Women and economy: a justice issue for the Decade - Churches in Solidarity with Women: A Mid-Decade Assessment

Among the priority aims of the Ecumenical Decade -- Churches in Solidarity with Women is facing the issue of global economic injustice, which takes its greatest toll on women and children. In the case of South Africa, as this article will show, the inhuman system of apartheid fostered economic injustice and financial oppression and was thus a particularly efficient instrument to subordinate women. I But even though apartheid was a system peculiar to one country, economic injustice is a worldwide phenomenon and in every case it affects women the most.

South Africa has a rich and varied natural resource base, a relatively developed human resource pool, a considerable skills-training capacity, a comparatively advanced infrastructure and a young but potentially vibrant and sophisticated managerial culture. Apartheid has employed these advantages to construct a racist haven of economic, political and social privilege for the white minority by comprehensively and ruthlessly oppressing, exploiting and dispossessing the black majority, thus dividing the country into the equivalent of the "first" world and "third" world. I Originally founded on mining and agriculture, the South African economy has since diversified into manufacturing. However, the manufacturing sector is still not as inteRNationally competitive as it could be, and mining remains the chief foreign exchange eaRNer. IndustrialIzation, particularly strengthening the manufacturing sector, will have to be an important component of economic growth and development.

For more than four decades, apartheid has made deliberate and systematic efforts to politically exclude and economically marginalize the black majority. The distribution of income, wealth and economic opportunity was thus racially determined in favour of whites rather than according to free initiative and tested merit. By undermining the production and market potential represented by the black majority, apartheid imposed radically severe constraints on the capacity of the economy to produce, create jobs, distribute wealth and grow. The economic problems of apartheid have been accentuated by the global economic recession. With rising unemployment, a soaring cost of living and a deepening crisis in education, health care, housing and general social welfare forcing millions of South Africans to struggle simply to stay alive, the pursuit of unorthodox, socially costly and unproductive means of earning a living has become that much more attractive. Racist law and order cannot contain this potentially explosive ferment, which also threatens the very chances of democracy emerging. The removal of racially inspired structural economic constraints and their social and economic consequences & an essential condition for the pursuit of economic recovery, growth and development as well as democratization.

Black women under apartheid

As a structural consequence of apartheid and its deeply ingrained male chauvinist bias, reinforced by some of the pointedly less enlightened male attitudes carried over from the predominantly patriarchal traditional African society, black women in South Africa have been oppressed and exploited as blacks, as workers and as women. Structurally they have been reduced to the most economically disadvantaged stratum of society. Therefore, in economic terms, the democratization of South Africa must fundamentally, though not exclusively, root itself in a conscious, explicit and active determination to overcome the abject poverty of blacks and black women in particular.

Blacks, who constitute the majority of the population, are the tillers of the land and the crushers and carriers of stones from the belly of the earth from which rich minerals are extracted. But they have no say over this wealth which they create -- and in the creation of which countless African lives are lost in mine disasters.

In the formal employment sectors, women are viewed as "high risk". Since they become pregnant and have to care for sick family members, they are considered economically unproductive. They are the easiest to exploit and are paid lower salaries than men. If they are African, their wages are lower than those of women of other races. In times of economic uncertainty, women are the first to lose their jobs. Women constitute less than 40 per cent of the economically active population, according to the 1991 census figures, though they constitute more than 50 per cent of the population. Among economically active women, 19 per cent are Africans though they constitute 69 per cent of the female population.

Women have always been in the forefront of the struggle for justice in South Africa -- in rent boycotts, in calls for sanctions, in the fight against the ever-increasing cost of living, taking care of the detained, keeping families together in the face of brutal force by the state. These my issues which threaten the lives women bring into this world. The credit for the gains that have been made has never been apportioned to them.