EDUCATION-SOUTH AFRICA: Shattering Gender Stereotyping

By Farah Khan Reprint | | Print |

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 20 2003 (IPS) - If her school blazer is anything to go by, 17-year-old Charmaine Mahaya is an achiever. Her blazer is decorated from the lapel to the bottom seam with a series of badges symbolising academic and sporting success at her Johannesburg semi-public school.

The final badge is the one she is proudest of: it says ”headgirl” and for her mum, a single mother, the honour has been doubled because Mahaya’s sister is also a junior school head-girl.

Mahaya, with a head for figures, says ”I want to be an investment banker, but I don’t know where to go about looking for a sponsor or for information”.

It is precisely for girls like her, those aged between 14 years and 18 years old, that the cellular phone company, Cell C, has started a national ”Take a girl child to work day” – a concept to shatter gender stereotyping and to encourage young school-girls to go into different careers.

It was a bold attempt to also change the view that women needed to be the equal of men – in fact, it was time to set different standards, said the mistress of ceremonies, Doreen Morris, a successful businesswoman and broadcaster.

She told a launch ceremony earlier this month that it was time to ditch the song from the musical ”Annie get your gun”, with the lyrics, ”I can do anything you can do”; it needed to be ”I can do anything, period”.

”(Girl children) need to know that you shouldn’t get into, say, nursing or hairdressing, just because that’s the kind of work women have always done. If you want to be a nurse or a hairdresser, do it because you love the work. And if you want to be an astronaut or chief of police or the state president or the person who finds the cure for HIV/AIDS, then there’s nothing to stop you except your own imagination,” said Cell C’s corporate social investment manager, Itumeleng Letebele.

Cell C has imported the concept from the United States where the Microsoft Foundation pioneered ”America’s Take our Daughters to Work Day” in 1993 – now a regular event which has ”succeeded in broadening the work ambitions of American women, significantly increasing the numbers of skilled women in the workplace”, revealed Letebele.

In South Africa, the occasion is being modified to take account of the need to reach beyond just middle-class schoolgirls into the areas of the community where the need is greater. Together with the Education Department, Cell C will choose girls from poorer schools.

Participating companies include International Business Machines (IBM), the South African telecommunications parastatal Telkom, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, First National Bank and Coca-Cola among other blue-chip companies who will each take 20 girls to work on May 8. Individual women can take their daughters or other young girls to work with them in a campaign the sponsoring company hopes will gain cachet.

At work, the girls will go through a work experience day, shadowing their mentors for a proper working day.

In addition to showing girls unusual careers, it is also an attempt to bring more women into the economy. Statistics show that while women comprise half the population, they own only half the national wealth. ”The day not only provides the general benefits the experiential learning but also clearly shows children the direct link between education and work,” says Thami Mseleku, the director-general of the Education Department.

Through the project, Mahaya is going to get a chance to join an investment bank for a day to see if the world of financial wheeling and dealing is for her. And for girls less directed and focused than her, the day could give them a sense of the choices..