Gender equality by design: The case of South Africa's commission on gender equality

Abstract

In this article I critically examine the constitutional and institutional engineering involved in promoting gender equality in South Africa through a careful study of the CGE. I trace its political history from its conception in the minds of gender activists at a particular moment in the transitional process, to the promulgation of its existence through the law, to its inception as an institution and its subsequent establishment and design and finally to its practice. My concern is whether ‘gender equality by design’ and the creation of an institution with a particular constitutional responsibility to promote and monitor gender equality in the state and in civil society, constitutes an appropriate strategy and, potentially, a global model for gender transformation.

Notes

1. This term is the title of an article written by a number of feminist scholars during the apartheid era – Hassim et al., 1985.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sheila Meintjes

Sheila Meintjes is Associate Professor in Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She was the Maria Goeppert Mayer International Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany in 2001. Both an activist and an academic, she participated in trade union and women's organizations linked to the liberation struggle in the Western Cape, Natal and the Transvaal in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s she participated in the Women's National Coalition and was a member of the Research Supervisory Group that oversaw the development of the Women's Charter for Effective Equality. She was on the Charter drafting committee. In May 2001 she was appointed to the Commission on Gender Equality as a full-time Commissioner for five years. She agreed to serve for a three-year term – and resigned in March 2004.