Hon Chairperson, hon Minister, my hon colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, before I make my speech, let me first share a story with you. Forty-five years ago, there was a young, single mother, aged 30, with three young children and no income. She had only basic education and had no experience or other formal skills training, other than her desire to survive and to provide for her children.
She went knocking from door to door, looking for work. She eventually put all her children through school and university, working as a cleaner at a hotel. Today she has rough hands and calloused feet, but smiles proudly at her children, who are now all university graduates and have families of their own. That single parent is my mother. This is a story of a typical rural woman in Taiwan. Having witnessed her struggle and tears, as her eldest daughter, I often wonder what the world could have offered my mother to ease her plight, even if it was just a little bit.
It is with great passion that I stand before you today to debate the question of empowering women in rural communities. There is no need for us to list numbers and statistics to know how much difficulty women in the rural areas face. We know that it is a reality, and a reality we need to address.
The struggle of rural women around the world appears to be universal. Issues such as low education levels, lack of legal protection, poverty and the low status given to them by the community affect most rural women. They are often left to fend for themselves and their children but without any resources that would ensure any kind of adequate care.
In South Africa, problems faced by rural women include, but are not limited to, the following: low literacy rates; low status in a patriarchal society; lack of control over resources; a low level of awareness of their civic or human rights; limited access to skills-enhancing or skills-acquiring activities; lack of access to services; being in low-return economic activities and with very few work opportunities; and having the dual responsibility of child care and income generation.
Now, we need to think and ask ourselves what we should do about all this. In order to empower women in rural communities, we should first look at the current resources they have at their disposal, such as the ability to mobilise the community and take advantage of currently operating co-ops; using women with skills as mentors for women lacking the same skills; and expanding the co-operatives' function to include supporting women emotionally, socially and economically.
Information dissemination regarding available services and resources and regarding women's civil and human rights is also important. Women need to be informed of what is available to them and how they can use these resources to best serve their needs.
Literacy programmes to improve the literacy levels of women in rural communities would hugely improve their chances of employment and of interacting with society at large, thereby enhancing their confidence and self-esteem. This would have a big impact on their families, communities and society in general.
Another important aspect of empowering women in rural communities is training in entrepreneurial and business management skills. Showing them how to start, manage, run and maintain a small business would be invaluable to communities where access to commercial employment is limited, in terms of both skills and geographical location. Linked to this is the accessibility of microcredit and funding to women. Training must be given on how loans can be acquired, and the qualifying criteria for such should be made extremely clear and reasonable.
Empowering women in rural communities is clearly not an overnight endeavour. As the theme of this debate - Together empowering and improving the lives of rural women - indicates, it is only by working together that we can achieve all that we hope to achieve. Let us be a success story for the rest of the world, where a different story can be offered relating to women in rural communities. It should be a story of support, assistance and hope. I thank you. [Applause.]