FICCI-FLO & SOUTH AFRICAN HIGH COMISSION Seminar on Addressing Unemployment, Poverty and Inequality: Together Contributing Towards the Progressive Future for Women New Delhi:

South African Minister’s call to find ways to empower women

with quality health, education and finance

NEW DELHI, August 22, 2012. Ms. Elizabeth Thabethe, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry of South Africa, today called upon the women of South Africa and India to “find ways of empowering women with quality health, education, and finance. We need to develop financial products that can help women entrepreneurs to fully utilize their potential.” Women should also be included in decision making positions and be given higher responsibilities because they are more than capable, she declared at a women’s seminar organised here today by FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) and the South African High Commission on the theme, ‘Addressing unemployment, poverty, and inequality together contributing towards the progressive future for women’. Ms. Thabethe said that the Government of South Africa is set to introduce a draft legislation aimed at enforcing gender equality both in the public and private sector and those who do not comply will face compelling penalties. The contribution by women movements in South Africa, she said, saw visible change after the 2009 national elections when women representation in parliament increased to 43% making South Africa one of the highest gender balanced countries in terms of government positions.

The seminar was organised to celebrate South Africa’s ‘Women’s Month’. August, therefore, commemorates a series of political activism by women during the struggle for liberation against colonisation and apartheid which culminated in the women’s march on 9 August 1956.

Ms. Thabethe said, “Like India, South African women have a shared history of oppression and a shared history of resistance to oppression. In the case of India, this was resistance against British colonial rule and in South Africa’s case it was resistance against both colonial and apartheid rule. In addition, women from South Africa and India faced similar challenges in that they had a three tier form of oppression. For South African women, they were oppressed on racial lines, as a class as they were largely poor, and in addition also as women because culture sometimes subdued the presence and movement of women. Indian women on the other hand also faced a similar three tier oppression. They were oppressed by a colonial iron fist, on the basis of which class they belonged to and also as women.

” Both countries, she said, have now come out of oppressive rule and are dynamic democratic countries who are leaders in their own right. Through forums such as IBSA and BRICS and the UN, South Africa and India are forces to be beckoned with. However, we are now faced with the task of matching up the status of women to that of our countries. It cannot be that the same countries that I have just described as dynamic and democratic and leaders still has homegrown environments that are not conducive for the upliftment of women.

In his address, Rev. Harris Majeke, High Commissioner of South Africa to India, expressed the hope that the seminar would provide guidelines for the two governments, communities and women entrepreneurs and organisations. He said, “I am reminded by names such as Mother Teresa and Indira Gandhi who played a pivotal role in vocalizing India’s anti-apartheid movement. I am reminded of generations of women from all walks of life, continents and backgrounds who have positively contributed to humanity as we know it today. We pay tribute to many generations of women for their sacrifices, patriotism, hard work and commitment because they laid the foundation for women today. The challenges we face today may be different but the amount of resilience needed to overcome such challenges is the same.

” Ms. Kavita, Varadrajan, President, FLO, in her remarks stated that, “All the highest offices in India’s constitutional and political arena are held by women and there is dominance of women in all spheres of Indian life such as the corporate sector, medicine, sports, literature, arts and entertainment.” Yet, it should not be construed that women are an empowered gender in India enjoying a shackle-free life. On the contrary, “We are a society where women are less valued than men. Crime rates against women are appalling and female infanticide is rampant in rural areas.

” She reiterated FLO’s commitment to work against female infanticide, a task taken up by the organisation a few years ago.

Ms. Varadrajan indicated that she was focussing on developing 400 rural women at the grass root level and a series of talks by empowered women in various fields such as art, politics and media, and education programmes for FLO members with IIM Ahmedabad and delegates with women entrepreneurs from other countries.