ESKOM IS SHOWING THE WAY TOWARDS THE EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE

Dear Fellow South African,

We have just ended Women’s Month, in which we have celebrated the achievements of South Africa’s women across many areas of life.

We have recognised the great progress that has been made in improving the position of women in our society. We have also recognised the many challenges that still remain and the tasks that we must undertake to build a truly non-sexist and equal society.

At the same time, the country has gone more than 150 days without load shedding. This is in large part due to the concerted efforts of the leadership and staff of Eskom to improve the performance of its power stations.

While there is much attention on what Eskom is doing to stabilise our electricity system, another significant change has been quietly underway at the company over the course of the last few years. Women are taking a more prominent role in the work of Eskom and are playing a pivotal role in keeping the country’s lights on.

Two years ago I met with Eskom’s power station managers and I was pleased to see that a number of them were women. I found this to be a complete departure from the past where power station managers were always white men. This represented tremendous transformation on a demographic as well as gender basis.

The inspiring story of Maserati Lesolang, the general manager of the Matla power station in Mpumalanga, is a demonstration of Eskom’s successes in growing a new generation of female leaders. Under Lesolang’s able leadership, Matla power station has implemented a turnaround plan resulting in it now being among Eskom’s better performing power stations.

At a number of state-owned enterprises, women are excelling not only in management and leadership positions, but also in technical roles and occupations that were previously the preserve of men.

Within Eskom itself, women are working as power station managers, engineers, artisans, operators and technicians.

This is the result of a deliberate and sustained initiative to increase female representation in the form of Eskom’s Women Advancement Programme. The programme was launched ten years ago to redress the under-representation of women in leadership and technical roles at Eskom.

The programme’s focus has been on creating a pipeline of female leaders. It has also focused on transforming workplace culture to make it more gender-friendly, on skilling and training more women to occupy specialist roles, to conduct outreach in communities where Eskom operates, and to address issues of equal work for equal pay.

Among the achievements of the programme since its inception has been that just over 33% of Eskom’s workforce is now female, 20% of Eskom executives are women, and women occupy approximately 43% of senior management roles. This is important progress, but there is still same way to go to achieve gender parity.

Eskom has succeeded in narrowing the gender pay gap from 41% to below 6%. The company’s procurement spend on black-women owned businesses has increased from R6 billion in 2013 to over R16 billion by 2022.

The national power utility continues to invest heavily in skilling and training for women, with just over half of further study opportunities at Eskom taken up by women.

Another key focus area of the programme is conducting outreach at schools and in communities to encourage female learners to consider future careers at Eskom.

Earlier this year Eskom also launched a Young Professionals Development Programme, a graduate trainee programme that places participants in positions across the span of its operations. Eskom has made a concerted effort to encourage female graduates to apply.

We call on other companies, both public and private, to put in place deliberate programmes to eradicate workplace discrimination and make workplaces more conducive to women’s participation and development. Companies need to empower women in decision-making and technical roles. This is to ensure that every workplace and every occupation reflects the demographics of our country.

We must commend the leadership of Eskom and of other state-owned entities, as well as many other businesses, for all they are doing to advance gender equality in the workplace.

By continuing and intensifying this work, we can make sure that we have more and more to celebrate during Women’s Month in the years to come.