Introduction

The Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation has marked the month of October 2020 as the beginning of a new era for women in construction. An era where emerging women contractors are supported to rise and succeed and black owned women businesses are not allowed to fail. She has noted the significant progress that has been made. However, she realised that black women are still not supported enough. They still battle with issues of race, culture, geographical location, limitations in access to finance, access to relevant social networks, inadequate skills due to low levels of education and training, an unsupportive socio-cultural environment, the absence of mentors for women by established construction companies, and the lack of business management skills for starting up or sustaining new ventures.

COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown restrictions have made the situation worse as most companies are on the verge of collapsing. She has listened to the plight of women and decided to host a special summit for women.

“Now, more than ever we need to focus on supporting people to do things for themselves. We can harness the energy, the values, the success and long held capacity of our people, especially women. Women have been building homes and homesteads for generations. We want to help them do that now, and build homes of value which they can hold as assets and pass on to their children. It is our purpose to bring to bear the full might of our resources and institutions to help people help themselves and to create wealth with their own hands. Thus, apart from releasing serviced sites, we are bringing partners to help people and expand their efforts”. Minister LN Sisulu, Budget Vote 2020.

Background and Rationale

South African government has created sufficient governance and delivery frameworks to support the implementation of services. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (RSA) is the Supreme Law of the Country that provides a foundation to the development of policy frameworks and has also embodied a number of rights including the section 26 which provides for the right of access to housing and right of access to water and sanitation.

Despite the supportive policy and legislative environments, challenges still persist as the country still battles with high levels of gender inequality in access to and beneficiation from existing economic opportunities particularly in the built environment. The construction sector is still dominated by males. Female-owned businesses, and in particular black female-led enterprises, operating in the water and sanitation built environment sector and human settlements, are largely under represented and significantly lag behind male-owned businesses. This is demonstrated by the significantly reduced presence of productive female owned businesses that are competing in the sector. Many female-owned businesses struggle to break out of the small and medium-sized enterprise ceiling (Exempted Micro Enterprises (EME) and Small Qualifying Enterprises (QSE).

Women led and owned companies have not fully participated in projects relating to social housing, raising of Dam Walls, Building new Dams, Canals, Weirs and in the Operations and Maintenance. It is essential for the built environment to promote growth of women from Emerging to Established. The construction related Women Owned businesses remain at the same level for decades and ultimately collapse due to little or no support from government or well established businesses in the same field. The Women Summit is being held to assist government to identify challenges that are faced by women within the construction industry with an intent of enabling government to craft responsive and enabling policies and intervention programmes.