Women’s Day in South Africa turns 70 with equality still out of reach

The 1956 march transformed women’s rights and political power, but millions still cannot fully enjoy those gains.Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer and political commentator who focuses on race, gender and democracy.Published On 9 Aug 2026One of my favourite protest songs rings out every year on August 9, which is Women’s Day in South Africa. The song works as a call and response: one set of voices cries out, “You have struck a woman,” while another set responds, “so, you have struck a rock!”The chant dates back to the historic protest that gave South Africa’s Women’s Day its date and meaning. In 1956, 20,000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in opposition to “pass laws” that the Apartheid regime was seeking to extend to African women. African men were already subject to the indignity of carrying passes, and with this latest move, thousands of domestic workers across the country immediately understood that they too would be subjected to random stops and searches by police. What little freedom of mobility they enjoyed would be snatched away.Led by the multiracial Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) and the Women’s League of the African National Congress (ANC), a group of politically engaged women organised a petition and a march to oppose the incoming laws.After months of hard work, thousands of women, most of them Black, woke up at the crack of dawn and began to make their way to the Union Buildings, the seat of power of the Afrikaner government. By nine that morning, they had gathered in front of the office of the Minister for Native Affairs.It was no accident that the rally took place on a Thursday, which was also known as “Sheila’s Day.” In the 1950s and 1960s, Sheila was a generic name used to describe Black women who were domestic workers; a casual way for white women employers to refer to the African women who worked in their homes without having to remember their actual individual names. Most madams gave their staff Thursdays off and so it came to be known as Sheila’s Day.