Sisters still in chains

The Big Read: How are you today? How often are you asked this question and reply with a conditioned "I'm okay"?

As women, we feel guilty for taking a little time for ourselves, selfish for doing something we enjoy and self-indulgent for having any form of "me time". After all, we're expected to be supportive partners, mothers and friends, and productive employees or profitable employers.

So, how are you really feeling today?

This is an opening question in the Female Factor survey, one of the elements of ELLE's ground-breaking Female Factor initiative that aims to spark dialogue among women - about women.

The Female Factor is a 12-month process consisting of focus groups, print and online polls and televised debates that will roll out and culminate in the presentation of a white paper containing proposals and insights into South African women's lives to Lulu Xingwana, the Minister of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities.

However, it's not all about feminist issues and women's rights; it's also about needs. How do you feel about your appearance? Ageing? Having children? Does society need to rethink its attitude to women and what it demands of us? Or is it us who have to change the way we respond to expectations?

Even so, you may wonder why ELLE, often seen as "just a fashion magazine", would embark on such a project. The answer is that the Female Factor is in line with the long-standing tradition at ELLE International to represent style with substance.

The first state of women survey was done by ELLE France in 1970 and repeated last year - more than 1000 women attended the presentation of the white paper to French Prime Minister François Fillon. Some of the direct outcomes of the survey have been the introduction of laws to end unequal pay for men and women, and the decriminalisation of abortion in France.

Last year, ELLE's Italian sisters followed suit, and now it is ELLE South Africa's turn.

South African women face unique gaps of class and race. There are certain impediments every schoolgirl, wife, mother, daughter and grandmother face. We all want something better, be it fairer pay, better education or better medical care.

The latest Mo Ibrahim Index on African governance places South Africa fourth out of 53 African countries for its record on women's rights and we are listed an impressive sixth out of 134 countries by the World Economic Forum's "gender gap index". But the UN's gender-related development index puts South Africa at number 129 on a list of 182 countries.

These discrepancies could, in part, be because the organisations use different criteria. But 13 years after the promulgation of the Employment Equity Act, the Women's Business Association said there is no female representation on a fifth of the country's private-sector boards - this when 52% of the population is women.

On the plus side, more than half the undergraduates at universities are women.

There has been even less change in the home. In traditional cultures and households, men rule. Human Rights Watch calls the level of physical and sexual violence against South African women "shockingly high". A staggering 40% of women in our country admit that their first sexual encounter was not consensual, according to the World Health Organisation. Most black women believe a man has a right to sex with his wife or partner whenever he wants. And we haven't touched on "corrective rape" of lesbians.

Despite these depressing statistics, South African women are known for their strength. Wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo ("You strike the woman, you strike the rock"), a song sung by the 20 000 women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest pass laws, still rings true today.

So more than 50 years later, the question is: what do we want to achieve for ourselves today? This is what ELLE wants to find out. We hope women of South Africa will take 20 minutes to make a lasting difference in their lives.

• Tell us how you feel. Visit elle.co.za and click on the Female Factor