In light of the above data presentation and analysis, it may thus be concluded that women do not really take part in the formulation of organizational political agendas. If they do, they do not push for the feminization of policies in the quest to drive transformation. The political representation of women in the SRC of UKZN may thus be regarded as more descriptive than substantive because while women are the in numbers, but they are not making significant impact in terms of doing policy and program advocacy to promote the interests of other women. What has become the common trend is for women to dismiss the idea that they are charged with focusing more on other issues pertaining to women.
112 CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 6.1 Introduction
The primary focus of this chapter is to sum up this research project or the finding thereof and also outline the recommendations that could be considered in the rectification of circumstances that hinders gender transformation in the Student Representative Council(SRC) of the University of Kwa Zulu Natal (UKZN). However, before laying down the conclusions, this chapter will start by making an attempt to link the attitudes of participants towards gender transformation as a political agenda and the representation of women in the SRC.
The point of departure for this research was to explore the level of political activism of the student politicians who are the SRC members of UKZN. This was aimed at laying the foundation for the crux of the study which is to explore how female SRC members engage the political mandates of their political movements in order to feminize SRC policies. This would generate a sense of the extent to which SRC as the governing entity informed by the notion of gender equality which is an important aspect of democracy. Fore, Inglehart and Norris (2001: 624) have observed that gender equality or the lack thereof is what causes stumbling blocks for democracy to be consolidated.
Linking the attitudes of the participants towards gender transformation as a political agenda and the representation of women in the SRC of UKZN enabled the researcher to explore the political will within student political leadership to advance gender transformation agenda and the extent to which that is being done. To do this, Pitkin’s conception of political representation (descriptive and substantive) was adopted. Using the concept of political representation as an analytical tool, the researcher argued that while the proportional representation of women is important, but such representation must also be substantive as it is descriptive. For, gender transformation is about affording women participating meaningfully in the decision making of political and policy institutions. Therefore, having women in numbers is good, but if they do not participate in decision making, that defeats the whole purpose of them being there.
113 South Africa has made a remarkable progress in terms of changing attitudes towards the idea of women in leadership. Gender equality in leadership is, to a great extent, acceptable. It can therefore be concluded that the notion that “men make better political leaders than women” is slowly being challenged (Inglehart and Norris, 2001). This is an indication of a democracy in progress. However, whether the same can be said of the SRC is the question of debate. That is because for one the number of women who are in the SRC decreased between 2011 and 2013 instead of increasing. Scholars such as Morna (2004) and Philips (1995) have argued that having the number of women in governance is indicative of gender transformation, but it takes a lot more than that for a particular society to be regarded as an epitome of gender transformation.
This means that if the numbers are not on par, then there is still a very long way to go before true transformation is achieved.
From the theoretical point of view, it was concluded that the representation of women in the SRC of UKZN has more characteristics of descriptive representation than substantive representation.
However, given that the number of women in the SRC has been decreasing, the idea of descriptive representation of women in the SRC remains debatable. That is because the numerical decrease indicates regression. This therefore means that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to improve the descriptive representation of women in the SRC.
Following the need to improve descriptive representation is the need to devise ways of ensuring that descriptive representation translates to substantive representation. That is because the majority of women did not seem to understand that by the virtue of being women, they are mandated to advance the gender transformation agenda by trying to feminize policies and programs of the SRC. There were only a small number of women who proved to be conscious of this role.
In addition to the above revelation, it was also identified in this study that that the representation of women is confronted by a number of obstacles such as the political apathy of female students which make the advancement of gender transformation agenda seem not worth a political pursuit; political male dominance which have the intimidating factor of female politicians.
Political male dominance also compromises the gender transformation agenda in that it trivialized it on organizational mandates. Another identified obstacles is the lack of gender policy
114 from student political movements and as the results of this, even the SRC does not have such policy.