Brigalia Bam: Discrimination against women holds back SA science

South Africa’s success in science will be determined by the empowerment of women scholars and academics, a leading social and gender activist has said.

Brigalia Bam, former chairwoman of the Electoral Commission of South Africa and chancellor of the universities of Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, made the comment on 27 March.

“The intellectual development of young women is the score by which this country will be judged in terms of its advancement as a scientific society,” Bam told an audience at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she received an honorary doctorate.