Women leadership development in the City of Johannesburg
Date
2016
Authors
Saka, Mafusi
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Abstract
The notion of women empowerment in South Africa is steadily gaining momentum and recognition. The country has dedicated the month of August as “womens’ month” and the increased visibility of women in parliament are some of the gains made by government. However, it remains unclear what happens in the other spheres of government regarding the promotion of women and their development. This study examined the local government context by exploring the leadership development of women. The focus of this study was on the City of Johannesburg metropolitan municipality. The City of Johannesburg states that its mission is to be a “World Class African City of the Future”. Human capital and leadership therefore becomes imperative in attaining the mission and delivering effective and efficient services to the citizens of the City of Johannesburg.
This study is aimed at exploring the leadership development of women in the City of Johannesburg. The focus of the study was on their development into leadership roles. A qualitative research was carried out and data were collected using semi-structured interviews and documents as secondary data.
This study revealed that there was relatively good representation of women in the Members of the Mayoral Committee: there was a 50/50 gender split within the committee. However, there was a low presentation of women in other levels. Nevertheless, the focus of the study was not entirely quantitative but it was also qualitative in relation to the development of women into leadership roles. The study found that there was leadership development of employees where women were given preference over their male counterparts with regard to the intake on the programmes. Apart from the programmes held at Wits Business School, there was nothing internally which was focused on the development of women in leadership structures. This highlighted the fact that the City needed to do more in developing women. Despite this knowledge, this study revealed that policies in
the City when effectively used can help in the development of women into leadership roles.
This study provided recommendations that deliberate efforts should be made in developing women. The current policies in the City should be incorporated and there should be a clear strategy and targets set out regarding the development of women.
Description
A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management (in the field of Public and Development Management)
December 2015
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Citation
Sake, Mafusi (2016) Women leadership development in the City of Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand, <http://hdl.handle.net/10539/21803>