South Africa’s Women’s Month closed for us with two conversations held on consecutive days, in very different settings, and about what appeared to be entirely different problems.

On 26 August, the Shared Value Africa Gender Equality Unit convened the African Universities Gender Equality Forum, in strategic partnership with Sibanye-Stillwater. The purpose was to explore why growing numbers of women qualifying in mining-related disciplines are not translating into proportional recruitment and progression in the sector. The Forum attracted 313 registrations from 24 countries.

The following day, the Private Sector Coalition Women’s Month Dialogue was hosted by the GBVF Response Fund and Alexforbes, in collaboration with the Private Sector Coalition’s co-convening partners and Shared Value Africa’s Gender Equality Unit. The event asked a very different question: companies have invested in policies, reporting mechanisms and support systems – but are employees actually experiencing them as safe and effective?

One conversation was about getting women into an industry. The other was about keeping people safe once they are inside one. They arrived at remarkably similar conclusions.

What we expected – and what the audience told us

We went into the African Universities Gender Equality Forum expecting perception to be a significant part of the problem. We anticipated that women might still associate mining primarily with underground work and a narrow set of technical roles.

The audience corrected us.

Four in five poll respondents already understood that mining offers a wide range of careers within and beyond operations. For this audience at least, awareness was not the primary constraint.

What they wanted was access.

When asked what universities and industry should prioritise together over the next twelve months, structured internships and graduate placement programmes emerged as the strongest priority. The conversation in the room reinforced the finding. A final-year metallurgy student was actively trying to find work experience before graduating and could not locate a route into it. Another participant described completing every step required of her in a mining skills process – and then hearing nothing further.

That is an important distinction.

The pipeline exists. The transition system is where value is being lost.

Qualifications matter. Aspiration matters. But neither automatically translates into opportunity if women cannot access early experience, see clear pathways into industry or receive follow-through once recruitment processes begin.

The Forum also challenged us to think beyond employment. A meaningful share of participants were interested in participating in mining as suppliers and entrepreneurs. Processing and beneficiation attracted substantially more interest than conventional large-scale mining operations when participants were asked where they saw opportunity for women across the value chain.

That matters because gender equality cannot simply be about bringing more women into existing jobs. It must also ask where women participate in the value industries create.

 The policies exist. But can people reach them?

The following afternoon, the conversation moved from talent to safety – and the pattern repeated itself.

Our baseline engagement with companies participating in the Private Sector Coalition has shown that corporate South Africa is not starting from zero.

We encountered policies. We encountered codes. Organisations have reporting channels, employee assistance programmes, survivor-support mechanisms, disciplinary processes and formal governance structures.

And yet a much harder question remains:

 Is it safe for me to speak up?

Why can an organisation have so much infrastructure in place and still struggle to know whether its people actually feel safe?

The difficult work appears to sit in four places: recognition, trust, accountability and reach.

An employee may not recognise that what they are experiencing constitutes GBVH. They may recognise it but not trust the reporting system. They may report and see inconsistent accountability, eroding that trust. And even strong systems may not reach contractors, branch employees, people travelling for work or those based at client sites.

 The workplace is bigger than the office.

Even the numbers we traditionally use to measure progress require more interrogation. Fewer reported cases do not necessarily mean less GBVH. They may. But they could also signal greater fear and silence. Conversely, an increase in reporting may mean that employees better recognise inappropriate behaviour and have greater confidence that something will happen when they speak up.

Reporting numbers alone cannot tell us whether a system is working.

 Two rooms. One finding.

In one conversation, organisations have recruitment processes, graduate programmes, bursaries and transformation commitments. In the other, they have policies, codes, reporting mechanisms and governance structures. In both, the harder question is whether the people those systems were designed for can actually reach them.

That is the insight I am carrying out of Women’s Month.

The constraint is not always an absence of intent. Increasingly, it is not even an absence of infrastructure. It is the distance between what an organisation has built and what its people can find, access, trust and experience.

And there is something encouraging in that. The story emerging from corporate South Africa is not that companies do not care or that nothing is being done. There is a great deal to build on.

But the next phase of gender equality has to be more demanding.

We need to ask not only what have we put in place? But can people access it?

Not only what have we committed to? But what are people experiencing?

Not only how many women are entering the pipeline? But where are they being lost – and why?

Not only how many cases were reported? But do employees trust the system enough to report at all?

These are questions of implementation, but they are also questions of leadership.

Because many of the barriers we heard about during Women’s Month are within the influence of organisations themselves: structured early-career opportunities, recruitment follow-through, supplier pathways, trusted reporting mechanisms, manager capability and consistent accountability.

 What happens after August?

Women’s Month creates an important moment for attention, reflection and renewed commitment.

But perhaps the more important test begins when August ends.

For those of us designing and leading these systems, the questions worth carrying forward are simple:

Do the people our systems were designed for know they exist? Can they find them? Do they trust them enough to use them? And when they do engage – as a candidate, an employee, a complainant or a supplier – do we close the loop?

Because ultimately, organisations will not be judged only by what they have put in place.

They will be judged by what people can actually reach and experience.

At the Shared Value Africa Gender Equality Unit, this is increasingly where our work is focused: moving from commitment to accountability, from policy to lived experience, and from systems that exist to systems that work.

Women’s Month may be over.

The work of closing that gap is not.

By Joy Ruwodo

Head of the Shared Value Africa Gender Equality Unit