AFRICA SUCCESS STORIES: Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary General, Executive Director of UN Women
Born on 03/11/1955 (format : day/month/year)
Biography :
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (b. November 3, 1955),wad Deputy President of South Africa from 2005 to 2008.She was the first woman to hold the position and is the highest ranking woman in the history of South Africa. She is married to the former head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Bulelani Ngcuka.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was born in Clermont, Durban on November 3 1955 to Michael and Sabbath Mlambo.
Phumzile moved to Inanda where she attended the Ohlange High School where she matriculated. She then attended the University of Lesotho in 1980 where she obtained her BA in Social Science and Education. She then worked in KwaZulu-Natal as a teacher from 1981 to 1983. Mlambo-Ngcuka was a founder member and director of the Young Women’s International Programme at the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) office in Geneva from 1984 to 1987.
Phumzile is married to former politician Bulelani Ngcuka who is also the ex-Director of the National Prosecuting Authority. She was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1994 where she chaired the Service Portfolio committee. In 1996 she was appointed the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry and has been in the ANC’s national executive committee since 1997. In 1999 she was promoted to Minister of Minerals and Energy.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is best known for engineering a mining charter to give blacks a bigger share of an industry that had exploited them. She ensured that one of the earlier post-apartheid “black economic empowerment” charters soothed investor nerves while sticking to its purpose.
Now Mlambo-Ngcuka, , finds herself thrust into the limelight as the country’s first female deputy president. Although she does not have the same credentials as her predecessor Jacob Zuma, who was relieved of the post the week before (ironically, Mlambo-Ngcuka’s husband Bulelani Ngcuka had been instrumental in bringing the charges against Zuma).
The United Nations (UN) Women Solidarity Movement for Gender Equality says Malawi is on right track in demonstrating commitments towards empowering women and young girls through elimination of all forms of violence directed at them.
Executive Director for UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said ?this Tuesday evening? during the HeForShe gala dinner held at Sofitel Hotel in New York.
Ngcuka said the revision for the legal marriage age from 16 to 18 years old by the Malawi Government, has helped in reducing child marriages in the country.
“More than 3,500 child marriages have been cancelled, because the leadership under Prof. Arthur Peter Mutharika implemented one of the HeForShe commitments for women and girl-child empowerment,” she said.
The HeForShe solidarity movement is a UN Women initiative in providing a systematic approach to challenges like child marriage. It has a targeted platform where a global audience can engage and become change agents for the achievement of gender equality in society.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said the interventions Malawi is carrying out in promoting gender equality are vital in transforming the world so that a girl child can live the life she wants.
The UN Women chief cited the case of Malawian female police officers who went on peace mission three years ago in Sudan as a huge leap in changing the mindset of society towards women and girl children.
“These Malawian officers inspired many girls in Sudan. They visited communities and taught women about nutrition and maternal health.
“They inspired girls in many communities to pursue their dream careers. The Sudanese government requested for their long stay in the country because of their positive impact on lives of Sudan women and girls,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
While acknowledging the progress of gender equality in many sectors, she said inadequate female personnel in the military service, remain a huge challenge.
Only 13 percent of troops to peace keeping missions in Africa are women, according to the UN Women body.
The organisation is using several approaches in mobilising stakeholders in the empowerment of a girl child.
Apart from engaging stakeholders through capacity building in advancing gender equality issues, the UN Women is engaging key influential people as focal impact champions in the “HeForShe” initiative.
Malawi President Prof. Arthur Peter Mutharika, attended the gala dinner as one of the HeForShe champions in Africa.
Speaking earlier, President Mutharika said Malawi has intensified mainstreaming of gender equality in all sectors.
He cited the composition of commissioners at Malawi Electoral Commission, which has five female commissioners out of the total nine and is being headed by a woman.
But he was quick to point out that challenges still exist especially in politics.
“There is still low female participation and the number of female legislators has been declining over the years,” Mutharika said.
The president said his government is planning a deliberate approach of boosting female participation and aspirations in politics.
“In the next elections, we will reserve one constituency for a woman in all the 28 districts. The challenge is, will the Malawian society go beyond that and elect more women into parliamentary seats?” wondered Mutharika.
At this year United Nations General Assembly in New York, UN Women is leaving no stone unturned in wooing influential leaders in public and private sector to commit to gender equality through the HeForShe initiative
The initiative was launched on 20 September, 2014 by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon.
Message by UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2017
Across the world, too many women and girls spend too many hours on household responsibilities—typically more than double the time spent by men and boys. They look after younger siblings, older family members, deal with illness in the family and manage the house. In many cases this unequal division of labour is at the expense of women’s and girls’ learning, of paid work, sports, or engagement in civic or community leadership. This shapes the norms of relative disadvantage and advantage, of where women and men are positioned in the economy, of what they are skilled to do and where they will work.
This is the unchanging world of unrewarded work, a globally familiar scene of withered futures, where girls and their mothers sustain the family with free labour, with lives whose trajectories are very different from the men of the household.
We want to construct a different world of work for women. As they grow up, girls must be exposed to a broad range of careers, and encouraged to make choices that lead beyond the traditional service and care options to jobs in industry, art, public service, modern agriculture and science.
We have to start change at home and in the earliest days of school, so that there are no places in a child’s environment where they learn that girls must be less, have less, and dream smaller than boys.
This will take adjustments in parenting, curricula, educational settings, and channels for everyday stereotypes like TV, advertising and entertainment; it will take determined steps to protect young girls from harmful cultural practices like early marriage, and from all forms of violence.
Women and girls must be ready to be part of the digital revolution. Currently only 18 per cent of undergraduate computer science degrees are held by women. We must see a significant shift in girls all over the world taking STEM subjects, if women are to compete successfully for high-paying ‘new collar’ jobs. Currently just 25 per cent of the digital industries’ workforce are women.
Achieving equality in the workplace will require an expansion of decent work and employment opportunities, involving governments’ targeted efforts to promote women’s participation in economic life, the support of important collectives like trade unions, and the voices of women themselves in framing solutions to overcome current barriers to women’s participation, as examined by the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment. The stakes are high: advancing women’s equality could boost global GDP by US$12 trillion by 2025.
It also requires a determined focus on removing the discrimination women face on multiple and intersecting fronts over and above their gender: sexual orientation, disability, older age, and race. Wage inequality follows these: the average gender wage gap is 23 per cent but this rises to 40 per cent for African American women in the United States. In the European Union, elderly women are 37 per cent more likely to live in poverty than elderly men.
In roles where women are already over-represented but poorly paid, and with little or no social protection, we must make those industries work better for women. For example, a robust care economy that responds to the needs of women and gainfully employs them; equal terms and conditions for women’s paid work and unpaid work; and support for women entrepreneurs, including their access to finance and markets. Women in the informal sector also need their contributions to be acknowledged and protected. This calls for enabling macroeconomic policies that contribute to inclusive growth and significantly accelerate progress for the 770 million people living in extreme poverty.
Addressing the injustices will take resolve and flexibility from both public and private sector employers. Incentives will be needed to recruit and retain female workers; like expanded maternity benefits for women that also support their re-entry into work, adoption of the Women’s Empowerment Principles , and direct representation at decision-making levels. Accompanying this, important changes in the provision of benefits for new fathers are needed, along with the cultural shifts that make uptake of paternity and parental leave a viable choice, and thus a real shared benefit for the family.
In this complexity there are simple, big changes that must be made: for men to parent, for women to participate and for girls to be free to grow up equal to boys. Adjustments must happen on all sides if we are to increase the number of people able to engage in decent work, to keep this pool inclusive, and to realize the benefits that will come to all from the equal world envisaged in our Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
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