The paper's new correspondent in the state examines the institutionalised sexism that is everywhere.

	"I'm the boss," I said with glee. "No," he said. "I mean the master."	THE first clue was right there on the day our furniture arrived from New York. Though I had spent the whole day directing traffic -- the couch goes there, the Chinese piece here -- along about 5 P.M. the foreman approached me with his clipboard and said, "Where's the boss?" Drunk with the power of being The New York Times's new Johannesburg bureau chief, I grinned. "I'm the boss," I said with glee. He looked at me blankly. Then, he looked annoyed, really annoyed. "No," he said. "I mean the master." All he wanted was a signature acknowledging that we had received our belongings, but mine would not do. Never mind that technically the moving company was working for me, that every box had my name on it and that my husband's name did not even appear on the contract.
	What I really needed was a Wonderbra.	I shrugged. "He's in the back," I said. Getting ready to cover southern Africa, I had shopped for hiking boots with perhaps more care than needed. In the small ways that you have of trying to brace for huge life changes, I had spent a lot of time looking for just the right shoes. But what I really needed was a Wonderbra. I had expected snakes, elephants and malaria. I had expected racism, bug-filled hotel rooms and the heartbreak of watching children die. But the status of women here, the level of sexism, astonished me. Some of South Africa's most prominent women, including Ramphela Mamphele, who runs the Univerisity of Cape Town, argue that sexism is actually a bigger problem in Africa than racism.
	Sexism is actually a bigger problem in Africa than racism.	Here a woman is a babe first, last and foremost. The better-looking she is, the easier life is. At least you get some attention. No wonder most of the other middle-aged moms dropping off their darlings at my children's school are in full makeup and cleavage by 7:20 A.M. (I no longer get out of the car.) Of course, women in many countries, including the United States, have to deal with terrible sexism. Japanese women are groped on the subways. Some Muslim countries deny women education and make them wear virtual tents. But South Africa is in the midst of a social revolution defined by its emphasis on equality, and it has the most liberal constitution in the world. Suggest, however, that it is demeaning to hear constant jokes about women as chatterbox shoppers or wily spendthrifts, and eyes roll. I must have brought a half-dozen dinner parties to an uncomfortable silence before I realized that the indignities of being a woman here were not up for discussion among any group -- black, white or colored, rich or poor, young or old. A look of, "Another obnoxious American woman" ran across their faces, like the news zipper in Times Square.
	The social revolution of the 1960's largely bypassed even South Africans of English descent.	Resistance to change in the status of women might be explained by cultural factors -- whether one grows up as an African, whose tribal laws treat women as children, or as a Dutch-descended Afrikaner, whose church teaches that men must rule the home. The social revolution of the 1960's largely bypassed even South Africans of English descent. After all, under the international sanctions of the apartheid era, this country spent decades as an isolated, pariah state, and didn't even allow television until 1976. At the bank that first week, we found there was no such thing as a joint checking account. My husband, I was told, could give me permission to use his account, but it would carry only his name and he could withdraw that permission at any time without notifying me. No one there could understand why I found this objectionable. As I arranged for phones and bought office equipment, every payment form and service contract asked my marital status. Often my husband was required to co-sign. And slowly I came to another realization. I was expected to wait. Store clerks routinely abandoned helping me when a man walked into the store looking the least bit anxious.
	Store clerks routinely abandoned helping me when a man walked into the store looking the least bit anxious.	If I approached a man behind a counter to pay a bill and he was talking to a friend of his, I could wait 10 minutes for him to take the money. The worst was in airports. At car rental counters, men positively glower if they are in a hurry and aren't waited on first. Not long ago, I finally confronted the female clerk at an Avis counter who had left me in mid-transaction to help a demanding Afrikaner male. "Why did you do that?" I asked, trying to sound gentle. "I'm in a hurry too, you know." "Well, there is not much you can do about these things," she said in a tone that suggested I was unfairly bothering her. And how's this for a run of humiliations in front of your boss, who's here on a visit? First we go to see President Nelson Mandela. The brief courtesy visit has been incredibly difficult to arrange. But here we are. Ten minutes of chitchat pass. Mr. Mandela leans over to my boss, Joseph Lelyveld, the executive editor of The Times.
	The ladies were to leave the room now so the men could smoke cigars and talk politics.	"You know," he says to him, pointing at me, "in my day, if you had a wife who looked like that, you would be embarrassed. In my day, a woman needed a little more meat on her bones." (Where was that Wonderbra?) The next day there was a meeting with the leader of the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, Mangosuthu Buthelezi. My husband, Donald G. McNeil Jr., who is also a correspondent in the bureau, came along. As we were leaving, I tried to give Mr. Buthelezi my card. He took it without looking and sidled up to Donald. "I see you have a good Zulu wife who carries your cards for you." he said. Ah, how sweet. They were bonding. At dinner that evening at the house of Harry and Bridget Oppenheimer, the diamond- and gold-mining Oppenheimers, the servants were clearing dessert when Mrs. Oppenheimer stood: "Ladies," she said.
	I can't count the number of times I have been asked who is chief correspondent in South Africa by men who were holding my business card in their hands.	Everyone else seemed to know -- the ladies were to leave the room now so the men could smoke cigars and talk politics. "But, but," my boss protested, thinking that as a journalist I shouldn't be missing out on talking politics with some of South Africa's most powerful executives. "She's the bureau chief." That silence again. I meekly followed the other wives out. Early on, an American black woman journalist here complained of the way she was treated and told me that she was thinking of having new business cards made up saying she was her paper's bureau chief. She thought the disdain for her really had to do with being black. But I could match her slight for slight and my card said bureau chief. I can't count the number of times I have been asked who is chief correspondent for The New York Times in South Africa by men who were holding my business card in their hands. I've asked women why they put up with all this. Outside a courtroom recently an attractive young woman reporter was struggling with a soda machine. A middle-aged lawyer walked up, stroked the machine and said. "Oh, it's just like a woman: You put in money and it gives you nothing back." He wanted applause for this amazing wit. She laughed obligingly.
	also... policitcal correctness around the world.	I wondered how she could stand it, and asked. She agreed the remark was demeaning, but objecting outright was too much trouble, she said, and besides, he got the machine to give her the Coke. "I'm just waiting for guys like that to die out," she said. I marvel at this patience. In the meantime, I have learned a few tricks for getting by. One, I can wiggle my way out of almost anything with, "I'll have to ask my husband." Even got rid of the pushy neighbor who had an "emergency" and wanted to dig our yard up to find his pipes. "Of, course," he said with great understanding. In fact, I'm leaning on that phrase quite a bit these days. It's so handy. And my husband swears that I now wear much tighter shirts.