Acting DG, Mr Daan Du Toit.
All Women DDGs of the Department.
Chief Directors and Directors.
The entire women family of this exciting Department.
Ladies!

It is my honour to address you at this important event that forms part of the Department of Science and Innovation’s Women’s Month events. Today’s event is held under the national theme ”Celebrating 30 years of democracy towards women's development”.

Let me declare from the beginning that, I am gender activist and issues of women are very close to my heart.

As we celebrate this important month, I would like to talk to you under the topic “Women’s role in uplifting other women through policy advice and instruments as well in their roles as managers" which resonates well with the national theme.

While there is no doubt that, as a country, we have a lot to celebrate as it relates to advances we have made, in improving the quality of life for women over the past three decades, but women still have to put in ten times efforts to get positions that men easily get.

When addressing the Women’s Day last year in Union Building, President Ramaphosa noted that “In every part of this country, women are taking charge of their destinies, inspiring others and driving change. They are excelling in areas once closed to women; as engineers, scientists, managers, pilots, farmers, judges, magistrates, athletes, marine pilots, and soldier”

President continued “ There are a number of things we should do and continue doing together. Some of them are:
1. Increase the representation of women in all structures that affect our lives as South Africans. Women of our country said there should be nothing about them, without them…”

It is also true that, while commendable progress has been made, there are a couple of areas that should concern us deeply. In one Department, it was reported in media on how the powerful men were subjecting professional women to their sexual advances in order to get appointed to senior management level despite their competences and experience to get appointed. These malpractices are still pervasive and are difficult to pin them down unless the women exposes them.

In my previous Department, I consciously embraced women, especially those who were in senior levels including CEOs and Chairpersons of Agencies. I did so because I knew that , for women, the higher they go, the colder it becomes for them. To Shining the light to their programmes and Agencies that hey led was my responsibility. I mention this as a demonstration to your theme today of women lifting others to succeed.

As part of this critical reflection, as policy makers, researchers, academics, and member of civil society, we should be willing to confront some of the discomforting questions about the general condition of our people, but more so, the conditions of women and young girls in our country.

Part of the outcome of such a reflection would be for us to produce a set of well thought out policy and institutional responses to some of the weaknesses we shall have jointly identified. These can serve as our social compact for joint action over the next decade.

This therefore implies that the manner in which we should celebrate must be tempered with a moment of honest and critical reflection and this is what today’s session seeks to achieve.

Ladies, I am excited that this Department, since inception, has implemented a number of interventions that are aimed at enhancing the development of women within our department, its entities, but also within society.

Towards this end, we updated our policy on science, technology, and innovation (STI) from 2019 to 2024 with the 2019 White Paper on STI and the 2022 Decadal Plan on STI. In both these policy documents, women's equality and the empowerment of women, youth and people with disabilities were stated as specific objectives.

Further to this, specific targets for bursaries, research grants, and research chairs have been set and achieved. As a commitment to training, and life-long learning for women and girls, we provide postgraduate bursaries (honours, masters, and PhD) targeting women.

It fills me with great pride to state that, in relation to bursaries, our Department has exceeded its target for bursaries to PhD students, awarding 12 960 bursaries through the National Research Foundation for 2019-2024.

Of these, 90% were South African students, 74% were black students, 56% were women (43% were black women), and 0,9% were people with disabilities. Similarly, for the same period, 32 210 pipeline students (BTech/honours + master's) were awarded bursaries – also exceeding the target set.

Of the research students supported, 97% were South Africans, 87% were black, 62% were women (55% were black women), and 0,6% were people with disabilities. As it relates to emerging researchers: On the research grants awarded over the 2019-2024 period, preliminary data shows that the Department has supported 3,030 emerging researchers against the MTSF target of 3,000 by March 31, 2024.

Of the 3 030 emerging researchers supported, 2 528 are South Africans; 2287 are black; 1622 constitute women; 1146 constitute black women; and 45 persons with disabilities.

Our Annual Performance Plan, which was approved on March 25, 2024, stipulated that the target for women would be 55% for implementation by March 31, 2025.

As it relates to women's entrepreneurship and enterprises, we have implemented our Preferential Procurement Policy to give preferential points to women-owned businesses.

As a result of this, over R124 million worth of tenders were awarded to women and women-owned businesses from April 1, 2019, to March 31, 2024. In 2020, President Ramaphosa made an announcement setting aside 40% of public procurement spent to women enterprises. It has been difficult to monitor this implementation. I hope this Department will strive towards meeting 40% procurement set-aside spent to women owned companies as directed by the President.

In our Department, when it comes to workplace, we have Employment Equity Committee that must ensures that women are not sidelined in the career pathing through getting appointed to higher posts. I am glad that we also have monitors for sexual harassment in the workplace.

I have been briefed that, in 2020, the Department launched the Women in Management Development initiative to create a pool of female employees who would be developed and prepared for the next level of management. We have a pool 48 MMS and SMS women in the programme since its inception. This is too exciting to me!

I have been informed that through this women Leadership initiative, short courses have been offered as interventions of the programme. In 2022, The Department approved Employment Equity (EE) Plan which has set a target of 50% women representation at senior management service (SMS).

This EE Plan is supported by an approved Framework to earmark certain positions as equity positions to enable the Department to achieve its EE targets. Furthermore, this framework enables the Department to give preference to women for senior management service (SMS) positions.

This approach assisted the department to achieve and surpass its EE gender target to achieve 56.9% representation of women at SMS.

I want to congratulate the Department for this sterling job of fast tracking women within the Department. Alibongwe!

Today’s programme provides us with an exciting and wide-ranging set of topics that will be interrogated through guest speaker presentations and panel discussions.

Some of the discussion topics include a reflection on the Department contribution in uplifting women’s lives through funding opportunities in the following areas; Space Science, Health innovation, the digital economy and information and communications technology, Indigenous knowledge systems and astronomy.

For me, the key message is how do women in influential positions uplift other women at work and their roles as female managers and supervisors. We have the power to change the narrative for women coming after us through our voices and decisions.

The question is, do we take an elevator to upstairs as women and press ground button for the elevator to return down to pick other women to where we are, or we arrive at the top and settle alone?

I wish to thank all our esteemed guest speakers and stakeholders for accepting our invitation to form part of today’s session. I wish you a productive session and look forward to the outcome of your deliberations.

Wathint’ abafazi!