In her column in today's edition, Redi Direko asks whether South African men know how it is like to be a woman in a country where violence against women is so rife.

In her column in today's edition, Redi Direko asks whether South African men know how it is like to be a woman in a country where violence against women is so rife.

Two other columnists, Oupa Ngwenya and William Gumede, also wrote earlier in the week about how we have grown to be indifferent to the economical and religious prejudices that continue oppressing those we give one day to and to the violence routinely perpetrated against women.

The points raised by our writers are important to ponder as we prepare for yet another Women's Day celebration.

We can look to our anti-apartheid history for lessons on how to fight gender injustice in our country.

In the same way that men and women of all colours came together in the acknowledgement that a system that favoured some over others on the arbitrary fact of the colour of their skin, we need all right thinking people to throw their own stone at the sexism edifice.

We need to take a leaf from the Madiba Day initiative and ensure that public holidays are used to raise the necessary consciousness and solidarity with those who are unluckier than ourselves or suffer from structural prejudices.

But as Direko alludes to it, it is only when we have fully appraised ourselves to what it means to be a woman in South Africa that we can wage a full-frontal war against the one form of oppression that survived the end of institutional injustice.