A country reveals who holds power by watching who gets to wait. Waiting is often framed as a minor inconvenience, yet it functions as a gatekeeper. It signals whose time is treated as valuable and whose time can be absorbed by the system, and that is where rights and justice often break down in practice.
For many women, time is not something they have in clean blocks that can be planned and protected. It is repeatedly interrupted by the practical work of daily life, which leaves less room for focus, learning, momentum, and rest. That constraint shapes outcomes in ways that are easy to underestimate. It influences which jobs are realistic, how quickly a business can grow, how consistently care can be accessed, and how often progress can be sustained over time.
We have spent years advancing the conversation on gender equality and pay equity. Those priorities remain important. At the same time, a quieter gap sits underneath many of the outcomes we want to change. I believe the next gender gap is time.
In South Africa, the time penalty is built into how many everyday systems operate. Even where each step looks reasonable on paper, the combined effect is predictable. Time is pulled away from work and income, family responsibilities, and the steady attention required to build capability and opportunity. Progress becomes harder to sustain, especially when people have a limited margin for error and little flexibility to absorb delays.
Time is, therefore, both a personal constraint and a system capacity issue. The International Labour Organisation estimates that women perform about 76% of unpaid care work globally, which means inefficiency and administrative drag land unevenly from the start. When systems consume time, they take it from those who already carry the greatest share of unpaid work, shrinking the space available for paid work, learning, enterprise, and leadership.
The UN Women theme for International Women’s Day 2026, “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls”, is a demand for outcomes. Rights matter when women can exercise them without sacrificing income, safety, or dignity. Justice counts when it is reachable within the time and conditions women have.
In my day-to-day as a technology leader, I see how often the difference between intention and outcome is operational. Time becomes the quiet divider between those who can navigate complexity and those who are priced out by it, even when the policy intent is sound and the service promise is clear. Closing that divide depends on infrastructure that makes access work in practice, including reliable connectivity, affordable data, and services designed for the devices people use.
Infrastructure matters because access has to work under real conditions at a cost people can afford, and service design has to reflect that reality, with mobile-first journeys that are usable in low-data settings and accessible across language and accessibility needs.
This is also where digital inclusion becomes more than connectivity and becomes capability. Huawei’s Women in Tech programme is one practical example. Since 2021, it has trained over 300 women in South Africa, with a focus on strengthening digital skills and leadership, and more recently building exposure to 5G, AI, and cloud computing. The focus is capability that shows up in outcomes. Many women entrepreneurs carry a daily operational load across business and household responsibilities, which makes time the limiting factor for growth. The programme supports women to use digital tools in ways that reduce that load, strengthen day-to-day decision-making, and run operations with greater efficiency and confidence.
A generational lens matters for the same reason. Rights and justice are shaped by who designs the systems that govern daily life, and representation in technology shapes what gets built, how it works, and who it works for. When young girls enter ICT and grow into engineers, cybersecurity specialists, data scientists, product leaders, and executives, they shape the direction of innovation and the standards of inclusion. Through the Huawei graduate programme, we support more young women with strong STEM foundations to enter a field that needs representation, mentorship, and visible pathways to leadership. Over time, that shifts participation and influence, strengthening opportunity and supporting outcomes that are credible for all.
For policymakers and decision-makers across the public and private sector, this is a practical agenda and the real test of “Rights. Justice. Action”, with time as the enabling condition. The focus is on removing the everyday friction that consumes women’s time and limits participation, so rights and justice become usable in real life and reach women across different constraints.
When women get time back, they gain capacity for work, learning, enterprise, and leadership, which is where equality starts to compound. If it costs a woman a day, it’s not access.
- Christina Naidoo, COO, Huawei South Africa
