1. HON. Members, the International Women’s Conference in Cape Town themed  “Women in the changing World of Work”, asks of us all to construct a new world of work for girls and women and speaks to issues discussed at our Women’s Parliament and more.
2. HON. Speaker, we now require women sensitive policies, regulations and by-laws to implement our gender laws effectively.
3. For effective development, women’s economic inclusion is vital, therefore workplace policies which allow for work-life balance should be mandatory; ie. Woman’s care work should be paid for. This also means reviewing maternity leave regulations.
4. We need to bring humanity into the workplace.
5. Every department and all HON. Members have to work harder to empower women on pregnancy, contraception and abortion.
6. We need to improve the lives of domestic workers and street vendors by formalising these sectors.
7. The private sector, CSR needs to factor in women and families in the mining and agricultural sectors by funding towards preventing violence to women. BBBEE codes should include these areas.
8. The ICT sector needs focus, so that, women use technology to become entrepreneurs in their homes.
9. KZN can only benefit by engaging the African Gender Innovation Labs (GIL) funded by the World Bank for scalable interventions for gender integration and equality at school level for growth mind-set change.
10. Finally, an interesting topic for another debate would be the financial economy with respect to, the sexual and care economy, as the latter two affect the former drastically. However these can only be debated once we collect reliable data for effective gender equality indicators from all departments.
11. Thank you.

Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi

Minority Front Leader (KZN Legislature)