of accessing vital health services, education, and socioeconomic opportunities throughout their lives,” said Chikunga.
“As a result, women continue to be underrepresented in economic decision-making positions, they have limited access to credit and capital, they face discrimination in employment, they earn less, shoulder disproportionate unpaid care responsibilities, and lag behind in digital financial access.”
She highlighted five broad pillars of financial inclusion that needed urgent attention.
On gender-responsive economic governance, Chikunga said that institutional reforms must ensure that women were equitably represented in economic decision-making, including gender-responsive budgeting, enforcing quotas in financial institutions and establishing economic advisory councils that amplified their voices.
To ensure meaningful access to financial resources and capital formation, the minister said progressive fiscal reforms and an overhaul of the global financial architecture were long overdue.
With a $1.7 trillion global financing gap for women entrepreneurs, structural changes in banking were essential. The minister called for the scaling of women-centered credit programmes and legal reforms to property laws that currently hindered access to collateral.
Chikunga said the conference must also address the issue of women’s access to land and related productive assets as key pillars of financial inclusion and the foundation of wealth creation.
“We contend that the economic and financial inclusion of women cannot be achieved alongside landlessness and unjust patterns of property ownership,” the minister said.
“We therefore hope that this conference will also serve as a foundational platform for addressing the enduring social, legal and customary barriers that continue to hinder women’s ownership of land, capital, credit, technology and other means of production.”
On participation in trade and industry value chains, Chikunga said women must be empowered to lead in industries such as green energy and mining beneficiation. The African Continental Free Trade Area offered a path to fairer participation and investment in value-added production.
The minister said another area that required urgent attention was the leverage of preferential public procurement at various levels of government to achieve sustainable financial inclusion outcomes.
This included setting mandatory quotas for contracts awarded to women-owned businesses, with specific attention to marginalised women entrepreneurs. The country has put the quota at 40% for women-owned businesses.
The minister framed the conference as a continuation of the vision set out in the 1995 Beijing Declaration, where 189 governments acknowledged that women’s economic empowerment was essential to global development.
“Three decades on, the Beijing promise feels more distant than we might ever have imagined. Women’s rights are under siege. The poison of patriarchy is back – and it is back with a vengeance: Slamming the brakes on action; tearing-up progress; and mutating into new and dangerous forms,” she said.
“But there is an antidote. That antidote is action. Now is the time for those of us who care about equality for women and girls to stand up and to speak out. Now is the time for the world to accelerate progress and deliver on the promise of Beijing.”
Citing global statistics, Chikunga noted that 15% of the Sustainable Development Goals were on track for 2030 and about 37% of these targets have shown no progress or, even worse, have regressed below the 2015 baseline.
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