{"id":244020,"date":"2022-11-25T15:29:02","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T13:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/women-empowerment-key-to-dealing-with-gbvf\/"},"modified":"2022-11-25T15:29:02","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T13:29:02","slug":"women-empowerment-key-to-dealing-with-gbvf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/women-empowerment-key-to-dealing-with-gbvf\/","title":{"rendered":"Women empowerment key to dealing with GBVF"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Empowering women by giving them opportunities to become economically independent is key to tackling Gender-based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) in the country, says Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest challenge for women is economic power. Let\u2019s expose them to opportunities to generate their own income so they can walk away from abusive relationships,\u201d Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said on Friday. <\/p>\n

The Minister was addressing the launch of the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children Campaign at the Johannesburg Expo Centre, which took place under theme \u201cSocio-Economic Rights and Empowerment to build Women\u2019s Resilience against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide: Connect, Collaborate, Contract!\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe call for the economic empowerment of women cannot be separated from the broader call for a violence-free South Africa. Both need to be met with urgency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scourge of gender-based violence and femicide continues to undermine our efforts of building a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist, and united South Africa,\u201d the Minister said.<\/p>\n

She said at the centre of government\u2019s response to GBVF, is to tackle the drivers of violence in our communities.<\/p>\n

This includes challenging the socio-economic status of women and other vulnerable groups including the youth, persons with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ persons.<\/p>\n

\u201cInclusive economic empowerment remains a key priority of the government and it is a central tenet to ensuring a more equal society for all.<\/p>\n

\u201cTherefore, the theme for this year\u2019s 16 Days of Activism aims to strengthen programmatic approaches to accelerate the social and economic empowerment of women.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur intention throughout the year has been to make the linkages between building women\u2019s resilience through socio economic empowerment and its influence in decreasing women and children\u2019s vulnerability to forms of violence including GBVF.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, we are saying that walking away from an abusive situation, must not lead women and children into poverty,\u201d the Minister said.<\/p>\n

Government used the launch to gather women in business across different sectors, including women\u2019s Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs), cooperatives and women informal traders.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rights of women to dignity, security, safety and protection is non-negotiable. We need to collaborate on developing, implementing, supporting and monitoring programs for equitable job creation, representation and ownership by women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes strengthening the public-private sector partnerships to facilitate economic opportunities for women. In addition, we must accelerate initiatives to empower our women who work the land,\u201d the Minister said.<\/p>\n

She reiterated calls for land redistribution and agrarian reform.<\/p>\n

This includes funding women farmers to drive transformation deliverables through broadening ownership of SMMEs led by women, youth and persons with disabilities to build and capacitate entrepreneurship and economic resilience.<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s Economic Assembly<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nkoana-Mashabane said the Women\u2019s Economic Assembly (WECONA) continues to empower women economically.<\/p>\n

\u201cWECONA continues to mobilize and establish the public-private sector partnerships to enable women owned enterprises to participate in procurement opportunities within industry supply chains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWECONA has engaged with key sectors to advocate and negotiate for the establishment of transformation targets and actions,\u201d the Minister said.<\/p>\n

These sectors include Agriculture, Steel, Energy, Poultry, Textiles, FMCG, Automotive, Finance, Transport & Logistics, Tourism, ICT, Mining, Infrastructure, and the Green Economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition, WECONA has been instrumental in driving advocacy and accountability in the implementation of the 40% preferential procurement in the public sector towards women owned businesses,\u201d the Minister said.<\/p>\n

WECONA co-chairperson Namhla Mniki said her organization will continue to work for and fight for the economic empowerment of women.<\/p>\n

WECONA is a critical vehicle to addressing women\u2019s unequal economic and social position, through access to government and private sector procurement, employment, housing, access to land, financial resources and other income generating initiatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recognize that the less empowered we are as women economically, the less it becomes impossible for us to leave abusive relationship.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe indignity of poverty and the indignity of economic exclusion leads to increased vulnerability generally not just to GBV. We are less resilient to economic shocks, we are less resilient if some is sick in our home, we don\u2019t have the capacity to deal with that,\u201d Mniki said.<\/p>\n

She said WECONA is working on a bold and radical programme that promotes women empowerment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen must claim economic power and the economy must create the opportunities for women to own their economic power, ownership to land, ownership to manufacturing infrastructure, ownership and access to financing so that we can become business owners,\u201d Mniki said. \u2013 SAnews.gov.za<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Empowering women by giving them opportunities to become economically independent is key to tackling Gender-based Violence and Femicide (GBVF) in the country, says Minister in the Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. \u201cThe biggest challenge for women is economic power. Let\u2019s expose them to opportunities to generate their own income so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[38678],"class_list":{"0":"post-244020","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-sanews","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/women-empowerment-key-to-dealing-with-gbvf.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}