Beyond representation: Is Parliament mainstreaming gender into its everyday work?

Gender mainstreaming asks a broader question than simply how many women occupy seats in Parliament. It asks whether Parliament routinely considers the different ways in which legislation, government programmes, budgets and public services affect women and men. In other words: has gender equality become part of the way Parliament works, or does it still largely sit on the margins of parliamentary business?

Our assessment finds evidence of meaningful progress. Gender-related issues are being raised through parliamentary questions and committee recommendations, and South Africa has established important institutional structures dedicated to gender equality.

But the picture remains uneven.

Gender considerations are still strongest in portfolios traditionally associated with women, social development and gender-based violence, while their integration into economic, financial and other areas of parliamentary oversight remains less consistent. 

Representation matters — but it is only the starting point

South Africa continues to perform comparatively well when it comes to women’s representation in its primary legislative chamber. In June 2026, women held 177 of the 395 recorded seats in the National Assembly — approximately 45%. In the National Council of Provinces, however, the picture was less balanced: 20 of the 53 recorded delegates were women, or approximately 38%. 

These numbers matter. A Parliament that reflects the society it represents is an important part of an inclusive democracy. But representation tells us who is in the room. It does not necessarily tell us who shapes the agenda, whose experiences influence decisions, or whether institutions themselves operate differently as a result.

This is the difference between descriptive representation — women being present in political institutions — and substantive representation, where institutional processes and political outcomes actually respond to gender inequality.

The next question for South Africa is therefore not simply whether women are represented, but whether that representation translates into influence across Parliament’s decision-making structures. 

Gender equality cannot be confined to the “women’s committee”

One of the clearest findings of the report is that gender mainstreaming cannot succeed if gender remains primarily the responsibility of structures specifically dedicated to women.

The Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities understandably plays an important role. But gender is also relevant to decisions about finance, policing, transport, infrastructure, mining, agriculture, health, education and economic development. A transport committee, for example, can ask whether public transport systems adequately account for women’s safety and mobility. A finance or economic development committee can scrutinise whether women-owned businesses are benefiting from procurement and economic support programmes. A policing committee can ask whether the resources allocated to responding to gender-based violence are producing meaningful improvements for survivors.

Gender mainstreaming therefore changes the question from “Is this a women’s issue?” to “What are the gender implications of this issue?”. The report finds that women’s participation is stronger in several social-policy-related committees, while gender imbalances continue in portfolios traditionally associated with male-dominated sectors, including defence, policing, finance, transport, mining and infrastructure. That matters because some of the most consequential decisions affecting gender equality happen outside explicitly gender-focused portfolios.

What are MPs asking Ministers about gender?

Parliamentary questions provide another window into how gender is being incorporated into oversight. ParliMeter identified 83 gender-related parliamentary questions directed to Ministers between February 2025 and July 2026.

The largest number — 15 questions — went to the Minister of Police. The Minister of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities received 11, while the Ministers of Justice and Constitutional Development and Social Development each received 10. 

This tells us two things. First, MPs are using parliamentary oversight mechanisms to raise issues including gender-based violence, access to justice, social protection and women’s empowerment.

That is important. But, second, gender-related oversight remains concentrated in a relatively limited number of portfolios — particularly policing, justice and social protection. The prominence of policing is understandable given South Africa’s continuing gender-based violence crisis. But GBV itself demonstrates why gender mainstreaming needs to extend further. A survivor's ability to escape violence may depend on police responsiveness and access to justice. But it can also depend on access to housing, healthcare, childcare, employment, social protection and financial independence.

A genuinely mainstream approach therefore requires Parliament to examine the whole government response, rather than viewing gender inequality through one department or policy area at a time. 

Parliament is making recommendations. But what happens next?

Committee oversight provides an even deeper picture.

ParliMeter analysed Budget Review and Recommendation Reports (BRRRs) between 2019 and 2025 and identified 94 gender-related recommendations or observations across the committee system. These covered issues ranging from gender-based violence and employment equity to women’s economic participation, procurement, leadership representation, service delivery and gender-disaggregated data.

Significantly, approximately 41 of the 94 recommendations required departments to provide additional information, including reports, monitoring and evaluation data, audits, dashboards or further briefings. This is encouraging because effective oversight depends on evidence. But it also exposes one of the most important weaknesses identified by the report: the gap between making a recommendation and establishing what happened because of it.

Parliament may request gender-disaggregated employment data. But did the department provide it? If it did, did the committee use that information to demand corrective action? And, ultimately, did representation improve? Likewise, Parliament may identify weaknesses in a programme responding to gender-based violence. But were additional resources allocated? Was implementation improved? Did survivors receive better services?

The report finds that Parliament is less consistent in demonstrating this follow-through. 

Following the money: are budgets gender-responsive?

Budgets are another critical test of whether gender equality has genuinely been mainstreamed. Gender-responsive budgeting does not mean creating a separate budget for women. It means examining how revenue and expenditure decisions affect women and men differently and whether public resources are reducing or reproducing existing inequalities. South Africa actually has a significant history in this area.

The Women’s Budget Initiative, established in 1995 by parliamentarians, researchers and civil society organisations, was among the earlier gender-budgeting initiatives internationally. It demonstrated how government spending could be examined through a gender lens and helped move discussions about equality from policy commitments to the allocation of public resources. 

Yet the latest assessment suggests that gender-responsive budgeting has still not become a consistent feature of parliamentary oversight. That matters because the largest impacts on gender equality will often come from budgets that do not carry a “women” label at all.

Transport spending affects mobility and safety. Infrastructure spending affects access to water and services. Economic development programmes affect employment and entrepreneurship. Police and justice budgets affect the state's ability to respond to GBV.

A gender-responsive approach to budgeting therefore asks more than: How much money was spent?

It asks: Who benefited? Who was excluded? And did the expenditure reduce inequality? So, what would a gender-responsive Parliament look like? The findings point towards a relatively clear next phase for Parliament. 

Gender analysis needs to become routine rather than exceptional.That means every committee considering the gender implications of legislation, budgets and government performance — not only committees with an explicit gender mandate. It also means departments providing reliable gender-disaggregated information so that MPs can determine who is actually benefiting from public programmes. And importantly, Parliament needs stronger mechanisms for following its own recommendations from identification of a problem through to government response, corrective action and measurable outcomes.

From presence to power — and from commitments to outcomes

South Africa has already achieved something important: women occupy a substantial share of seats in Parliament, dedicated gender structures exist, and MPs are raising gender-related issues through parliamentary oversight. But the next stage is harder. It requires moving from representation to institutional transformation, and from gender commitments to measurable accountability.

Gender mainstreaming will have succeeded not when every committee occasionally discusses women, but when considering gender becomes an ordinary part of how Parliament makes laws, interrogates budgets, questions Ministers, evaluates government programmes and listens to the public. Ultimately, the measure is not the number of gender-related questions asked, reports produced or recommendations adopted. It is whether those parliamentary processes contribute to reducing inequality and improving the lived realities of women in South Africa. 

That is the challenge of moving beyond representation.