“It’s still a man’s world out there, but we’re beginning to see not just the occasional stellar or quirky female performance, but women and girls actually driving the plot” – Molly Haskel, author and critic

women entrepreneurs in South Africa continuously face a wide array of obstacles in starting, growing and sustaining their own enterprises.

According to a statement taken from the 2010 annual report by the Business Connexions Group’s CEO, Benjamin Mophatlane, transformation of women marks a new era for Business Connexion with the successful implementation of a BBBEE transaction in which shares were allocated to a group of black women with ICT experience.

Research reports on women in leadership African women have always played a pivotal role in the family environment in terms of nurturing their family structure. Currently an increasing

48 Management Today | August 2011

number of women are seeking economic empowerment outside the family home. This means that they also have to cope with new demanding roles of which one is that of being a woman in the workplace, still observed by many as being male oriented and dominated. Overcoming their cultural conditioning and societal norms is frequently overlooked as a very real challenge that women face when they join the workforce. The demands on the leadership of women in their home, community and workplace require constructive research to expand future improvement and developments in these critical areas. While most research has

been exceedingly useful in terms of painting a gender representation of women in business or in politics, and

more recently the public sector, research findings have largely been quantitative in nature. Consequently, results are still confined to numbers and percentages as measurable indicators of gender transformation. Various indicators are available on the internet of the number of women in key decision- making government positions or percentages of women in executive management positions. These are embodied in figures and graphs without really expounding their successes, reasons for failure or concerns in these positions.

BWASA’s Women in Leadership Census 2011 The Business Women’s Association of South Africa successfully publish a Women in Leadership Census 2011 analysis on its website showing