She commented: “We should equally celebrate the role of women entrepreneurs, small businesswomen and emerging contractors that play a critical role in what analysts call the real economy.”

Referring to the 2014 campaign by United Nations Women, led by its executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, to consider the gains made 20 years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chisha notes that there is irrefutable evidence that empowering women empowers humanity.

“Countries with a higher level of gender equality have higher economic growth rates, companies with more women on their boards generate higher returns for their shareholders, countries with legislatures comprising more women adopt better laws on health, education, antidiscrimination and the environment, and peace agreements negotiated by men and women last longer and are more stable,” she lists.

Chisha was speaking at the launch of international engineering and project management consultancy Royal HaskoningDHV’s 2014 Women’s Perspective publication, which celebrates “extraordinary women in engineering” in honour of Women’s Month.

Royal HaskoningDHV CEO of South Africa and business line director for Southern and Eastern Africa Nyami Mandindi explains that the 2013 Women’s Perspective was well received and this year, “alongside our own dynamic talent”, the company included a “choice” group of clients and a selection of Grade 12 learners from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“. . . the learners have engaged in social initiatives such as our Saturday Schools programme . . . By setting up countrywide Saturday Schools, which provide free tuition to senior school learners in [the fields of mathematics, science and technology], pass rates can be improved and school leavers with the necessary acumen are directed towards a technical career,” noted Mandindi.

The learners featured in the 2014 Women’s Perspective publication were invited to a job shadow day in August to spend the morning with Royal HaskoningDHV clients and the afternoon at the Royal HaskoningDHV office to gain first-hand knowledge of engineering.

Also speaking at the event was Coega Development Corporation business development manager Sandisiwe Ncemane, who was partnered with Royal HaskoningDHV business development manager Chinese Tys and Grade 12 learner Amy Titus, an aspiring chemical engineer.

Being in the energy sector, Ncemane highlighted that the Department of Energy was focused on diversifying the energy mix in South Africa. “We already see the change being made with regard to renewables. There are independent power producers all over the country and a new industry has been created, with component manufacturers creating new job opportunities for new skills,” she said, stating that it was up to women currently in the workforce to unlock the opportunities in the industry for those women at school and university.

Tys added, however, that women could not succeed without ensuring that capacity was built at an elementary stage to “manufacture engineers in a bullish manner and make a difference”.

Chisha pointed out that education should be an overarching priority not only in general literacy and basic skills training, which were making “tremendous gains in lifting women out of poverty”, but also in specific training in entrepreneurship and financial literacy that would enable women to start their own enterprises, however small they may be.

She pointed out that the National Development Plan emphasised the creation of an enabling environment in which SMMEs and entrepreneurs could thrive.

“This includes recommendations on how to inculcate the spirit of entrepreneurship in our schools, specific measures to support emerging businesses by lowering the barrier to entry in various value chains, reducing the cost of doing business and ensuring that [SMMEs and entrepreneuers] receive preferential treatment through State-owned [company] procurement processes and, now we know, through mining procurement processes as well. This should be especially applicable to women-owned businesses,” Chisha explained.

On a practical level, to support the development of SMMEs and entrepreneurs in South Africa and other countries, she said women that were successful in small business growth should be celebrated to the same extent as the achievements of leaders in large corporations and the public sector were. Further, Chisha believed better access to financial markets would bring more women into the formal sector and encourage them to expand their businesses.

She stressed that the narrative of African women could change their conventional portrayal as spectators of the economy to one of active participants and shapers of the economy and its activities. “We are not onlookers – we are players and influencers,” Chisha said.