Women's League calls for women's emancipation

ANC Women's League president Bathabile Dlamini has called on the party to formalise women's emancipation.

Speaking to TimesLIVE at the ANC's national policy conference‚ Dlamini said women needed to be recognised and given the same treatment as men in top leadership.

"We are saying official structures must become a structure so that we also say fifty-fifty representation. We are also saying that there must be legislation of the private and public sector to ensure that there is also fifty-fifty representation in decision-making bodies because we have been following the trends of women who are CEOs‚ their positions are lowered so they need support around them because there is a perception that they can't do the work on their own‚" said Dlamini.

"Without a committee on the emancipation of women‚ we will keep going back because there's nobody monitoring the work of the ANC in all our structures. The leadership that we will elect going forward must be a leader that is committed to women's emancipation‚" said Dlamini.

Dlamini is an ANC NEC member as well as the Minister of Social Development.

She said the Women's League will be raising issues of violence against women and children‚ bigger budgets for the commission on gender equality and more powers for the women's ministry.

The league has publicly backed Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as its candidate to take over from President Jacob Zuma as party leader in December.

The first two days of the policy conference will focus on the state of the organisation.

-TimesLIVE