KATE THOMPSON DAVY: Twar on women: talking safety and equity on social media and in real life
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We have almost come to the end of another women’s month in SA, a “moment” in the annual content calendar I’ve reluctantly come to dread because it has morphed into a marketing exercise rather than a reminder to make space and usher in change.
I have nothing against the content-calendar-view of the year in itself — hell, as a freelancer I’ve written much in the way of Women’s Day copy — but as the crimes against women stack up year after year I find my resentment building. A casual glance at Twitter suggests I am not alone.
The core frustration for me lies in the vast chasm between knowledge and action, in real life and in the realm of social slacktivism. How can we claim to be a nation that recognises the contributions of and celebrates our women when we have arguably the worst record and statistics of crimes against women of any country not at war?
In the latest batch of crime stats released by the police, 171,070 contact crimes against women were recorded. We can go into all the ways in which those numbers are likely to be inaccurate (on the underestimation side), but even if we accepted them as reliable this means an average of 468 contact crimes against women are reported daily, with the emphasis on “reported”.
Apart from the very real threat of physical harm that SA women face daily, economic inequality is profound. Even in “modern”, “progressive” spaces women make up about 20% of directors in JSE-listed businesses, and after Maria Ramos’s retirement in 2019 there wasn’t a single woman at the helm of a top 40 JSE company until Naspers appointed Phuti Mahanyele in July.
It was against this backdrop that I first happened upon Momentum’s “Womentum” campaign and #sheownshersuccess on Twitter. The text of the post I saw spoke about turning the M upside down, and it felt — at the time — like another instance of pure lip service. Spare me, I thought, but I fired off an e-mail to them, saying: “I’m not a fan of the campaign, but I want to have an honest, cards-on-the-table chat about the issues it raises as well as the perils of social media campaigns.”
I was surprised (and thrilled) when four high-ranking women from Momentum jumped on a Zoom call to chat with me, including deputy CEO Jeanette Cilliers and group chief marketing ...
I have nothing against the content-calendar-view of the year in itself — hell, as a freelancer I’ve written much in the way of Women’s Day copy — but as the crimes against women stack up year after year I find my resentment building. A casual glance at Twitter suggests I am not alone.
The core frustration for me lies in the vast chasm between knowledge and action, in real life and in the realm of social slacktivism. How can we claim to be a nation that recognises the contributions of and celebrates our women when we have arguably the worst record and statistics of crimes against women of any country not at war?
In the latest batch of crime stats released by the police, 171,070 contact crimes against women were recorded. We can go into all the ways in which those numbers are likely to be inaccurate (on the underestimation side), but even if we accepted them as reliable this means an average of 468 contact crimes against women are reported daily, with the emphasis on “reported”.
Apart from the very real threat of physical harm that SA women face daily, economic inequality is profound. Even in “modern”, “progressive” spaces women make up about 20% of directors in JSE-listed businesses, and after Maria Ramos’s retirement in 2019 there wasn’t a single woman at the helm of a top 40 JSE company until Naspers appointed Phuti Mahanyele in July.
It was against this backdrop that I first happened upon Momentum’s “Womentum” campaign and #sheownshersuccess on Twitter. The text of the post I saw spoke about turning the M upside down, and it felt — at the time — like another instance of pure lip service. Spare me, I thought, but I fired off an e-mail to them, saying: “I’m not a fan of the campaign, but I want to have an honest, cards-on-the-table chat about the issues it raises as well as the perils of social media campaigns.”
I was surprised (and thrilled) when four high-ranking women from Momentum jumped on a Zoom call to chat with me, including deputy CEO Jeanette Cilliers and group chief marketing ...
