GENDER AND THE POLITICS OF RECONCILIATION | DR HELEN SCANLON created additional challenges to addressing the widespread gender inequalities in South Africa and insert gender fully into discussions on reconciliation. As such, South Africa is testament that the liberal feminist ideals of increased representation of women as key to transformation does not hold true. Apartheid’s Legacy President Nelson Mandela was quick to identify the need to address the structural and cultural obstacles to realising gender equality in South Africa. In a speech on Women’s Day in 1996 he observed: “The legacy of oppression weighs heavily on women. As long as women are bound by poverty and as long as they are looked down upon, human rights will lack substance. As long as outmoded ways of thinking prevent women from making a meaningful contribution to society, progress will be slow. As long as the nation refuses to acknowledge the equal role of more than half of itself, it is doomed to failure” However, despite the rhetoric, progress has been slow in addressing the profound inequalities within South African society beyond changes at the level of the law. As noted above, South Africa is the most unequal nation in the world and these inequalities remain primarily determined by race. As Human Rights Watch has observed: “despite being a middle income country, the key indicators of poverty for the African population are equal to or worse than those for much poorer countries elsewhere in Africa”.103 The international NGO has detailed how “95 percent of those in the poorest 40 percent of the population are African and 65 percent of Africans are poor, by the same measure”.104 To fully assess the extent of these inequalities it is important to disaggregate by race and gender since African women constitute both the lowest paid workers and the majority of the unemployed in South Africa. As Hassim notes: “poverty and inequality are deeply-gendered and inextricable phenomena and to address them as if they were not is misguided to say the least”.105 As many gender analysts recognise the reform or restructuring of economic and social structures is critical for reconciliation. Nonetheless, in South Africa, African women have been bearing the brunt of the increasing feminisation of poverty. Human development indicators such as those embodied in the 2015 United Nations Millennium Development Goals have, albeit inadvertently, highlighted African women’s continued marginalisation. While there is now generally parity in the educational achievement of men and women in South Africa of those living under the food poverty line – defined as less than R305 per month – the majority are African women. According to the government’s 2013 Millennium Development Goal Report women employees earn only 77 percent of the amount male employees earn and while 20 percent of women earned R1000 or less per month this figure was only 10 percent among men.106 Women form the majority of the country’s unemployed and in 2015 only 51 percent of the female population between the ages of 25 and 54 were employed. The 2014 National Employment Equity Report noted that in the private sector women constituted just 30 percent of Senior Management in 2013 and only 20 percent in Top Management.107 These statistics were confirmed by a July 2013 report by audit firm PwC that showed that women constitute just ten percent of those on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and on average earn 28.1 percent less than men. And although South Africa’s boasts progressive reproductive health laws (over 90 percent of pregnant women have access to antenatal care) levels of maternal mortality in South Africa have increased to 625 deaths per 100000 live births in 2010. Given that the UN MDG target was 38 per 100000 live births by 2015 this figure clearly highlights changes to policies and laws alone are not enough to address legacies of inequality from the past.108 It is impossible to discuss gendered statistics without acknowledging their racially skewed reality. As discussed above, rates of gender-based violence in South Africa are both contested and extraordinary. Crimes include high incidences of sexual crimes -the South African Police Service (SAPS) received 55,000 reports of rapes in 2010 but the Medical Research Council claim that less than one in 25 rapes is reported to the police. According to Louise du Toit 40 percent of reported instances of sexual violence concern “victims younger than eighteen years of age, and 15 percent of all reported cases involve victims under age twelve. About 84 percent of child rapes and 52 percent of adult rapes involve perpetrators known to the victims”.109 She also notes that there is no proper record of male rape victim numbers. In addition rates of teenage male homicide are extremely high but are nonetheless similar to the numbers of adult male homicide.110 According to Louise du Toit, there are currently four, often problematic but not mutually exclusive, interpretative frameworks used to explain the high rates of sexual violence in South Africa. The first is that of “past-perpetrator trauma” whereby the prevalence of sexual violence is explained through rationalisations centred on “masculinities in crisis”, “colonial emasculation” or “precarious masculine identities”.111 While not a justification for the current levels of violence, it is clear that during apartheid there was an acceptance of violent behaviour and, consequently, widespread toleration of gender-based violence.  A study by the Medical Research Council has contended that the state-sponsored violence perpetrated during the apartheid era in conjunction with societal responses to this violence has meant: “for many people, physical violence has become a first line strategy for resolving conflict and gaining ascendancy”.112 Louise du Toit notes that “social exclusion” due to socioeconomic marginalisation is the second explanation for high levels of sexual violence. This locates the causal factors for sexual violence in the present rather than the past. The third explanation focuses on patriarchal politics 10