House Chair, thank you Minister for your detailed and informative response. Members of the Portfolio Committee on Women Children and Persons with Disabilities were given a draft report on the South African delegations. Amongst other programmes discussed by the commission focused on access and participation of women and girls in education, training science and technology including the promotion of women's access to full employment and decent work, empowerment of rural women and the role in poverty and the eradication of hunger.
The Minister also confirmed that the department has started to implement those programmes. Can the Minister share with us on the progress and the achievements made by the department thus far. Thank you very much.
The MINISTER OF WOMEN, YOUTH, CHILDREN AND PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES: Chairperson, one of the site events we had in New York was on the Thuthuzela centres which were declared by the UN Secretary-General as some of the best practices in fighting violence and abuse of women and children. The other site event was on techno-girls which is a special project initiated by government in partnership with United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef, where we do job shadowing for girls between 15 and 18 who are doing matric. Research has shown that we have reached the Millennium Development Goals', MDG, target of 50% in ensuring that boys and girls equally have access to education. In fact we have more girls in schools and at tertiary level than boys.
However, research shows that we still have more girls doing the arts and humanities at tertiary level. To encourage girls and in keeping with the theme of Commission on the Status of Women, CSW, 2011 we have also set up these projects in partnership with private companies like Anglo Platinum, Vodacom, Airlink and so on and various government departments, for instance the Department of Finance is training girls to become pilots and they are also exposed to the mining industry.
We started with a pilot, but because of the success of this project we have seen many girls become engineers, technicians, scientists and chemists. In fact on 4 November we launched this project. We are going to ensure its roll-out from 2012 in all nine provinces. We started with three provinces. We will now be rolling it out.
Since March this year we also had programmes and workshops on rural women. In preparation for the next report to the UN we are working with rural women and closely with the Department Of Rural Development to prepare a good report for South Africa next year. Thank you, Chairperson.