An assessment of women's participation in South Africa's foreign policy decision making and execution from 2009-2019

Abstract

This study was aimed at assessing women’s participation in South Africa’s foreign policy decision-making and execution. The study was motivated due to the significant dominance of male gender participation and leadership in DIRCO about women’s participation since 1994. Four research objectives guided this study which included to investigate of women’s participation in decision-making and execution in South African foreign policy, evaluating the challenges of women's participation in foreign policy decision-making; to ascertain the strategies that could promote women’s participation in politics and South African foreign policy decision-making; and to make recommendations to promote women participation in politics and South African foreign policy decision-making. The Intersectionality and Kanter’s Theories were adopted to underpin the study. Ten participants were selected for the purpose of this study, while semi-structured interviews were adopted to collect data from the participants. After data analysis, Atlas-ti software (version 9) was used to analyze data into themes and categories. Afterwards, network diagrams were presented as the outputs and were interpreted and discussed in relation to the focus of the study. Findings obtained from the study indicated that women’s participation is less than 50% while they hold junior positions. It was discovered that challenges limiting the participation of women in foreign policy decision-making process include unfavourable cultural and traditional norms, religious practices, and lack of support for women, the influential attitude of men, financial issues, and under-representation in politics. The strategies and recommendations made by the study to improve the participation of women in the foreign policy decision -making and participation includes involving women as leaders, promoting gender equality, women’s empowerment, public lobby and sensitization, training of more women, redressing cultural barriers, promoting bills to handle domestic violence, women’s rights observation, removal of stereotypes against women, and improving feminist policies.