Gender Equality in South African Public and Private Domains: A Theoretical Discriminatory Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate that there is a measured resolution to discriminate against women in the public and private domains. The paper is virtuously theoretical and relies upon literature to present its arguments, soliciting information from published journals, reports, and previous studies. For many years, tremendous efforts have been made to link the disease of gender discrimination to women's empowerment practices in a manner that focuses mostly on understanding and breaking the various chains and channels of the disease's transmission pathways. Gender discrimination is common in many countries and manifests itself in various forms, e.g., discriminatory hiring practices, wage discrepancies, limited promotion opportunities, unfair dismissals, early compulsory retirement ages, and sexual harassment. South Africa is characterised by inequalities that create different worlds in one country. In a democratic societal administration, the issues of marginalisation, estrangement, erroneous notions of women's rights, empowerment, and social position are expected to have been issues of the past. However, all efforts at making relevant reforms, including constitutional, judicial, and administrative policies and programmes, as measures to eliminate and redress discrimination against women have not essentially influenced the feminine notion of gender equality. The paper argues that although there are many measures, frameworks, and policies that aim to combat gender discrimination, women are deliberately discriminated against at work as well as in communities. Therefore, the paper concludes that discrimination against women remains a serious developmental paradigm. The cultural patriarchies remain entrenched within societies and, therefore, continue to manifest under the auspices of democracy. Women continue to absorb pressure to combine both unremunerated and remunerated work, while men are doing less.