Cape Town – Science and technology Minister Naledi Pandor says women have all the qualities to be leaders in all sectors of the economy.
She said women should be encouraged to enter non-traditional fields of the economy and excel in them.
The Minister addressed the Global Women in Management reception dinner at the Twelve Apostles Hotel in Cape Town on Wednesday.
“Successful leadership goes beyond management of plans and tasks. Successful leaders mobilise all possible means and human resources. Successful leaders inspire. We don’t need autocratic modes of leadership that favour men any longer. We need transformational modes of leadership in which leaders seek to change the unequal conditions of society,” she said.
The Minister said programmes like these were immeasurable as they advanced women’s empowerment.
She urged women to take a different approach to empowerment, and abandon the “individual-enterprise focussed” business culture to adopt a more collective approach.
“Women need to think in a different and radical fashion about the investment and enterprise opportunities available to them.
“They should be encouraged to think of collective community ownership and investment and find ways of them empowering women through collaborative enterprises focussed on creative sectors that are currently neglected - services, design, financial administration and property development,” she said.
The Minister said in South Africa’s young democracy, many gains have been made to advance women’s empowerment.
Today, women have a large representation in Parliament, leading universities and some becoming business executives.
Despite this gender inequality still persists and the time has come for women to walk into non-traditional sectors of the economy.
“Women should be encouraged to enter non-traditional fields such as science and technology and to become established researchers in emerging disciplines. We need to change the current situation in which women corporate leaders are an exception rather than the rule.
“Female CEOs are still very rare, women are the minority in engineering and hard-science fields, and there is still a gender pay gap,” she said.
The Global Women in Management programme, which targets women from targets women from countries such as Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania, is designed for mid-career women from non-governmental organisations and business women's associations, amongst others, that implement projects targeting existing and emerging women business leaders and entrepreneurs with skills development, opportunities to start businesses, and technologies that advance women economically.
Over the past decade, the programme, a collaboration between energy company ExxonMobil Corporation and community development organisation Plan International USA, has seen 700 women being trained and given skills to be leaders and entrepreneurs in their own countries.
Pam Darwin, the Vice President of Exploration Africa at ExxonMobil, said the company had invested US$90 million over the past decade to implement programmes that have directly benefited tens of thousands of women around the world.
She said women have traditionally dedicated a sizeable chunk of their income, no matter how little, back into their families.
Darwin said women have taken a similar approach about their own communities.
“Empowering women is really key. If you give a woman a helping hand, they will lift up the community,” she said.
She told women who were part of the programme that after the Cape Town workshop, they were going to return to their countries and organisations empowered and ready to effect a positive change in their communities.
“You are going to rock this world ladies.” – SAnews.gov.za
