Debate on International Women’s Day: The gender agenda, gaining momentum

Cheryllyn Dudley MP ACDP
26 February 2013

We could ask...is the gender agenda, gaining momentum...and if it is...what good is it doing us?

One of many areas where this question is being raised is in Correctional Services. Precious little work, we are told, is being done to differentiate between men and women offenders in jail where there are far fewer women offenders – with about 77 per cent being male and 23 per cent female.

There are apparently, very few gender specific programmes for women in South Africa's correctional institutions compared to internationally where there is a lot of research, and policy.

Like it or not, women are quite different in their psychological make-up yet they are subjected to systems created for men. Women offender's interests are generally family and child-centred and there is too little consideration given to this.

One of many complex and controversial issues in this regard is that women offenders are permitted to keep their babies with them until they are two years old and then the child is fostered.

Experts say that due to a lack of collaboration between the departments of Correctional Services and Social Development there is then seldom any contact between the mother and child which leads to a lack of bonding and depression. When the mother is released she is reunited with her child - but the reunion is then, all too often, not successful.

There is a need for Correctional services to be more sensitive in the management of female offenders generally. Many of these women are breadwinners whose industry provides for large households. As, generally speaking, women offenders are a low to medium public safety risk and public safety is not as much of an issue it could be worth exploring alternative ways of dealing with them. Proper risk assessments need to be carried out together with the consideration of non-custodial sentences.

The National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders (NICRO) has had an 88 per cent compliance with non-custodial sentences since 2008. This is extremely significant and could assist in easing prison congestion and better facilitate the successful rehabilitation of women offenders.

The ACDP calls on government to provide greater support to NGOs who are doing so much work for the betterment of women and South Africa as a whole; some agencies report a tension over funding between NGOs and Social Development that needs to be resolved because it impacts on people in need who are suffering. Many, previously funded from overseas, are getting less and less and they get no funding from government. At the same time Social Development concentrates on child offenders, which they are mandated to do, but most offenders are adults and they are receiving inadequate attention.