It is thought that multiple ethnic groups in South Africa have long-standing beliefs concerning gender roles, and most are based on the premise that women in South Africa are less important, or less deserving of power, than men. Some view African traditional social organizations as male-centered and male-dominated. One prevailing caricature of Afrikaner religious beliefs emphasizes a strong, biblically grounded belief that women's contributions to society should normally be approved by, or undertaken on behalf of, men. Claims are even made of modern sexism and Christianity being introduced into what is now South Africa by the ancestors of the Afrikaners.
20th-century economic and political developments presented South African women with both new obstacles and new opportunities to wield influence. For example, labour force requirements in cities and mining areas have often drawn men away from their homes for months at a time, and, as a result, women have borne many traditionally male responsibilities in the village and home. Women have had to ensure the day-to-day survival of their families and to conduct financial and legal transactions that would otherwise have been reserved for men.
History
Women's movement in South Africa began with the organization of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of the Cape Colony (WCTU) in 1889. The temperance movement supported women's suffrage on the premise that women would vote to ban or restrict alcohol. In 1911 the Women's Enfranchisement Association of the Union was founded, and in 1930 women's suffrage was granted to white women.
Women and apartheid Apartheid imposed new restrictions on Indigenous African women beginning in the 1950s. Many lived in squalor in the former homelands, where malnutrition, illness, and infant mortality were much higher than in urban areas. Other women who followed their husbands into cities or mining areas lived in inadequate, and often illegal, housing near industrial compounds. Many women were forced to do housework. Women frequently left their families to commute long distances to low-wage jobs in the domestic workforce in white neighborhoods. Substantial numbers of temporary workers were in agriculture, and a growing number of women joined the burgeoning industrial workforce, as has been carefully documented in Iris Berger's 'Threads of Solidarity: Women in South African Industry', 1900–1990.
Women became the primary source of resistance to many race-related restrictions during the apartheid era, especially the pass laws, which required Indigenous Africans to carry documents permitting them to be in white-occupied areas. The Women's Defence of the Constitution League, later known as the Black Sash, was formed in 1955, first to demonstrate against such laws and later to assist pass-law violators. Black Sash established pass-law advice centers in many cities and helped reduce sentences or assist violators in other ways.
The African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL), formed in 1943, was able to organise more than 20,000 women to march on government buildings in Pretoria to protest against the pass laws and other apartheid restrictions in 1955. Their protests eventually failed, however. In the early 1960s, pass-law restrictions were extended to women, and new legislation restricted black women without steady employment to stays of no more than seventy-two hours in any urban area. Also in 1964, many senior ANC leaders were arrested, and others fled from South Africa or went underground, and the ANCWL became almost defunct.
Women continued to join the urban workforce, and by the late 1980s, women accounted for at least 90 percent of the domestic workforce and 36 percent of the industrial workforce, according to labor union estimates. However, as in the rest of the world, women's wages were lower than men's for the same job; positions typically held by women were characterised by long hours and few benefits (e.g., sick leave). Women were often dismissed without advance notice and without any form of termination pay.
Conservative Afrikaner women have organised in support of Afrikaner cultural preservation and apartheid since the early 1970s. The Kappiekommando was established in the late 1970s to demand a return to traditional Afrikaner values. This organisation was named for its distinctive Voortrekker dress, which caused some young Afrikaners and others to ridicule its members' appearance and their militancy. The Kappiekommando's militant opposition to political reforms eventually contributed to its marginalisation, even among staunchly conservative Afrikaners.
The Afrikanervroue-Kenkrag (AVK), another Afrikaner women's organisation, was formed in 1983 and primarily opposed de facto racial desegregation in schools and other public spaces. AVK membership grew to about 1,000 during the mid-1980s. The group published a monthly newsletter and cooperated with other Afrikaner organisations. Still, like the Kappiekommando, the AVK lost support when mainstream Afrikaner political leaders began working towards de jure racial desegregation in the early 1990s.
Women in the 1990s and 2000s
The ANCWL was revived in 1990, after the ban on the ANC was lifted, and women in more than 500 towns and cities organised to press for the inclusion of gender issues in the upcoming constitutional negotiations. At the insistence of its Women's League, the ANC accepted, in principle, the proposal that women should receive one-third of the political appointments in the new government. Other symbolic gains by the ANCWL have included firm policy stands on women's rights and protection against abuse and exploitation, but translating these standards into enforceable laws proved to be a difficult task.
Women are achieving new prominence in politics as a result of the sweeping political reforms of the mid-1990s. In 1994, women won election to eighty of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, the only directly elected house of parliament, and a woman, Frene Ginwala, was elected Speaker of the National Assembly. Women were also elected to almost one-third of the seats in the nine provincial assemblies.
Nelson Mandela, as president, appointed two women cabinet ministers in May 1994, and a woman succeeded the late minister of housing, Joe Slovo, after his death in January 1995. Three women were deputy ministers in early months of 1995. One of these, President Mandela's former wife, Winnie Mandela, was appointed deputy minister of arts, culture, science, and technology.
Eliminating violence against women and improving educational opportunities for women were almost universally supported goals in South Africa in the mid-1990s, but these goals received only rhetorical support in many cases. More urgent priorities are to eliminate the vestiges of apartheid legislation and to improve economic and social conditions for the very poor, for children, and for other groups that were especially disadvantaged in recent decades. Gender-related inequalities were likely to be decried but relegated to secondary importance well into the 21st century.
2010s – present and Gender based violence
According to UN Women, the murder rate for women increased by 117 percent between 2015 and 2016/2017. Also, the number of women who experienced sexual offenses increased by 53 percent between 2015/16 and 2016/17.
In August 2018, women used the start of the country's Women's Month to embark on a protest dubbed #TotalShutdown, to demonstrate their frustration and anger on the increasing levels of Gender Based Violence (GBV) in South Africa. The President, Cyril Ramaphosa, was handed a Memorandum of Understanding by the organizers of the protest, where a gender summit was convened and funded by the government. "The 24 demands in our memorandum signify 24 years of democracy in which women and gender non-conforming people have been ignored", said Gaopalelwe Phalaetsile, a representative of the #TotalShutDown National Committee.
On 21 November 2025, South Africa declared gender-based violence and femicide a national disaster amid national women's protests organized by Women For Change. During the G20 summit, there was a protest dubbed the G20 Women's Shutdown that called for women to stay home from work, refrain from spending money, observe 15 minutes of silence at 12:00 local time (10:00 GMT) in honor of the 15 women who are murdered in the country every day, and make their demands impossible to ignore.
Marriage and family life
Until the late 20th century, married women's rights remained legally restricted. The family law has changed gradually throughout the 20th century, with white women being the first to gain rights, and black women in customary marriages being the last. Marriage law has, for most of the 20th century, been based on the Roman-Dutch law concept of marital power of the husband, a doctrine in terms of which a wife was legally an under the usufruct tutorship () of her husband. The marital power included the power of the husband to administer both his wife's separate property and their community property. A wife was not able to leave a will, enter into a contract, or sue or be sued, in her own name or without the permission of her husband. The report of the Women's Legal Disabilities Commission in 1949 led to the enacting of the Matrimonial Affairs Act in 1953, which improved the legal status of wives by restricting the marital power, but it did not abolish it. The Matrimonial Property Act of 1984 abolished it prospectively (i.e. for marriages contracted after the act came into force) but not for marriages between black people. An amendment in 1988 abolished it prospectively for marriages of black people under the civil law, but not for marriages contracted under customary law. A further amendment in 1993 repealed the marital power in all civil marriages, regardless of when they were contracted. The marital power persisted, however, in the Transkei (which was nominally independent from 1976 to 1994), but it was held to be unconstitutional for civil marriages by the High Court in 1999. In 2000, when it came into force, the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, 1998 abolished the marital power for all marriages under customary law throughout South Africa. Other important changes enacted by 20th century legislation include abolishing the concept of restitution of conjugal rights by the Divorce Act, 1979 (Act No. 70 of 1979), Section 14, as well as enacting several specific laws against domestic violence in the 1990s (see Domestic violence in South Africa). South Africa outlawed marital rape in 1993. The 21st century has seen different conceptions about marriage: in 2006, South Africa became the fifth country in the world to allow same-sex marriage.
In South Africa, the practice of marriage by abduction is known under the name of ukuthwala, and is the custom of abducting young girls and forcing them into marriage, often with the consent of their parents. This practice occurs mainly in rural areas, in particular the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. The girls who are victims of this practice are frequently underage.
Status of women and girls