Gender Advocacy Programme

The Gender Advovacy Programme's (GAP) vision is to strive towards a society in which South African's particularly those that are marginalised can participate in policies and decision making at all levels of South African life for the achievement of gender equality.

The Women and Governance Programme has been operational since 1998. The project has always been engaged in advocating for strategies that would reserve seats for women in governance structure.

Through the Women and Governance project, GAP's advocacy call for the increase of women's representation in governance structures is based on the following assumptions:

· Critical mass of women in parliament would mean women's issues would be raised · By having women in parliament the stereotypes of women ability to lead are debunked and · Women's presence in parliament and councils insures that the political institutions would be challenged with regard to its patriarchal demeanour.

The project's goal is to contribute to a society where women are equally represented in all structures of governance and women are skilled and empowered to avail themselves for the leadership positions. The following are its immediate objectives:

· To create an opportunity for women from disadvantaged communities to interact with women in the national assembly and Provincial Legislature in an attempt to hold them accountable and to equip them with leadership skills.

· To challenge societal stereotypes about women's ability to be leaders and to advocate for an increased representation of women in governance as well as to lobby, motivate and evaluate political parties' position and policies with regard to women as their membership. Activities for this objective include the 50/50 campaign

· To lobby government in order to pursue the implementation of the gender policy framework