Women's Activism in South Africa

Women's Activism in South Africa PDF Author: Hannah Evelyn Britton
Publisher: University of Kwazulu Natal Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
Women's Activism in South Africa provides the most comprehensive collection of women's experiences within civil society since the 1994 transition. This book captures South African women's stories of collective activism and social change at a crucial point for the future of democracy in the country, if not the continent. Pulling together the voices of activists and scholars, South Africa's path to democracy and the assurance of gender rights emerge as a complex journey of both successes and challenges. The collection elucidates a new form of pragmatic feminism, building upon the elasticity between the state and civil society. What the cases demonstrate is that while the state itself may not be a panacea, it still represents a key source of power and the primary locus of vital resources, including the rights of citizenship, access to basic needs, and the promise of protection from gender-based violence - all central to women's particular needs in South Africa.

Young Women Against Apartheid

Young Women Against Apartheid PDF Author: Emily Bridger
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847012639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
Provides a new perspective on the struggle against apartheid, and contributes to key debates in South African history, gender inequality, sexual violence, and the legacies of the liberation struggle.

Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa

Women's Organizations and Democracy in South Africa PDF Author: Shireen Hassim
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299213838
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
The transition to democracy in South Africa was one of the defining events in twentieth-century political history. The South African women’s movement is one of the most celebrated on the African continent. Shireen Hassim examines interactions between the two as she explores the gendered nature of liberation and regime change. Her work reveals how women’s political organizations both shaped and were shaped by the broader democratic movement. Alternately asserting their political independence and giving precedence to the democratic movement as a whole, women activists proved flexible and remarkably successful in influencing policy. At the same time, their feminism was profoundly shaped by the context of democratic and nationalist ideologies. In reading the last twenty-five years of South African history through a feminist framework, Hassim offers fresh insights into the interactions between civil society, political parties, and the state. Hassim boldly confronts sensitive issues such as the tensions between autonomy and political dependency in feminists’ engagement with the African National Congress (ANC) and other democratic movements, and black-white relations within women’s organizations. She offers a historically informed discussion of the challenges facing feminist activists during a time of nationalist struggle and democratization. Winner, Victoria Schuck Award for best book on women and politics, American Political Science Association “An exceptional study, based on extensive research. . . . Highly recommended.”—Choice “A rich history of women’s organizations in South African . . . . [Hassim] had observed at first hand, and often participated in, much of what she described. She had access to the informants and private archives that so enliven the narrative and enrich the analysis. She provides a finely balanced assessment.”—Gretchen Bauer, African Studies Review

A World of Their Own

A World of Their Own PDF Author: Meghan Healy-Clancy
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813936098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
The politics of black education has long been a key issue in southern African studies, but despite rich debates on the racial and class dimensions of schooling, historians have neglected their distinctive gendered dynamics. A World of Their Own is the first book to explore the meanings of black women’s education in the making of modern South Africa. Its lens is a social history of the first high school for black South African women, Inanda Seminary, from its 1869 founding outside of Durban through the recent past. Employing diverse archival and oral historical sources, Meghan Healy-Clancy reveals how educated black South African women developed a tradition of social leadership, by both working within and pushing at the boundaries of state power. She demonstrates that although colonial and apartheid governance marginalized women politically, it also valorized the social contributions of small cohorts of educated black women. This made space for growing numbers of black women to pursue careers as teachers and health workers over the course of the twentieth century. After the student uprisings of 1976, as young black men increasingly rejected formal education for exile and street politics, young black women increasingly stayed in school and cultivated an alternative form of student politics. Inanda Seminary students’ experiences vividly show how their academic achievements challenged the narrow conceptions of black women’s social roles harbored by both officials and black male activists. By the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, black women outnumbered black men at every level of education—introducing both new opportunities for women and gendered conflicts that remain acute today.

Women's Economic Empowerment

Women's Economic Empowerment PDF Author: Kate Grantham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000340341
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
This book investigates the barriers to women’s economic empowerment in the Global South. Drawing on evidence from a wide range of countries, the book outlines important lessons and practical solutions for promoting gender equality. Despite global progress in closing gender gaps in education and health, women’s economic empowerment has lagged behind, with little evidence that economic growth promotes gender equality. International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Growth and Economic Opportunities for Women (GrOW) programme was set up to provide policy lessons, insights, and concrete solutions that could lead to advances in gender equality, particularly on the role of institutions and macroeconomic growth, barriers to labour market access for women, and the impact of women’s care responsibilities. This book showcases rigorous and multi-disciplinary research emerging from this ground-breaking programme, covering topics such as the school-to-work transition, child marriage, unpaid domestic work and childcare, labour market segregation, and the power of social and cultural norms that prevent women from fully participating in better paid sectors of the economy. With a range of rich case studies from Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nepal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, and Uganda, this book is perfect for students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on women’s economic empowerment and gender equality in the Global South.

Women and Democracy

Women and Democracy PDF Author: Jane S. Jaquette
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801858383
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
A unique look at the political experiences of women in two regions of the world--Latin American and Eastern and Central Europe--which have moved from authoritarian to democratic regimes. By examining various political attitudes and efforts of women as they learn to participate in the political process, contributors offer important new insights into democratic consolidation.

African Women South of the Sahara

African Women South of the Sahara PDF Author: Margaret Jean Hay
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : es
Pages : 0

Book Description
Vision de la situacion economica politica y social de las mujeres de los paises africanos situados al sur del sahara. Desde una perspectiva historica (la epoca precolonial) hasta nuestros dias, este libro aporta informacion y reflexiones sobre los principales cambios que se han efectuado y sobre sus repercusiones en las mujeres en aspectos como: Los roles sexuales, el papel de la mujer en la economia rural y en la urbana, las transformaciones en la familia, la religion y la ideologia secular, y los movimientos nacionales de liberacion. Incluye bibliografia y un apendice estadistico.

African Women and ICTs

African Women and ICTs PDF Author: Ineke Buskens
Publisher: IDRC
ISBN: 1848131925
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Based on the outcome of an extensive research project, this book features chapters based on original primary field research undertaken by academics & activists who have investigated situations within their own communities & countries.

Women, Activism and Apartheid South Africa

Women, Activism and Apartheid South Africa PDF Author: Bev Orton
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787545261
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
This book investigates women’s political activism and conflict in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, using play texts, alongside interviews with female playwrights and women who worked within the theatre, to examine issues around domestic violence, racial abuse and women in detention without trial.

Women in the South African Parliament

Women in the South African Parliament PDF Author: Hannah Britton
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252030133
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
Although the international press closely chronicled the dismantling of South Africa's apartheid policies, it paid little attention to the unique role women from a variety of political parties played in establishing the new government. Utilizing interviews, participant observation, and archival research, Women in the South African Parliament tells an inspiring story of liberation, showing how these women achieved electoral success, learned to work with lifelong enemies, and began to transform Parliament by creating more space for women's voices during a critical time in the life of their democracy. Arguing from her detailed analysis of the strategies and political tactics used by these South African women, both individually and collectively, Hannah Britton contends that, contrary claims in earlier studies of the developing world, mobilization by women prior to a transition to democracy can lead to gains after the transition--including improvements in constitutional mandates, party politics, and representation. At the same time, Britton demonstrates that not even national leadership can ensure power for all women and that many who were elected to South Africa's first democratic parliament declined to run again, feeling they could have a greater impact working in their own communities.