Executive Summary
This review of the State of the Nation Address (SONA) for 2013,as delivered by President Jacob Zuma in parliament on 14 February 2013, gauges how government’s priorities for the year will affect the social, political and economic status of women. It also measures the advances made with regards to the five priorities the president set in the 2009 SONA, namely: Decent work, education, crime, health and rural development and agrarian reform. It ends with a conclusion stipulating issues of concern that should be watched out for during the course of 2013.
Decent Work
There was no mention of the disproportionate impact of unemployment on women, or details of any measures to improve women’s position in the labour market, or any additional approach to create jobs beyond infrastructure development plans. In light of this, one cannot discern any significant commitment from the SONA 2013 which may contribute toward the reduction of female unemployment in the year ahead.
The government’s focus on the development of infrastructure is expected to generate jobs in sectors dominated by men and which will therefore have little benefit to women. The Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill, aimed at making gender equality in the private and public sectors mandatory, overlaps with at least five existing laws, which begs the question why an assessment has not been done about the apparent lack of success of existing enforcement frameworks to ensure gender parity in the workplace. A new law is unlikely to address problems that have not been identified.
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