4 minute read
Women's Month Message From Honourable Minister Sindisiwe Lydia Chikunga
Minister In The Presidency for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities
Women’s Month 2025
August is not just another month in our calendar; it is a living testimony to the courage of women who changed South Africa’s destiny. In 1956, Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa, Sophia Williams-de Bruyn, Helen Joseph, and Albertina Sisulu, together with 20 000 women, marched to the Union Buildings to declare that injustice would not stand. Their footsteps remind us that Women’s Month is not symbolic, it is a call to continue their struggle for equality, dignity, and justice.
This year, we mark Women’s Month under the theme “Building Resilient Economies for All.” It reminds us that democracy without women’s economic power is incomplete. Resilience means women with equal access to education, finance, land, markets, and leadership opportunities. It means safe communities free from gender-based violence, and recognition of the unpaid care work that sustains families and economies alike.
Reflecting On Our Struggles and Gains
Almost seventy years later, South African women still face urgent challenges. Nearly half of young women aged 15–34 are not in employment, education, or training, locked out of opportunity and excluded from growth. Women remain underrepresented in corporate leadership and continue to earn less for equal work. The burden of unpaid care work falls disproportionately on women, limiting their economic participation. Most painfully, the crisis of gender-based violence and femicide continues: one in three women has experienced physical violence.
These are not just numbers, they are the lived realities of women in every village, township, and city. And yet, there are hard-won victories that must inspire us. Women now make up 46% of Parliament and 43% of Cabinet, placing South Africa among the top countries globally for women in decision-making. In 2024, Justice Mandisa Maya was appointed our first woman Chief Justice, breaking another barrier in our judiciary.
In education, women lead the way, accounting for over 60% of university graduates and increasingly entering STEM fields. In business, women own more than a third of formal enterprises, supported by bold reforms like the Public Procurement Act, which guarantees a minimum of 40% of state procurement for women-owned businesses. The Women’s Economic Assembly (WECONA) is unlocking access to procurement across key sectors.
At this year’s Empower Her Market Trade Fair, a woman entrepreneur testified that while she usually earns between R500 and R1 500 a day, on that platform she made R20 000 in one day. That is the power of access, markets, and coordination. Her story is a glimpse of the scale of transformation we must replicate nationwide.
We celebrate women innovators who are reshaping our present and future: Dr Nomfundo Mcoyi-Zondo, who has redefined the funeral industry; Phuthi MahanyeleDabengwa, corporate pioneer; Sibongile Sambo, aviation entrepreneur; and the late Ndoni Mcunu and Dr Senamile Masango, whose scientific contributions continue to inspire.
This is the dual story of South African women: one of persistent struggles that demand urgent action, and one of extraordinary resilience and achievement that lights the path forward.
Looking Ahead
As South Africa chairs the G20 Empowerment of Women Working Group, we are advancing priorities on financial inclusion, recognising unpaid care work, and ending GBV and femicide. This year also marks 30 years since the Beijing Platform for Action, reminding us that our struggle is part of a global movement for gender equality.
Throughout August, government, civil society, and business will host commemorative, reflective, and action-driven programmes — from trade fairs to dialogues, from policy summits to grassroots campaigns. But to unlock real change, women’s organisations, networks, and businesses must also coordinate their efforts more deliberately: aligning strategies, sharing resources, and building collective strength to secure markets and opportunities at scale.
A Call To Action
This Women’s Month, I extend a call to action:
To women: keep breaking barriers but also work together; our power multiplies when it is coordinated.
To young women: your leadership is not tomorrow’s dream, it is today’s imperative.
To men: transformation cannot be women’s burden alone, walk with us as partners.
To business and civil society: invest, mentor, and open markets for women.
Let it be said that in our generation, we did not only celebrate the march of 1956, but we also advanced it. We turned resilience into justice, protest into progress, and solidarity into shared prosperity.
