Campaigning for Social Security Rights: Women in the Informal Economy and Maternity Benefits

This article captures and analyses how women in organised labour structures in South Africa mobilised around the need for a legislative response to a critical gender justice issue, namely access to maternity benefits for self-employed women, and women in the informal economy. Currently, only workers recognised as 'employees' by South Africa's labour law framework qualify for social security benefits such as Unemployment Insurance and maternity benefits (Unemployment Insurance Act 63 of 2001, Unemployment Insurance Contributions Act 4 of 2002, and Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995), resulting in discrimination against and hardship for informal economy and self-employed workers. Following a complaint received in this regard, the Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), one of South Africa's Constitutional Institutions Supporting Democracy, undertook legal and consultative research among members of the South African Self-Employed Women's Association (SASEWA), and examined the impact of this gap on their sexual and reproductive health rights, labour rights and Constitutional rights to social security. The CGE formed a strategic alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), through its national gender structure, resulting in the adoption of a recommendation at its National Gender Policy Conference, for South Africa's ratification of International Labour Organisation Maternity Convention 183 and Recommendation 191 on Maternity Protection, and necessary reforms to existing labour law. Buttressed by the oversight mandate and policy advocacy interventions of the CGE, and the political weight of COSATU's policy recommendations as a member of the ruling party's Tripartite Alliance, campaign partners on this issue were able to secure the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development's support for such reform, resulting in creation of the South African Law Reform Commission (SALRC) Project Committee 143: Investigation into Maternity and Paternity Benefits for Self-Employed Workers (SALRC 2017a, 2017b). Through the SALRC further research was conducted with women informal traders, through the support network Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), and other informal trader networks. This article captures the rights considerations and aspirations relating to women in the informal economy, and how such workers successfully navigated and generated the law reform initiative currently under way.