Monday is International Women’s Day, which is aimed at celebrating the achievements of women across the globe.
This year’s theme is “Women in Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World.”
The Motsepe Foundation will be hosting the 5th annual Gender Equality, Wellness and Leadership Summit as part of the celebrations.
Co-founder and CEO Motsepe Foundation, Dr Precious Moloi-Motsepe, says the day should be used to remind everyone about the importance of gender equality.
“And we all need to lobby governments as well as business sectors to ensure this is we all understand how important this is because a country that doesn’t tap into its full human resources cannot be competitive and will not do well in terms of its GDP,” says Moloi-Motsepe.
Motsepe Foundation to host the Gender Equality, Wellness and Leadership Summit:
On Sunday, Unisa’s first female principal and vice-chancellor, Professor Puleng Lenkabula said the country needs to tackle gender inequalities in the workplace and in family settings to create the future it hopes for.
She was addressing the 12th Annual International Women’s Day Event, hosted by Unisa and the Thabo Mbeki Foundation.
Professor Lenkabula said society must ensure that victims of gender-based violence overcome the lasting negative effects of working from home due to lockdown regulations.
Within the first week of the national lockdown in the country, police reported receiving 2 300 partaining to GBV. By mid-June 2020, at least 21 women and children had been killed by intimate partners.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has declared the scourge a second pandemic.
According to Amnesty International, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe stand out as countries where support services to women and girls subjected to violence and abuse were not taken into consideration in the design of the measures to control the spread of COVID-19 in southern Africa.
Thabo Mbeki Foundation and UNISA commemorate International Women’s Day, Part 1
