The Gender Equality Bill proposes giving the government the power to force companies to appoint women to half of all top positions.

In her budget speech in parliament yesterday, Women's Minister Lulu Xingwana said the bill would be submitted to the cabinet in March.

She singled out grocery chain Shoprite, saying it was one of 27 JSE-listed companies without a single woman as a director or executive.

"We have to find measures to address this abnormality, which is a major indictment on transformation," she said.

Xingwana wants a percentage of the R9-billion new-jobs fund, announced yesterday by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, dedicated to creating jobs for women.

She said the private sector performed better than the state sector in employing disabled people. About 1% of employees in the private sector were disabled, as against only 0.6% in the state sector.

Xingwana took over the ministry seven months ago from Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, who did little to advance the ministry's role.

According to the draft, one of the bill's objectives is to find ways to punish companies and individuals who do not meet government-set gender equity targets.

Sandra Jooste, assistant to Shoprite chairman Christo Wiese, said he was not in the office and was unavailable for comment.

But, for some top companies, gender targets do not appear to be out of reach.

Standard Bank human resources director Shirley Zinn said that, at the end of last year, women made up 30% of the bank's senior management, 49% of middle management and 69% of junior management.

She said 63% of all Standard Bank employees were women and that the bank had set "pretty steep targets" for gender transformation this year.

The bank, she said, runs a Blue Heels programme to develop women for managerial positions and to "strengthen their leadership capability to enable them to position themselves for career progression and possible senior management positions".

Of the 58 women on the Blue Heels programme, 82% were black, Zinn said.

Vodacom spokesman Richard Boorman said that the group was in "pretty good shape" regarding gender transformation. But, "as we get to senior management, we're not where we'd like to be", he said.

Boorman said 23% of the group's senior managers were women but it was "working very hard to address that". He said the group had a training programme that "specifically targeted women at the grass-roots level to develop them".

Economist Katharine Pulvermacher, of the Economist Group, said the bill's proposals were in line with global trends, and other countries, including the US, had implemented similar legislation.

South Africa, she said, had a "very high" rate of unemployment among women and that, "if you leave the market to its own devices, you will not achieve [gender equality]".

Pulvermacher said "women should be hired on merit and not on gender", but she emphasised that it was much harder for women to reach upper management.

But other economists disagreed.

Merina Willemse, of the Efficient Group, said: "If you want to empower women, empower them by sponsoring training and educational opportunities for them."

Her colleague, Dawie Roodt, said: "Whenever you force companies to comply with a particular measure, whether labour legislation or gender equality, or racial equality, then you are adding a layer of cost onto that company.

"It's not a matter of just picking up women; I'm sure many women are very capable but it takes time to groom somebody," he said.

Chris Hart, a strategist at Investment Solutions, said the bill "doesn't sound like a merit-based policy, it sounds like an issue-based policy, especially in top management, where merit matters most".

Hart said that, when companies begin to "de-skill" because of legislation, "it strongly reflects that job creation and poverty reduction are really only the government's 10th or 12th priority".

The draft bill calls for:

• A guarantee of equality with men in terms of section nine of the Constitution;
• The prohibition of all forms of gender-based violence against women;
• Provisions to render invalid all laws, practices or penal provisions having a discriminatory effect on women; and
• The outlawing of a number of traditional African practices relating to customary marriages.

Lisa Vetten, of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, said laws dealing with these issues were not effectively implemented.

She cautioned against penalties for transgressors, saying: "If you introduce punitive measures, you generate an immense amount of hostility directed against women and not against the legislators."