Central SA
Public Protector to address women’s struggles─── LUCKY NKUYANE 06:52 Sat, 07 May 2022

The Public Protector (PP), Busisiwe Mkhwebane, will today address a women seminar in Rustenburg in North West.
Mkhwebane, in her address, will be focusing on the empowerment of women in business in Rustenburg.
This comes amidst a vigorous debate in the country around government and businesses’ failure to ensure that women are given the space for self-emancipation.
Various organisations also recently raised a number of concerns about the dwindling number of women in positions of power - both in government and the private sector.
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The seminar will be held at Greenside Lodge in Rustenburg at around 10:00 this morning.
Recently, lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Free State (UFS) and Chairperson of the University of the Free State Women’s Forum, Nombulelo Shange, wrote an opinion piece which stated that “at every turn black women in higher education have to navigate tremendous obstacles in order to make it to senior positions.”
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Shange says in her opinion piece that many move to other fields, hoping to find acceptance whilst others reluctantly give up such ambitions and find meaning in junior roles.
"I agree that we have to hold our leaders to high standards and those who promise to bring much-needed transformation should be held to even higher standards. But it is bizarre to me that people think a 150-year complex history of structural injustice and exclusion can be changed almost overnight now that a black woman is in leadership, [and] these same unrealistic expectations are seldom placed on black men, at least not as quickly," Shange adds.