By Zinhle Mncube
Sometimes, just sometimes, organisations and captains of industry proudly brandishing statements along the lines of “we support and promote our women” tends to sound like Steve Hofmeyr saying, “Some of my best friends are black.”
It’s an eery side of platforming that veers towards objectifying women in professional and entrepreneurial settings. Part of this speaks to where we are socially as people. We live in a world that compels us to live-blog and self-promote ourselves, which does have its benefits when considering the number of careers it has created.
Everyone is a a content creator and everyone is an audience. The issue that may arise from this, however, is that when content runs dry (and boy does it run out), it leads to a gold rush-like scramble where every single piece of our lives, when put up to the sun deceptively shines.
Our lives then become this C-grade reality show that no one would pay money to watch but because of where we are this has become part and parcel of living. It’s in this reality show that the advancement of equality, fairness, and justice exists but in a state of compromise.
Women’s rights and placing women on an equal footing still remains an insurmountable trek in several quarters. The numbers tell us this.
According to the 2022 Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurs, South Africa ranks 40 out of 65 countries when it comes to accessing finance for women, a decline of four places from the previous report. The same report ranks South Africa number 54 for providing government support. Lastly, the report ranks South Africa 37th in the “Supporting Entrepreneurial Conditions” component of the index, which benchmarks how supportive entrepreneurial conditions are as enablers or constraints of women business ownership.
Socio-economically, Stats SA has continuously highlighted that Black African women face the highest unemployment rate. This justifies why policies, activities, interventions, and programmes geared towards placing women in the mainstream of the economy are paramount.
What we can question though is how far these means go in advancing equality and fairness in business, and professional spaces. These practices go back decades and have evolved with time, but it is telling that a 2022 report still shows gaping holes in our social compact towards fame counterparts.
Beyond commitments on paper are hearts and minds that still need winning over to thoroughly undo systemic discriminatory practices that are naturally geared towards sidelining women. It’s these hearts and minds that make it easy to develop programmes for women without working with women. And it’s these hearts and minds that will beat their drums and shake their tambourines like it’s Pentecost Sunday when there’s one woman who manages to advance, not appreciating that there are prejudicial, prehistoric tectonic plates drenched in misogynoir that still need to be shifted out. This work takes time and dinosauric-levels of effort.
This is not a fight against the celebration of women and the continued strides they make in a world that was originally not built for them. There’s a hall of personal heroes I think about that deserve their field of flowers. What concerns me is when celebrating veers towards trophism whose imagery is that of a big game hunter with a bust of a buffalo in his office for all to witness.
See, with this form of celebration, the focus of honour is not the women who have toiled and dedicated their time and resources to be a success. The honour is reserved for the one who supported them. Like the hunter, these organisations care more about how they are perceived in the eyes of the audience.
Like the bust in the trophy room, the women they support are but a means of receiving adulation and applause. This furthers the objectification of women more than levelling the playing field for them.
We have all to a certain extent, been guilty of the above. Call it cultural bias or an unchecked blind spot. We can all agree, that there is no cogent argument one can reasonably make to justify the exclusion of half of our workforce from meaningfully contributing to the economy when there’s a commercial demand for this talent. The participation of women and them comprehensively receiving support is necessary.
All organisations doing this work must be commended and their work amplified. We, however, must fight against the temptation of haphazardly putting together interventions that achieve the bare minimum but demand maximum exposure. It’s a disservice to the participants and to us as implementing agents or sponsors. This is not a big game hunting sport.
Zinhle Mncube is head of Business and Partnerships at 22 On Sloane, Africa’s largest entrepreneurship campus.
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