The 1956 march transformed women’s rights and political power, but millions still cannot fully enjoy those gains.
In 1956, 20,000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in opposition to “pass laws” that the apartheid regime was seeking to extend to African women. African men were already subject to the indignity of carrying passes, and with this latest move, thousands of domestic workers across the country immediately understood that they too would be subjected to random stops and searches by police. What little freedom of mobility they enjoyed would be snatched away.
...
Once they were in power, the daughters of 1956 pushed through numerous legal and policy changes on reproductive rights, customary law and marriage – and the rights of domestic workers.
As a result of their efforts, South Africa has some of the most progressive laws and policies promoting gender equity and equality in the world. More than 30 years after the end of apartheid, women still constitute about 45 percent of parliamentarians and 44 percent of ministers.
Yet these gains have not translated into safety. South Africa’s first national gender-based violence study found that 33.1 percent of women aged 18 and older had experienced physical violence in their lifetime, while one in five men surveyed admitted to perpetrating physical or sexual intimate partner violence. The persistence of such violence exposes the limits of formal equality: laws can change faster than the attitudes, relationships and behaviours that shape women’s lives.
The same gap between formal rights and lived reality is evident in economic life. The disconnect between the rights enjoyed by women in positions of power who have helped shape South Africa’s laws and the lives of women in the poor communities to which they are accountable is stark.
South African women living in poverty are besieged by high levels of unemployment, gender-based violence and poor access to health and education services, while middle-class women enjoy many of the privileges once reserved for whites only. This is because in the last 30 years the ANC-led government has done little to dismantle the underlying economic structures that upheld apartheid. Formal equality has not translated into material equality for millions of women.
It is hard to find hope for women in South Africa’s statistics. Indeed, many women I know don’t celebrate Women’s Day – they are weary. Yet the women’s movement that the march helped galvanise 70 years ago still has much to teach us.
Extracts only from https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/8/9/womens-day-in-south-africa-turns-70-with-equality-still-out-of-reach