KWAZULU-NATAL OFFICICE ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN

Structure

The Office on the Status of Women (OSW) operates in the Human Rights Chief Directorate within the Office of the Premier. It consists of a Manager, Assistant Manager and an Admin Assistant.

Policy and Gender Action Plan

The OSW has a draft gender policy and is currently working on an implementation strategy as well as a gender-monitoring tool. The Office has furthermore undertaken a statistical audit of women in senior management in the province as part of assessing the 10 years of democracy.

Programmes

The following Departments have programmes that are gender related:

· Department of Safety and Security: A Women's safety Audit is designed to assist communities and government in identifying women's safety issues, identifying ways of addressing them and then ensuring that they are addressed immediately or through the integrated development planning process. Training on the use of the toolkit is to be rolled out to all municipal areas over the next year.

· The South Mrican Police Services: The department has established a Victim Support Unit in 2005 to assist capacitating Trauma Centres both in police stations and communities to prevent victims to suffer a secondary form of victimization after reporting a crime because they do not receive adequate support from the criminal justice system. Such support includes feedback on investigations being conducted into their victimization.

· Department of Education: Women empowerment programme has capacitated women senior management teams in three Presidential Nodal Areas (Nongoma, Inanda, KwaMashu) have been capacitated on HIVIAIDS Management and Policy Formulation. In these areas High School Girls have been workshopped on Teenage Pregnancy, Responsible Sexuality and Healthy Relationships.

· Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and new Municipality Infrastructural Grant (MIG) water and sanitation projects which are currently being implemented under the MIG programme, which is managed by the Department of Traditional and Local Government Affairs. More women are selected to be committee members of (MIG). Sanitation Projects exist in all district municipalities.

· Department of Health: Health- Crisis Care Centres for abused woman have been established. The purpose of these Crisis Centres is to manage the victims of abuse and rape in a patient friendly environment and to give the appropriate treatment to the patients when needed. There are 28 fully operational Crisis Centres in the Districts. Voluntary Counselling and Testing of HIVIAIDS is also provided in these centres. Workplace Gender Forum has been Launched. The department of Health has also adopted a holistic approach to health. It has responded to the challenges of poverty eradication by opening up markets for the targeted groups, inter alia co-operatives, as part of the Department's initiative for poverty eradication thus improving the health status of the people.

· Department of Transport - Zibambele Road Maintenance Contract, Women for Road Safety, Employment for Female Traffic Officers, Vukuzakhe and labour construction programmes and celebration of events for significant days.

OSW's achievements:

· GFPs have been permanently established in some Departments and municipalities. The location of the GFPs differs across Departments. The location of the GFPs places them outside of key decision-making structures and thus limits the impact of the GFP in gender mainstreaming.

· Undertaken research on Women in Senior Management. There has been an increase of women in the most critical decision making positions in government departments, that is the head of Departments (HOD), from zero to five in one year. The women HOD'S are now 5 out of 13 which makes them a critical mass.

· Women and Indigenous Knowledge Project. Indigenous knowledge is being explored as means to alleviate poverty and also a means to promote rural development.

· '(ZN Implementation Strategy for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment workshop. The Gender Machinery will be workshopped on Legal Imperatives related to gender mainstreaming on 22 to 23 August 2005.

· Women Entrepreneur Empowerment Programme. OSW in collaboration with the Department of Economic Development initiated the programme with an aim of providing productivity awareness for women entrepreneurs; productivity coaching for women entrepreneurs; audit of businesses; and hold women entrepreneurs productivity conferences or seminars that will include: Show casing of achievements/businesses owned and managed by women; providing information on access to finance; providing information on access to markets; providing government support; coaching of businesses over a period. The Black Economic Empowerment Unit within the Department of Economic Development leads the project.

· Enhancing Adult Basic Education. Statistics are being used to provide information about ABET accessibility to rural women, their progression and dispersion of centers that provide ABET. A campaign to encourage women to register is underway. Partners are Education Department and Rural Women's Movement.

· Enhancing Girl Guide Movement. OSW is facilitating the enhancement of both the provincial Girl Guide and Scout movement towards moral regeneration. The needs of the girl child will also be taken care of by this initiative. The premier has set aside a budget for the Girl Guide movement.

· Take a Girl Child to the Workplace. An initiative "Take a Girl Child to the Workplace" is gaining momentum in the Province. OSW participated in this initiative which exposes girl learners to various careers. Ohiange High School at Ethekwini Region and Sthabile at Umgungundlovu District participated in the 2005 event held at IEC in Durban.

· Information sessions in rural areas. To reach out to rural communities OSW collaborate with is organisations like Rural Women's Movement. This organisation consists of 499 organisations of rural women that range from dressmaking, HIVIAIDS intervention organisations, agriculture, etc. spread all over the province.

· Campaign against women and child abuse. By collaborating with Civil Society Organizations OSW reaches out to communities to show solidarity to a woman in need.

· OSW is also able to reach out to disabled women in communities through working in collaboration with the Committee on the Quality of life and Status of Women, Children and People with Disability by joining the committee in its "taking parliament to the people" campaign.

· The Office on the Status of Women works closely with the Commission on Gender Equality in investigating complaints sent to its office. The complainants are visited at their homes to witness their social condition and the Commission helps the complainants in filing restraining orders.

Challenges

 

The challenges are as follows:

 

· Establishment of permanent GFPs and the resourcing thereof.

· Establishing an integrated approach to gender issues and political buy-in. Furthermore, there is a need for an integrated approach to deal with gender issues.