Women Still Shut Out from South Africa's Wealth and Property, Ramaphosa Warns

Seven decades after 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings to protest pass laws that confined their movement, South African women still lack equal access to the nation’s wealth, property, and commercial enterprises. President Cyril Ramaphosa made this stark assessment on Sunday afternoon while addressing thousands gathered at the same Pretoria location where the historic 1956 march took place.

The gap between women’s share of the population and their economic standing remains a defining failure of the post-apartheid state. Women make up more than half of South Africa’s people yet hold no proportional claim to national wealth or land ownership. The disparity cuts across multiple dimensions of daily life. Unemployment disproportionately affects women. Those who do work often earn less than male counterparts performing identical tasks. Many shoulder unpaid domestic and care responsibilities that society neither recognizes nor values in economic terms.

“This must change,” Ramaphosa said, framing the persistence of these inequalities as a matter demanding urgent national attention.

The government has begun rolling out targeted interventions designed to shift these entrenched patterns. Public procurement policies now direct state spending toward women-owned businesses, creating pathways for female entrepreneurs to build enterprises through government contracts. The Women Economic Assembly serves as a mechanism to integrate women-led companies into supply chains within major industries. Credit access and market entry have been widened to reduce financial barriers that historically locked women out of business ownership and expansion.

Education presents a more complicated picture. Universities and colleges now enroll more women than men, a reversal from earlier decades. Yet this numerical advantage masks a persistent skills gap. Too few women pursue engineering, science, technology, or trades where tomorrow’s most lucrative opportunities will concentrate. Ramaphosa identified this mismatch as a critical obstacle to women’s economic independence and self-determination.

Land ownership emerged as another focus area. The government is working to ensure that women hold legal title to the land they cultivate and inhabit, a foundational requirement for building wealth and securing economic stability. Without property rights, women remain vulnerable to displacement and lack collateral for loans or investment.

Meanwhile, Ramaphosa framed women’s economic empowerment not as a matter of charity or social obligation but as a prerequisite for individual freedom. “A woman who is skilled, who earns her own income, and who enjoys good health is a woman able to determine the course of her own life,” he said. This formulation positioned economic independence as inseparable from personal agency and the capacity to shape one’s future without dependence on others.

The commemoration drew global attention. Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai attended the event, and Ramaphosa used her presence to condemn the systematic exclusion of Afghan women and girls from education, employment, and public participation. He praised Yousafzai for refusing silence and becoming a global advocate for girls’ rights and dignity. Her attendance served as a reminder that women’s exclusion from economic and civic life remains a worldwide phenomenon, not unique to South Africa.

Sophie De Bruyn, the last surviving leader of the original 1956 march, was also present. She was 18 years old on that historic day seven decades ago, making her a living link between the anti-apartheid struggle and contemporary efforts to achieve substantive equality.

Ramaphosa’s remarks acknowledged that legal rights and formal equality, won through decades of struggle, have not automatically translated into economic reality. Women remain constrained by structural barriers, unequal pay, unpaid labor burdens, and limited access to capital and property. The government’s stated commitment to remedy these conditions reflects recognition that formal freedom requires material foundation.

The path forward requires sustained policy action across multiple sectors: procurement reform, financial inclusion, land redistribution, educational reorientation toward high-demand fields, and cultural shifts that value women’s unpaid contributions. Without such comprehensive change, the gap between women’s formal rights and their actual economic standing will persist, limiting their capacity for self-determination and constraining the nation’s broader development. Whether the interventions already underway prove sufficient to close that gap remains the central question facing South Africa’s policymakers.