Parliament, Wednesday, 13 March 2024 – NCOP Deputy Chairperson Ms Sylvia Lucas told delegates to the 68th annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68) that advancing gender transformation requires parliaments to consistently analyse the gender norms that prevail in communities to ensure policy interventions are targeted for each community to improve the efficiency of policies.
Ms Lucas addressed the second session of the gathering on the theme, “Gender-sensitive Institutions to Break the Poverty Cycle. In her address, Ms Lucas said parliaments’ capacity to craft gender responsive law-making and policy interventions is a critical area that needs attention. Parliaments should also continue to build women’s capacity to advocate for gender-responsive oversight and law-making processes, across important sectors like development and transformation.
The Deputy Chairperson is accompanying National Assembly Speaker Ms Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to the CSW68, which is organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and the United Nations (UN) Women and which is taking place in New York in the United States, from 12 to 22 March.
Ms Lucas said parliaments have a critical role to play in reducing poverty through gender transformation by enacting laws that are gender-responsive and which are framed with dexterity to disrupt gender-regressive norms and behaviors across society at large.
“In working towards achieving gender transformation, we must continue to be guided by existing international and national protocols and legal frameworks, including prescribed norms of gender transformation, which can be used to strategically shape policy making and promote gender equality,” she said.
Ms Lucas told the session that South Africa has recently adopted the 2021 Women’s Charter for Accelerated Development. This charter is based on international best practice and mandated by South African women, outlines critical areas for parliamentary intervention in policy, legislation and programming. The charter’s goal is to meaningfully advance gender transformation and reduce poverty.
“To this end, critical policy areas highlighted through our Women’s Charter Review process include the recommendation for the amendment of budget policies, money bills, fiscal policies and tax laws, including macroeconomic policies, which we view as critical areas for sustained and high-level analysis and amendment. If amended to make more gender-responsive in their shape, form and content, these policies and legislative instruments will serve as enabling instruments to achieve poverty reduction and gender transformation objectives,” Ms Lucas said.
Some of the capacities and resources parliaments should continue to invest in include gender-responsive budget analysis capabilities and law making, gender-responsive oversight and oversight agenda-setting, and increasing capacity to use gender-disaggregated data to shape budget decisions and commitments, Ms Lucas concluded.
ISSUED BY PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
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