In the first article I wrote for this column it was the weekend that was celebrating women in August

2004. I asked whether women empowerment was a hymn without an amen. It is now appropriate to assess the state of women empowerment as we celebrate Mothers Day. In 2004 the Businesswomens Association (BWA) conducted a census that highlighted the following: there is a 5.9% representation of women on the boards of JSE listed companies and 26.8% on State-Owned Entities (SOEs). the chair of board positions by women is 2.6% (9 out of 347) in JSE listed companies and 11.8%(2 out of 17) in SOEs. almost 60% of JSE-listed companies have no women directors compared to 17.6% of SOEs. In a follow-up census in 2005 the results have improved. The BWA census cites the national census finding that women represent 52% of the adult population with only 41% gainfully employed and only 14.3% of all executive managers and only 7.1% of all directors in the country were women. There is an increase to 9.2% representation of women in the boards of the JSE listed companies (34.9% in SOEs) leading to an overall representation by women in the boards of both listed companies and SOEs to 10.3%. Women account for 3.7 % of the board chairs in the JSE and 11.8% in the SOEs. There are improvements seen in the absolute numbers of women participating in the boards of both JSE and SOE boards. Approximately 56.2% of all woman directors in the JSE and SOEs are black. The SOEs still outperform the listed companies. What has accounted for the increased women representation in the board is a mixture of factors, but chief amongst these is the pressure put by BEE initiatives on companies to transform in order to retain their business with the government. Public sector licensing, procurement and concessions have exerted pressure on companies to increase black woman representation in their governance and executive structures. On the black ownership front more focus is placed on having black women as key participants in the ownership deals. A typical scenario in the past would have the males (black and white) concluding the salient details of the deal and then as an afterthought consider women who would get about 2,5% of the total deal. The women would be brought to the press conference announcing the deal without details of the rand amount of the deal was accruing to them and the voting rights (if any) that they would be able to exercise. However this status of women as tag-alongs in the deals would not last long, because of the introduction of the draft codes of good practice on BEE which set a target of 10% of all economic interest and voting rights of the entire entity to accrue to black women. This target brings women to the mainstream of the economy. These specific targets are in line with the requirements of the Broad-based BEE Act which states that there must be specific targets for black women in BEE initiatives. The effect of these targets was brilliantly demonstrated in most of the deals that were announced after the release of the draft codes. The Firstrand deal included the Women

Development Bank Trust (WDB) as the main BEE partner in the deals. Recently the Old Mutual Group of companies included Wiphold as the major business partner in the three BEE deals concluded. Even before the release of the codes, in the banking sector Absa led the way by making Nthobi Angel as a principal partner in its deal. Bidvest also concluded a deal with the Dinatla consortium that included WDB as one of the main partners to the deal. Overall there seems to be improvement, however challenges still abound because a majority of the companies are still lagging behind. For example more that 53.5% of the listed companies still have no women on their boards. Furthermore with the deals that have been concluded take a long time for them to provide the tangible economic benefits to the black partners. There are still areas such as employment equity, skills development, affirmative procurement, enterprise development and corporate social investment that could be utilized to empower women but is not optimally used by companies. It is my hope that on this Mothers Day we can be able to say to our mothers, sisters and wives that the woeful cry from Gladys Knight in her song Guilty when she said, There are two strikes against me when I come up to bat. One strike for being female. One strike for being black. would be a lament of the past and that women empowerment will not be a hymn without an amen.