HIGHER EDUCATION TODAY - WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES Guests: Dr. Mary Hames, Director, Gender Equity Unit, University of the Western Cape Host: Steven Roy Goodman Original Air Date: 27 September 2017 In this episode of Higher Education Today, Steven talks about Women’s and Gender Studies with Dr. Mary Hames. We discover that the Gender Equity Unit at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) is one of the oldest of its kind. The unofficial movement started in the midst of the apartheid struggle. The inequality was staggering in the UWC faculty and the director at the time asked Dr. Hames and her colleagues to draw up a list of corrections that they would like to see made. Then a unit was created to monitor the progress. The Gender Equity Unit formally started in 1993 and was pivotal in including a lot of the rights for women in the Constitution, mainly the right for termination of pregnancy. In 1995 labour laws looked into the workplace. Laws against sexual harassment came into the fray, but the law is not always rigorously implemented. This lack of implementation towards human rights saw 30 000 people killed between April – December 2016, many of whom were women. In light of this, Dr. Hames and Penn State University joined together to do a theatre performance that addressed the violence against women on both campuses, which had very similar traits. The South African Constitution, in relation to women, is far ahead of parts of the world and most African countries. However, the law and its implementation in South Africa are both far from perfect.