tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/patriachy-17616/articlesPatriachy – The Conversation2024-01-16T14:13:41Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211252024-01-16T14:13:41Z2024-01-16T14:13:41ZSouth Africa’s ANC marks its 112th year with an eye on national elections, but its record is patchy and future uncertain<p>The speech President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered at the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/ANC-January-8th-Statement-2024.pdf">112th birthday celebration</a> of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), on 13 January can be seen as the party’s opening election gambit: a stadium packed to capacity, the display of a united leadership, and an invocation of three decades of success, delivered by a leader firmly in control of his party.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/anc-january-8th-statement/">annual January 8</a> statement, unsurprisingly, was a 30 year self-assessment and is self-congratulatory. It was silent on the many failings under ANC rule: <a href="https://www.resbank.co.za/content/dam/sarb/publications/statements/monetary-policy-statements/2023/november-/Statement%20of%20the%20Monetary%20Policy%20Committee%20November%202023.pdf">sluggish economic growth</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-police-are-losing-the-war-on-crime-heres-how-they-need-to-rethink-their-approach-218048">crime and lack of security</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/local-government-in-south-africa-is-broken-but-giving-the-job-to-residents-carries-risks-155970">failure to deliver essential services</a> and <a href="https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/opinion/2023-01-31-south-africa-must-maintain-and-build-new-infrastructure/">maintain public infrastructure</a>. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa said the anniversary <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/anc-january-8th-statement/">occasion</a> was an opportunity to focus members of the party on the tasks ahead of the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">2024 general elections</a> – expected between May and August. He pointed out that the ANC had, over its 30 years in power, put in place the building blocks of a social democratic state. These include:</p>
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<li><p>a <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a> that guarantees human rights to all South Africans and is much admired around the world</p></li>
<li><p>protecting workers’ rights, promoting investment and economic development and providing a legal framework for black economic empowerment </p></li>
<li><p>an active role for South Africa on the international stage, and solidarity with people struggling for their rights and striving for a just world order.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Assuming the moral high ground by <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/anc-in-full-support-of-sas-case-against-israel-in-">supporting the cause of Palestine</a> was a reminder of the ANC that once won the hearts of many South Africans and international supporters: principled and standing up for justice, as it had done in the struggle against apartheid.</p>
<p>Ramaphosa highlighted the oft-repeated statistics reflecting “delivery” by the ANC-led government since 1994: </p>
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<li><p><a href="https://www.dhs.gov.za/content/media-statements/human-settlements-delivers-47-million-houses-1994">4.7 million houses</a> have been built and provided “mahala” (for free) to South Africans, including houses allocated to nearly 2 million women </p></li>
<li><p>89% of households now have access to water and 85% have <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=12211">access to electricity</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2024-01-15-listen-28-million-people-rely-on-social-grants-ramaphosa-boasts-about-ancs-efforts-to-prevent-poverty/">more than 28 million people</a> are beneficiaries of social grants aimed at alleviating poverty.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Along the way, mistakes had been made, Ramaphosa said. But the ANC stood resolute in addressing the stubborn legacy of colonialism, apartheid and patriarchy.</p>
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<p>Not much was said about these mistakes. The ANC is nursing its fragile unity ahead of a general election later this year. Tactically, it might have been wiser for the party to own up to some of its shortcomings, as this could have denied its opponents and critics the chance to <a href="https://dailyinvestor.com/south-africa/41313/cyril-ramaphosa-celebrates-28-million-grant-recipients-four-times-the-number-of-taxpayers/">ridicule some of its claims</a>. </p>
<p>As a political scientist, I am interested in the ingredients of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sandy-Africa">durable democracies in post-conflict societies</a>, including South Africa, Mauritania and Libya. Thirty years after its first democratic elections, the stakes are high for the ANC as the party that took the lead in ushering in a new era.</p>
<h2>Despair and frustration</h2>
<p>It is an open secret that the party has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/factionalism-and-corruption-could-kill-the-anc-unless-it-kills-both-first-116924">riven by factions</a>. And the state it runs has been <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">racked by corruption</a> for which few have been held accountable.</p>
<p>The perception that South Africa has been unsuccessful in the fight against corruption has dented the country’s image, and lessened its international leverage and stature. </p>
<p>This, in spite of the ANC government having <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202105/national-anti-corruption-strategy-2020-2030.pdf">an anti-corruption strategy</a>. And, to the chagrin of some members, the party has insisted that those facing allegations of corruption must <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-01-06-anc-resolves-to-keep-step-aside-rule-with-case-reviews-every-six-months/">relinquish state and party positions</a>.</p>
<p>There is disappointment that the reversal of the perception of a party mired in corruption has been <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/columnists/sipho-masondo/sipho-masondo-instead-of-our-greatest-moment-ramaphosa-has-been-our-greatest-disappointment-20230502">slow in the making</a>. </p>
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<p>There is a mood of despair over <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/speeches/minister-bheki-cele-second-quarter-crime-statistics-20232024-17-nov-2023">high levels of crime and violence</a>. There is also widespread frustration over <a href="https://wandilesihlobo.com/2023/01/14/crumbling-basic-infrastructure-limits-south-africas-agriculture-and-tourism-growth-potential/">crumbling infrastructure</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africans-are-revolting-against-inept-local-government-why-it-matters-155483">poor service delivery</a>.</p>
<p>Lashing out at detractors, a confident Ramaphosa said that South Africa was markedly different to that of 30 years ago – and that this was an achievement of the ANC.</p>
<p>He urged members and supporters to campaign for a decisive victory and avoid a coalition with other political parties. Coalitions, he argued, did not benefit the people but the deal-makers who came from the smaller parties. This argument is not without merit – the coalitions have <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/coalitions-the-new-normal-in-south-africa">rendered some municipalities dysfunctional</a>.</p>
<p>Yet, in spite of the public pronouncements, the ANC may be bracing itself for a coalition government. Several surveys say the party will garner <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/anc-polling-under-50-for-2024--brenthurst-foundati">less than 50% of the vote</a> needed to form a government. </p>
<p>The largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, has struck a deal with like-minded parties in the hope of <a href="https://mg.co.za/politics/2023-08-17-opposition-parties-agree-on-moonshot-coalition-vision-principles-and-priorities/">unseating the ANC</a>.</p>
<h2>Wooing young voters</h2>
<p>Ramaphosa’s speech reflected the party’s comfort zone, one in which it does not have to appease multiple factions. But this may be a short-lived luxury.</p>
<p>In addition to having to contend with a record number of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67741527">splinter formations</a> in the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">upcoming general elections</a>, the ANC is also facing a generational change. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.eisa.org/election-calendar/">2024 general election</a> may become the battle for the soul of the young voter. If that is the case, then the ANC needs a fresh image, one less reliant on its history as a liberation movement. It must reflect the interests and aspirations of potential supporters more: <a href="https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/statistics-south-africa-quarterly-labour-force-survey-quarter-three-2023-14">unemployed youth</a>, women under constant threat of <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/publication/ad738-south-africans-see-gender-based-violence-as-most-important-womens-rights-issue-to-address/">gender-based violence</a>; the <a href="https://debtline.co.za/south-africas-middle-class-is-r10k-poorer-than-in-2016/#:%7E:text=The%20financial%20landscape%20for%20South,compared%20to%20their%202016%20earnings.">financially squeezed middle class</a>, and those living in crowded, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10708-022-10808-z">uninhabitable circumstances</a>. </p>
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<p>Ramaphosa called on supporters to stand up against gender-based violence, and to resist the exclusion of marginalised people, such as the LGBTQI community and disabled persons. He acknowledged the positive role of the youth in society, and commended the ANC Youth League <a href="https://www.enca.com/top-stories/anc-youth-league-wants-more-young-people-parliament">for their inputs</a> in shaping the statement. He promised that the party would attend to their concerns and recommendations: </p>
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<li><p>beneficiation of raw materials </p></li>
<li><p>reindustrialisation of the economy </p></li>
<li><p>the energy crisis</p></li>
<li><p>the climate crisis</p></li>
<li><p>the quality of public services. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>These items are already on the ANC’s policy programme being implemented in government. So if the party had been more astute, the January 8 statement could have indicated, especially to its younger constituency, what would be done differently this time round. As it is, these items also feature high on the list of priorities of other political parties, including those formed in recent months.</p>
<h2>Bravado amid disillusionment</h2>
<p>The ANC, through its January 8 statement, put on a show of bravado. However, it would be foolhardy of it to ignore the fact that the political terrain has shifted.</p>
<p>Even long-serving members within its ranks have become disillusioned with the party, as evidenced by the recent <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/why-i-am-resigning-from-the-anc--mavuso-msimang">resignation of ANC veteran Mavuso Msimang</a>, who later retracted his decision. Not all of these can be labelled rogue ex-members. In any case it is just posturing for the ANC to claim that it is and has been the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-insists-its-still-a-political-vanguard-this-is-what-ails-democracy-in-south-africa-141938">only vehicle</a> through which citizens can express their political agency. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-insists-its-still-a-political-vanguard-this-is-what-ails-democracy-in-south-africa-141938">The ANC insists it's still a political vanguard: this is what ails democracy in South Africa</a>
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<p>The ANC leans heavily on its liberation movement brand. But this will not necessarily be a determining factor in who will sway voters later this year. Many see the ANC as having brought the country <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2023-03-01-the-anc-has-mastered-the-art-of-demolition-not-building/">to the brink of failure</a>. Others see its policies as centrist and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-isnt-ready-to-radically-transform-the-south-african-economy-75004">not radical enough</a>.</p>
<p>The governing party has only a few months in which to persuade voters to give it yet another chance to govern South Africa. It won’t be easy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221125/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sandy Africa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ANC leans heavily on its liberation movement brand. But this will not necessarily be a determining factor in who will sway voters later this year.Sandy Africa, Associate Professor, Political Sciences, and Deputy Dean Teaching and Learning (Humanities), University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103432023-08-02T13:27:23Z2023-08-02T13:27:23ZSouth Africa’s new Marriage Bill raises many thorny issues - a balancing act is needed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539927/original/file-20230728-16043-9x88ao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brides attend a mass wedding ceremony at the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, south of Johannesburg.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ihsaan Haffejee/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is changing its marriage law to recognise all types of intimate partnerships – irrespective of gender, sexual orientation, or religious, cultural and other beliefs. </p>
<p>The Department of Home Affairs has <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/department-home-affairs-invites-public-submit-written-comments-draft-marriage-bill-11-jul">invited public comment</a> on the <a href="https://www.gov.za/documents/marriage-bill-draft-7-jul-2023-0000">Draft Marriage Bill 2022</a>. The bill amends some marriage laws, and prescribes what’s required for marriages to be considered valid, forms of registration, and the property consequences of marriage. As the <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/48914_7-7_HomeAffairs-4-28.pdf#page=3">preamble</a> shows, it seeks to promote liberal values of equality, nondiscrimination, human dignity and freedom of thought. </p>
<p>While it is innovative for bringing all forms of intimate partnerships under one piece of legislation, the bill raises thorny questions. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism">Liberalism</a> – or openness to different behaviour, opinions or new ideas – is a strange beast. It pushes accepted conduct to its limits.</p>
<p>For instance, if the bill truly seeks equity, why does it not recognise intimate partnerships such as cohabitation? Why does <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202307/48914gon3648.pdf#page=20">section 22(6)</a> criminalise marriage between people who are related to each other by adoption or by blood (to certain degrees)?</p>
<p>I have <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JgVz0yUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">researched</a> these issues, notably as a member of the Advisory Committee on Matrimonial Property of the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/Salrc/ipapers/ip41-prj100E-MatrimonialPropertyLawReview-6Sep2021.pdf">South African Law Reform Commission</a>.</p>
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<p>I believe that even though the bill promotes important constitutional values, it does not sufficiently reflect changing social and economic conditions. Specifically, it ignores polyandry – marriage of a woman to more than one man – and unmarried partnerships. This is significant because other laws recognise <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/a17-061.pdf">civil unions</a>, which include formalised marriage-like partnerships of same-sex couples.</p>
<h2>The thorny issues</h2>
<p>Firstly, radical socioeconomic changes require society to reevaluate traditional assumptions about accepted forms of relationships. Due to urbanisation and the interaction of different cultures, relationships such as cohabitation and polyandry are rising. A couple could live together for reasons such as exorbitant rent, distance to workplaces, and prohibitively high bridewealth (<em>ilobolo</em>). </p>
<p>The bill doesn’t recognise such intimate partnerships, which the Constitutional Court has accorded the same legal status as formal marriages. As the court has <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2021/51.html">acknowledged</a>, unmarried partnerships have serious implications for finances, human dignity, property ownership and child custody.</p>
<p>Secondly, the Marriage Bill <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/48914_7-7_HomeAffairs-4-28.pdf#page=8">defines</a> <em>ilobolo</em> as</p>
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<p>property in cash or in kind … which a prospective husband or the head of his family undertakes to give to the head of the prospective wife’s family in consideration of a customary marriage.</p>
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<p>This implies that only (traditionally male) family heads can receive it. The definition does not anticipate a role for women, as happens among the Galole Orma people of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2744433">northeastern Kenya</a>.</p>
<p>Also, the position of family head could be disputed where the mother is divorced and raised the bride alone. As far back as 1997, the Transvaal High Court <a href="https://www.bbrief.co.za/content/uploads/2019/11/Mabena-v-Letsoalo-1998.pdf">ruled</a> that the bride’s mother could negotiate and receive <em>ilobolo</em>. The bill should therefore redefine bridewealth as “money, property, or anything of value given by the groom or his family to the bride’s family in consideration of marriage and/or to symbolise a union between the groom and bride’s families”.</p>
<p>This definition is consistent with the decreasing role of the extended family in the education or raising of the bride. Uncles and aunts should not benefit from bridewealth if they did not assist in raising the bride. </p>
<p>Thirdly, the bill is silent on the coexistence of a civil law marriage with a customary or religious marriage. For reasons like legal certainty and communal respect, <a href="https://www.saflii.org/za/journals/SPECJU/2018/14.pdf">double marriage is common</a>. Previously, if a couple in a civil marriage subsequently concluded a customary or religious marriage, the state regarded the latter marriage as invalid. </p>
<p>The bill creates ambiguity because it does not stipulate the fate of a subsequent customary or religious marriage. This could affect inheritance, property and child custody because legal systems may govern these issues differently.</p>
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<p>Furthermore, the bill defines polygamous marriage as “a marriage in which a male spouse has more than one spouse at the same time”. This patriarchal definition does not promote equality. It implies that a woman should not marry more than one man. </p>
<p>Finally, the bill imposes an omnibus standard for divorce on all marriages. This standard may complicate divorce under Islamic and customary law, where the standard is relaxed. Also, <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202307/48914gon3648.pdf#page=19">section 21(1)</a> of the bill states that a marriage may be dissolved by the “continuous unconsciousness of one of the spouses,” without specifying how long a spouse must be unconscious following an injury, for example.</p>
<p>If the thorny issues in the bill are not addressed, the eventual legislation could be challenged as discriminatory. Its amendment would then drain the public purse. </p>
<h2>A balancing act</h2>
<p>Significantly, the bill emerged from the 2022 <a href="http://www.dha.gov.za/images/PDFs/White-Paper-on-Marriage-in-SA-5-May2022.pdf">White Paper on marriages and life partnerships</a>. The advisory committee that worked on the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/dpapers/dp152-prj144-SingleMarriageStatute-Jan2021.pdf">Single Marriage Statute (Project 144)</a> proposed two options for regulating life partnerships in its discussion paper.</p>
<p>These are a <a href="https://www.lssa.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/SALRC-discussion-paper-152-on-single-marriage-statute-plus-media-release.pdf">Protected Relationships Bill and a Recognition and Registration of Marriages and Life Partnerships Bill</a>. It appears Home Affairs did not add life partnerships to the bill because it is controversial. But legislative avoidance is unhelpful because it <a href="https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1727-37812021000100048">postpones inevitable problems</a>. The Constitutional Court <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2021/51.html">recognises</a> the right of a woman in a life partnership to inherit or claim maintenance from her deceased partner’s estate. </p>
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<p>Ultimately, new forms of relationships demand legislative recognition. Law reform should be carefully handled to ensure that non-discriminatory cultural and religious practices <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10566/7355/Diala_law_2021.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">are respected</a>. The bill should strike a balance between preserving these practices, promoting liberal values, and recognising the evolving realities of contemporary relationships.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthony Diala receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number 136532). </span></em></p>The Marriage Bill should strike a balance between preserving non-discriminatory cultural and religious practices and promoting liberal values.Anthony Diala, Director, Centre for Legal Integration in Africa, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1963022023-01-16T12:16:44Z2023-01-16T12:16:44ZWomen’s voices are missing in the media – including them could generate billions in income<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500401/original/file-20221212-103851-okrley.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women are severely underrepresented in editorial leadership and in news coverage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stefan Heunis/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How can the news media represent women’s voices better? The answer might be in a recent <a href="https://internews.org/from-outrage-to-opportunity-women-media/">report</a>, “From outrage to opportunity: How to include the missing perspectives of women of all colors in news leadership and coverage”. </p>
<p>The report was written by <a href="https://www.lubakassova.com/">Luba Kassova</a>, the award-winning evidence-based storyteller, and commissioned by the <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/">Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation</a>. It is based on extensive research in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, India, the UK and the US. The report discusses gender parity in news leadership and production, as well as news coverage.</p>
<p>Socio-economic and patriarchal structures have long determined and usually hampered women’s entry and ascendance in society and the workplace. But the news media provide a very particular case of gender discrimination. This is especially through the hurdles and threats the contemporary media sphere presents to women journalists. </p>
<p>Research outlining gender imbalances remains scarce and uneven across media platforms, organisations and national contexts. This means that the effect of gender on decisions about the structure and content of news media is left unaddressed. </p>
<p>Research on female leadership in the news media is scarce too. This makes the <a href="https://internews.org/from-outrage-to-opportunity-women-media/">“From outrage to opportunity” report</a> even more important.</p>
<p>The report shows that women in the six countries surveyed remain severely underrepresented in editorial leadership and in news coverage. Their voices are excluded in shaping public discourse in the male-dominated industry. Ensuring better representation of women’s voices in the news media would change not only the industry, but also public discourse.</p>
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<p>Other studies show that where women control news content, it tends to be <a href="https://www.comminit.com/global/content/who-makes-news-6th-global-media-monitoring-project">more gender sensitive and representative</a>. Women journalists are also more likely to challenge gender stereotypes, raise gender inequality issues, and reference legislation or policy that promote gender equality or <a href="https://www.comminit.com/global/content/who-makes-news-6th-global-media-monitoring-project">human rights</a>. </p>
<p>On the upside, the “From outrage to opportunity” report focuses on solutions. It makes a case for addressing the gender gap in news consumption. This provides a multi-billion-dollar revenue opportunity for a struggling global news industry. The report argues that, if the gender gap were to be addressed and women better represented in the news media, the industry could grow female audiences exponentially. It estimates that closing the gender consumption gap could generate as much as US$83 billion over the next 10 years.</p>
<h2>Patriarchy and sexist attitudes</h2>
<p>Worldwide, women still battle patriarchal and sexist attitudes as well as non-supportive or non-existent policy environments. These contribute to women media workers fighting uphill battles to <a href="https://www.comminit.com/global/content/who-makes-news-6th-global-media-monitoring-project">reach the higher echelons of the industry</a>. </p>
<p>The scarcity of women journalists in senior editorial positions and at board level remains <a href="https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/ccom_papers/169/">an obstacle to gender parity</a>. Research by the Reuters Institute at Oxford University analysing top media outlets in 12 countries across four continents shows that <a href="https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/women-and-leadership-news-media-2021-evidence-12-markets">only 22% of top editors are women</a>. In the South African news media, some positive inroads have been noted. Women hold 46% of senior management positions and <a href="https://genderlinks.org.za/gmdc/publications/glass-ceilings-women-in-sa-media-houses-2018/">36% are in top management</a>.</p>
<p>In most countries, there is still a <a href="http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/news-media/female-journalists-media-sexism-emerging-trends">pay gap between men and women journalists</a>, including in <a href="https://genderlinks.org.za/gmdc/publications/glass-ceilings-women-in-sa-media-houses-2018/">South Africa</a>. <a href="https://www.poynter.org/news/cohort-women-public-facing-journalism-jobs-are-exhausted-harassment">Research</a> also shows an increase in the harassment of women journalists through social media. So-called cyber bullying is disproportionately directed at women journalists.</p>
<p>Particularly dire is the situation of women of colour. The <a href="https://internews.org/from-outrage-to-opportunity-women-media/">“From outrage to opportunity” report</a> says women of colour in South Africa, the UK and the US experience even greater marginalisation or outright exclusion from news leadership roles. </p>
<p>The argument made is that if women of colour were represented in senior positions in proportion to their percentage in the working population, their numbers in these roles would be three times higher in the US, 2.2 times higher in South Africa and 1.2 times higher in the UK. Of course, in South Africa people of colour are the majority.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/digital-storytelling-can-be-a-powerful-tool-for-water-researchers-189322">Digital storytelling can be a powerful tool for water researchers</a>
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<p>South Africa does present a slightly different scenario. It leads among the six countries on representation of women in news leadership. This is attributed to its liberal and equitable <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>. The country also has the highest gender parity in terms of reporting on business and economics, health and to some extent politics. </p>
<p>Compared to the UK and the US, South Africa has seemingly made greater strides towards gender equity in some areas. In the UK, no women of colour occupy the most senior editorial positions in politics, foreign affairs and health news beats. In South Africa, 29% of political editors are women of colour, while their proportion in the population is 46%.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/african-newspapers-can-be-anti-african-too-what-my-research-found-190256">African newspapers can be anti-African too: what my research found</a>
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<p>Importantly, the women of colour interviewed for the report perceived newsrooms as being fearful or unwilling to deal with lack of diversity or cultural exclusion. Consequently, women of colour often faced the impossibly onerous expectation that they should resolve the problem of their own under-representation and exclusion from newsrooms and leadership. This has also been well documented and confirmed in earlier studies of the South African news media. Where gender parity in the newsroom might have been reached, women’s experiences still talk to a wide range of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1742766519899116">impediments to real gender equality</a>.</p>
<h2>Costly lost opportunity</h2>
<p>Globally, research by the <a href="https://whomakesthenews.org/">Global Media Monitoring Project</a> on gender equity in the workforce, news production and editorial decision making over 20 years shows that progress has been <a href="https://www.comminit.com/global/content/who-makes-news-6th-global-media-monitoring-project">very slow</a>. The organisation estimates that at the current pace at which equity is being achieved, it will take another 67 years to close the average gender equality gap in <a href="https://www.comminit.com/global/content/who-makes-news-6th-global-media-monitoring-project">traditional news media</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/william-ruto-vs-kenyas-media-democracy-is-at-stake-190780">William Ruto vs Kenya's media: democracy is at stake</a>
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<p>However, as the “From outrage to opportunity” <a href="https://internews.org/from-outrage-to-opportunity-women-media/">report</a> concludes, there are no quick fixes or silver bullets. Women’s voices and participation need to be amplified on each step in the news value chain, whether in leadership, news production or consumption. Acknowledging the impact that increased women’s participation could have on revenues in the media industry – where new business models are sorely needed – is a first and important step.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ylva Rodny-Gumede does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The news media provide a very particular case study of gender discrimination.Ylva Rodny-Gumede, Professor of Journalism in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978512023-01-13T19:31:56Z2023-01-13T19:31:56ZFrene Ginwala remembered: trailblazing feminist and first speaker of South Africa’s democratic parliament<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/504487/original/file-20230113-14-ka7h5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frene Ginwala addressing the media in 2017, tireless in her fight for justice.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gulshan Khan/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Frene Ginwala, feisty feminist, astute political tactician and committed cadre of South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (<a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">ANC</a>), has <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-pays-tribute-%C2%A0dr-frene-ginwala-founding-speaker-parliament-13-jan">died at the age of 90</a>. In a country blessed with exceptional leaders, Ginwala must surely count among the best. Typically for her, but unusually for the ANC leadership, she will be laid to rest in a private ceremony. While she was modest about her achievements, she has left an indelible mark on South Africa’s constitution and democratic institutions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/frene-noshir-ginwala-1932">Frene Noshir Ginwala</a> was born in 1932 in Johannesburg. Her <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dr-frene-noshir-ginwala">Parsee grandparents</a> immigrated from Mumbai in India in the 1800s and made a life for the family in Johannesburg. Ginwala left South Africa after high school, to pursue an LLB degree <a href="https://www.mandela.ac.za/Leadership-and-Governance/Honorary-Doctorates/Frene-Ginwala-2003">at the University of London</a>. She qualified as a barrister at the Inner Temple. Around this time her parents moved to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique. She returned to South Africa after graduating and moved to Durban where her sister, a medical doctor, had settled.</p>
<p>Although she supported the ANC, she was not politically active in any significant way until 1960, when the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> set off a crisis for the ANC, and the <a href="https://pac.org.za/">Pan Africanist Congress of Azania</a>, both of which were banned and many of whose members went into exile. Ginwala’s family links to east Africa suddenly became a valuable resource, as did her political obscurity. </p>
<h2>Life in exile</h2>
<p>She was asked by ANC leader <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a> to go to Mozambique to facilitate the exit of ANC members and supporters into exile. One of those exiles was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a> president of the ANC. Ginwala helped him get across the border into Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and into a safe house. It was the beginning of a long and important comradeship. Ginwala became assistant to Tambo, who went on to lead the exiled ANC <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">for 30 years</a>. She was instrumental in setting up the ANC office in Tanzania. </p>
<p>Ginwala’s work in creating a politically effective ANC in exile – arguably the most powerful exiled liberation movement in the world – was invaluable. She loved to point out the ANC had more missions abroad <a href="http://www.freedomcollection.org/interviews/frene_ginwala/">than the apartheid government had embassies</a>.</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, she created a newspaper, <a href="https://www.tambofoundation.org.za/trustees/frene-ginwala-acting-chairperson/">Spearhead</a>, wrote articles for a variety of international media outlets, wrote speeches for Tambo and gave speeches herself. Her time in Tanzania was interrupted when she was suddenly banned herself by the government of Tanzania for her critical commentary, and she left for the UK. President Julius Nyerere lifted her ban in 1967 and asked her to return to Dar es Salaam to establish a new national newspaper, <a href="https://www.tambofoundation.org.za/trustees/frene-ginwala-acting-chairperson/">The Standard</a>.</p>
<p>But her independent and forthright views – a hallmark for all of her life – got her into hot water and once again she was banned. This time she returned to the UK, where she registered for a <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2022/dr-frene-ginwala-remembers-wits.html">PhD at Oxford University</a>. Her doctorate, awarded in 1976, was a sharp reading of the relationship between class, race and identity among Indian South Africans. She continued to build the ANC’s external profile. Her writing on the South African situation was prodigious, well-informed and hard to ignore. She was soon sought after by the United Nations to advise on peace-building globally. </p>
<h2>Return from exile</h2>
<p>When the ANC was unbanned <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/place-of-thorns/unbanning-of-the-anc-political-violence-and-civic-politics-19901995/505D6A37A01673DFB67D2458D4A71A44">in 1990</a>, Ginwala returned after an absence of 31 years. She became the first speaker in the National Assembly in 1994, creating the office as a democratic institution and ruling parliament with a firm, authoritative and fair hand for a decade. Later, she was the prime mover behind the formation of the <a href="https://au.int/en/pap">Pan-African Parliament</a> and one of the most prominent supporters of the <a href="https://www.advocacyinternational.co.uk/featured-project/jubilee-2000">Jubilee 2000 Campaign</a>, which successfully lobbied for the scrapping of the onerous debt incurred by the world’s poorest countries. </p>
<p>Others will write about her many contributions to the ANC and to her status within the liberation movement. My generation of feminists will remember her, above all, for her remarkable championing of the struggle against patriarchy. This began when she was in exile, when she worked with ANC Women’s Section to ensure that ANC principles included non-sexism. It was a long and conflictual process, but by the mid-1980s all ANC documents carried the commitment to a <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10566/5829/Non%20racialism%20and%20the%20African%20National%20Congress%20views%20from%20the%20branch.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">“nonracial, nonsexist democracy”</a>. This was so much more than a linguistic shift; it enabled feminists within the ANC to demand that the commitment be followed through in programmes and policies.</p>
<p>Ginwala was always somewhat impatient and to the left of the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/anc-womens-league/">ANC Women’s League</a>. She feared that there was a conservative streak in the league that caved in to the patriarchal assumptions of the movement’s leaders. She was worried this made it ineffective in pushing for gender equality. She worked from the side – cajoling comrades (ANC activists), and when that did not work badgering them, into action. </p>
<p>She set up the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/49th-national-conference-commission-on-emancipation-of-women/">ANC’s Emancipation Commission</a> in 1991, dedicated to advancing gender equality and combatting sexism in the movement. Although not intended to compete with the Women’s League, it did have strategic status that was ensured by placing it under the authority of then-ANC president Tambo. It was a base from which Ginwala could drive the demand for gender equality unconstrained by the Women’s League.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">multiparty negotiations</a> to end apartheid in the 1990s, when it became apparent that gender concerns would sink to the bottom of the ANC’s list of priorities, she led the process of forming an independent women’s organisation – the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4066477">Women’s National Coalition</a> – that would unite women across political parties and ideological lines. She described it as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40971570.pdf">“conspiracy of women”</a>. </p>
<p>It was a remarkable body that coalesced around two key demands: the inclusion of women in all decision-making about the shape of the post-apartheid state and constitution, and an end to violence against women.</p>
<h2>Impatience and integrity</h2>
<p>Ginwala understood power and politics better than most ANC leaders; her analysis of the balance of forces on any given issue was rapier-like. She knew that the transition process offered an opening to insert feminist principles into the new state, but understood that the window of time was fleeting. This made her impatient at times with other feminist leaders who wanted to build the Women’s National Coalition from the bottom up. </p>
<p>She was clear in her views and at times obstinate, but there was never any doubt about her integrity. Inevitably, there were bitter struggles over the pace of development of the flagship document of the Women’s National Coalition, the <a href="http://www.kznhealth.gov.za/womenscharter.pdf">Charter for Women’s Equality</a>. </p>
<p>Ginwala was concerned that the slow consultative processes preferred by the leaders of the charter process, <a href="https://www.pregsgovender.com/about">Pregs Govender</a> and <a href="https://www.apc.org/users/debbie">Debbie Budlender</a>, would mean the charter would not be ready to be included alongside the Bill of Rights in the constitution, and that the moment for greatest impact would lapse without any long-term gains.</p>
<p>Although the charter was only adopted after the main constitutional debates were concluded, the Women’s National Coalition ensured that gender equality was firmly embedded in the country’s final 1996 <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf">constitution</a>. </p>
<p>The contestations that took place in the drafting of the charter about the meaning of gender equality offer a rich and long-lasting archival resource for political activists as well as researchers.</p>
<p>Ginwala was passionately concerned about economic transformation and set up numerous study sessions on issues such as unpaid care. She wrote a <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/8766832.pdf">hard-hitting challenge</a> to the 50 male economists who crafted the ANC’s key economic policies as it took power. In conversations and seminars among feminists, she was insistent that political representation was only a lever for feminism, not its end goal. </p>
<p>As Speaker of the National Assembly, she took responsibility for establishing training programmes for women parliamentarians, drawing on her vast global network for funding and educational materials.</p>
<p>Hamba kahle, lala ngoxolo Comrade Frene. (Go well, rest in peace.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with a hurtful clarity. (<a href="https://poems.com/poem/when-great-trees-fall-reprise/">Maya Angelou</a>)</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197851/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shireen Hassim receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada.</span></em></p>A younger generation of feminists will remember her, above all, for her remarkable championing of the struggle against patriarchy.Shireen Hassim, Canada150 Research Chair in Gender and African Politics and Visiting Professor, WiSER Wits University, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927912022-11-09T14:13:42Z2022-11-09T14:13:42ZDigital activism: study shows the internet has helped women in urban Ghana and Nigeria raise their voices<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491369/original/file-20221024-6143-daep55.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women in rural areas have limited access to the internet. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Information technology and the internet have proven to be a strong force for building collective action groups and mobilising communities of protesters. Among the main advantages of digital and online activism are its increasing accessibility (relatively low-cost and easy to use), its speed, and the ability to reach large numbers of people around the world. </p>
<p>Digital activists can protest and advance their cause using a variety of digital tools. They include websites for online petitions (such as Change.org and Avaaz.org), social networks (Facebook, YouTube, Myspace), blogs (as a form of citizen journalism), micro-blogging (Twitter), mobile phones and proxy servers. </p>
<p>These digital platforms can connect with a large community and at both local and international levels. The interconnected nature of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook makes it easy to share information. Activists can post messages, slogans, photos and instructions more easily than using the traditional street protests or door-to-door mobilisation strategies. </p>
<p>The drawback of digital campaigning, however, is that the same tools can be used for hate speech and misinformation. This has sometimes endangered the goals of such campaigns.</p>
<p>Women’s rights groups in Nigeria and Ghana are among social movements that have these tools at their disposal. Groups like Female in Nigeria and Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana seek to empower women economically and politically. They also advocate for women’s rights to education, respect, social justice and inclusion in political leadership. They protest against violence and victimisation and call attention to inequalities.</p>
<p>As a scholar of social media and society, I carried out a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17405904.2021.1999287">study</a> to investigate women advocacy action groups in Nigeria and Ghana and how digital communication may have enhanced or limited their actions and objectives.</p>
<p>My findings show that social media give women advocacy groups a voice, allowing them to speak more freely in a context of traditional patriarchy. This shows the importance of technology in shaping social life. Women in these countries are demanding change – and change is happening. But the groups’ reach is limited mostly to urban areas because access to the internet is constrained in rural areas. </p>
<h2>A safe space</h2>
<p>For my study, I drew on the websites of women advocacy groups in Nigeria and Ghana and posts on their social media platforms. I used computer-mediated discourse analysis, a method of analysing online interactions and their implications for society. The analysis considers information about the people interacting online, their relationship with one another, their purposes for communicating, what they are communicating about and the kind of language they use.</p>
<p>The groups I looked at were the <a href="https://nigerianwomentrustfund.org/">Nigerian Women Trust Fund</a>, Nigerian League of Women Voters, Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (<a href="https://kind.org/">KIND</a>), <a href="https://genced.org/">Gender Centre For Empowering Development</a> and <a href="https://landportal.org/fr/organization/network-women%E2%80%99s-rights-ghana#:%7E:text=The%20Network%20for%20Women's%20Rights,to%20strengthen%20women's%20human%20rights.">Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana</a>. </p>
<p>These groups have been very active for some time. They target public audiences, including the government and other interest groups. </p>
<p>My focus was on campaigns for political empowerment rather than access to economic and material resources.</p>
<p>These groups’ websites were notably non-confrontational in style. They promoted group activities, created public awareness, and sought feedback and involvement. Mostly the language was used to inform, report and claim, and to describe events and processes. Sometimes it was used to give direction, such as appealing for and inviting certain actions.</p>
<p>English was the language used for most of the website content.</p>
<p>The groups were not only active via their websites but also on their social media platforms, particularly Twitter and Facebook. Campaign messages on these platforms were different from those on the websites. They celebrated successful female politicians and expressed resistance and hope. They showed solidarity with inspiring women parliamentarians and other role models, and mobilised support for women running for political office.</p>
<p>Messages on social media called for members to participate in rallies and offline protests, demand change and reject the marginalisation and victimisation of female politicians.</p>
<p>The messages did not explicitly challenge male authority, but asked for a fair chance for women to decide on issues that affect their lives. </p>
<p>Other campaign messages were about group activities such as webinars and training for women aspiring to political office. </p>
<p>The language used tended to be encouraging towards women, and not hostile to men.</p>
<h2>Room for improvement</h2>
<p>With the <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation">backing</a> of the United Nations and the African Union, women in African countries are achieving progress. Rwanda, for example, has the <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/best-countries-women-in-politics-equality/">world’s highest level</a> of female representation in government, at 61%. </p>
<p>The number of women in government in sub-Saharan Africa <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2019-july-2019/african-women-politics-miles-go-parity-achieved#:%7E:text=(812%20out%20of%203922).,Map%20of%20Women%20in%20Politics.">grew to a regional average</a> of 23.7% in 2018. In Ghana, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1244930/share-of-female-seats-in-parliament-in-ghana/">14% of seats in parliament</a> are held by women after the election in 2020. <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/more-news/528219-low-number-of-women-in-politics-bane-of-nigerias-development-minister.html">In Nigeria</a>, the House of Representatives has 18 female members (5%) out of 360 while the Senate has eight women (7%) out of 109 members. </p>
<p>Further progress will depend in part on the challenges that online activism faces. These problems are not particularly related to the content and character of online communication, but rather to access to technology. Urban women have an advantage over women in rural areas because of their access to the internet. </p>
<p>In Ghana and Nigeria, the internet doesn’t reach rural areas due to perceived low revenues and steep investment cost. Technology companies don’t invest where the population is small or sparsely distributed.</p>
<p>So it is difficult for people in rural areas to access online-based advocacy forums and training. </p>
<p>While online activism of the women’s empowerment advocates is effective, it is limited to a small percentage of the population. Women are still grossly underrepresented in Nigeria and Ghana.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192791/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Innocent Chiluwa does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Only a small percentage of women in rural areas have access to the Internet, so participation in online activism is limited to urban centres.Innocent Chiluwa, Professor, Language and Media/Digital Communications, Covenant UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1713442022-08-30T12:17:29Z2022-08-30T12:17:29ZHow Mary Kay contributed to feminism – even though she loathed feminists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480473/original/file-20220822-54947-jktayt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C2789%2C1996&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary Kay Ash's legendary love for the color pink symbolized her determination to be a business success by "thinking like a woman."</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/beautys-big-business-mary-kay-ash-the-originator-and-news-photo/502259765?adppopup=true">Colin McConnell /Toronto Star via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1963, the same year American businesswoman Mary Kay Ash started her cosmetics company, publisher W.W. Norton <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/powerful-complicated-legacy-betty-friedans-feminine-mystique-180976931/">released “The Feminine Mystique</a> – the book that has since been widely credited with launching the contemporary women’s liberation movement.</p>
<p>Ash loathed the term "feminist” and disliked the movement. In a 1983 Dallas Morning News interview, she dismissed “that foolishness feminists started in the ‘60s” of “trying to act just like a man” by cutting their hair short or lowering their voices.</p>
<p>Yet Ash, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/business/mary-kay-ash-who-built-a-cosmetics-empire-and-adored-pink-is-dead-at-83.html">who died in 2001</a>, successfully defied her era’s female gender norms. She turned a few thousand dollars into a multibillion-dollar cosmetics empire and led it for decades. Her sales force grew from fewer than 10 women to tens of thousands.</p>
<p>While researching a book on Ash’s life and work, I’ve learned that many of the Mary Kay saleswomen were comfortable with their era’s vision of femininity and motherhood. Ash’s <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-hot-pink-empire-of-mary-kay-ash/">company motto of “God First, Family Second, Career Third”</a> put them at ease. </p>
<p>American women today owe gratitude to the women’s movement of the 1960s for making issues like equal pay for equal work and sharing household responsibilities part of the national conversation – but also to a Dallas entrepreneur who reveled in the feminine mystique.</p>
<h2>From underpaid saleswoman to CEO</h2>
<p>In 1963, the year Ash founded “Beauty by Mary Kay” in a small Dallas storefront, barely <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002">a third of American women were in the workforce</a>. Ash was one of them. She had peddled children’s encyclopedias door to door, and conducted “house parties” - home demonstrations of products that catered to housewives – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/business/mary-kay-ash-who-built-a-cosmetics-empire-and-adored-pink-is-dead-at-83.html">with Stanley Home Goods</a> and other companies. </p>
<p>Ash consistently earned lower wages than her male counterparts, who also passed her by for promotions. When she protested, one common response was to deride her for “thinking like a woman.” Another was that men needed more money because they had families to support. </p>
<p>“I had a family to support too!” <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mary-Kay-Ash-1981-10-01/dp/B01K175DX0">recalled Ash, a single mother, in</a> her 1981 memoir. So she quit to build a company where there would be no wage gap or male bosses, and women would be rewarded for thinking like women – all while embracing the vision of traditional gender roles that the feminist movement was trying to overturn. </p>
<p>By 1969, the company was earning US$6.3 million in net sales, according to The New York Times. And an article in the Irving Daily News, a Texas newspaper, put the sales force at around 4,000 women from 15 different states.</p>
<p>In 1976, Mary Kay Inc. became the <a href="https://npg.si.edu/exh/journal/ash.htm">first woman-founded and -led company listed</a> on the New York Stock Exchange. </p>
<p>In 1979, glowing coverage on “<a href="https://youtu.be/nrWz_MzKAMk">60 Minutes</a>” prompted nearly 100,000 more women to sign up. The company was grossing over <a href="https://youtu.be/nrWz_MzKAMk">$100 million annually</a> and had a <a href="http://www.marykaymuseum.com/highlight_1970.aspx">global reach</a>, and Ash was named one of the year’s top corporate women in America by <a href="http://3vcm07307bnr2jg8679q77x8-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Mary_KayCosmeticsInc_Corp_PlanningInAnEraofUncertainty.pdf">Business Week</a> magazine.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nrWz_MzKAMk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The CBS news show “60 Minutes” aired a glowing profile of Mary Kay Ash’s cosmetic company in 1979.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1985 Ash and her son <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/23/business/mary-kay-ash-who-built-a-cosmetics-empire-and-adored-pink-is-dead-at-83.html">led a $450 millon deal</a> to buy the company back into private family hands. As of 2021, the company <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/10/02/how-mary-kays-founder-went-from-single-mom-to-billion-dollar-beauty-queen/">reportedly has $3.5 billion in annual revenues</a>. </p>
<h2>The Mary Kay mystique</h2>
<p>Ash rejected feminism but sought to build women’s confidence – something absent in the average housewife’s life, according to “The Feminine Mystique” – as well as their income.</p>
<p>“Here’s a woman who’s never had any praise at all for anything she’s ever done,” Ash <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mary-Kay-Ash-1981-10-01/dp/B01K175DX0">said in her best-selling memoir</a>. “Maybe the only applause she’s ever had was when she graduated from high school. So we praise her for everything good that she does.”</p>
<p>Based on the interviews I’m doing for my research, this approach worked. </p>
<p>Esther Andrews, a housewife, told me that before she became a Mary Kay saleswoman in 1967, “nobody had ever said that I could be great at anything.” Andrews, who raised three children with her Mary Kay earnings after her husband died, was among the first winners of a pink Cadillac – a company prize for top sellers. The car was both a symbol of her success and a means of mobility few housewives enjoyed at the time. </p>
<p>Andrews’ story reflects that of many I’ve uncovered. From a former waitress and single mom in New Jersey who was able to raise her daughter and purchase her own home to a former housewife in Ohio who has more diamond rings than fingers and funds her family’s European vacations, Mary Kay has changed women’s lives. </p>
<p>Both of these women fought back tears as they shared their career accomplishments with me. Both have been in the company for more than 30 years. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Salespersons from Anhui Province, China, pose for pictures in front of a pink sedan, an award for the best sales team, during the Mary Kay China Leadership Conference on February 20, 2011, in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481609/original/file-20220829-27-801kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481609/original/file-20220829-27-801kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481609/original/file-20220829-27-801kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481609/original/file-20220829-27-801kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481609/original/file-20220829-27-801kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481609/original/file-20220829-27-801kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481609/original/file-20220829-27-801kvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mary Kay company continues to award top saleswomen with new cars in its founder’s favorite color.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/salespersons-from-anhui-province-of-china-pose-for-pictures-news-photo/109325814?adppopup=true">China Photos/GettyImages AsiaPac via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In her book “In Pink: The Personal Story of a Mary Kay Pioneer Who Made History Shaping a New Path to Success for Women,” homemaker and early Mary Kay recruit <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pink-Personal-Pioneer-History-Shaping/dp/0985372516">Doretha Dingler remarked that</a> “much more than raising our family income, that kind of earning raised my consciousness” – language echoing that of the era’s feminists.</p>
<h2>Opportunities for women of color</h2>
<p>It wasn’t just middle-class white women who found success in Mary Kay. </p>
<p>In 1975, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9lwEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA183&dq=ruell%20cone%20mary%20kay&pg=PA183#v=onepage&q=ruell%20cone%20mary%20kay&f=false">Ruell Cone</a>, a Black woman from Atlanta, was the company’s highest-earning saleswoman. She was honored in person by Ash herself before tens of thousands of saleswomen at the company’s annual seminar. </p>
<p>In 1979, Gerri Nicholson told The Record newspaper of Hackensack, N.J., that while she had “a lot of hang-ups” from growing up as an African American in the South, working for Mary Kay “substantially increased my family income” and gave her “a feeling of self-worth.” At that point Nicholson had worked her way up from saleswoman to sales manager, and would go on to become Mary Kay’s <a href="https://www.warrenrecord.com/article_a63211f2-30fa-11ec-9c07-cb0095c02517.html">first Black national sales director</a>.</p>
<p>By 1985, Savvy magazine reported that Mary Kay Inc. could claim more Latina and Black women earning annual commissions of over $50,000 – the equivalent of $137,000 in 2022 – than any other corporation worldwide. </p>
<p>Ash’s elevation of “thinking like a woman” and the company’s acceptance of Black and Latina saleswomen are also forerunners of feminism’s “third wave” in the 1990s. In this era, younger feminists shifted the movement’s focus from equal rights to diversity, embracing gender differences and celebrating femininity in its various forms.</p>
<h2>A ‘pink pyramid scheme’?</h2>
<p>Along with these success stories, the company has faced accusations of exploiting more women than it enriches. A 2012 article in Harper’s Magazine, “The Pink Pyramid Scheme,” <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2012/08/the-pink-pyramid-scheme/">pointed at unrealized promises of success</a>, saleswomen going into debt to purchase product inventory, and high turnover rates.</p>
<p>I believe these stories are a part of any accurate telling of Mary Kay history. </p>
<p>However, based on my research, a substantial number of the company’s “beauty consultants” say they found camaraderie, <a href="https://hbr.org/2018/08/why-women-stay-out-of-the-spotlight-at-work">recognition</a> and <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/after-two-years-job-womens-confidence-plummets-180955373/">confidence</a> working for Mary Kay, and a female role model in Mary Kay Ash.</p>
<p>These are things working women today <a href="https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2006.22898277">still find elusive</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171344/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cassandra L. Yacovazzi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ash derided women’s liberation as “that foolishness” – but her success story is very feminist.Cassandra L. Yacovazzi, Assistant Professor of History, University of South FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1854572022-07-13T13:57:05Z2022-07-13T13:57:05ZNew book challenges whiteness: a review through the cover image<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472840/original/file-20220706-15-x1igkj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of the cover of the new book featuring art by Norman Catherine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness/Routledge</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The cover of <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Studies-in-Whiteness/Hunter-Westhuizen/p/book/9780367403799">The Routledge Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness</a> carries a striking image courtesy of South African artist <a href="https://www.normancatherine.com/">Norman Catherine</a>. The image was created in 2015 as <a href="https://www.normancatherine.com/gicle-prints">one of a set of digital prints</a> and, typical of Catherine’s work, contrasts dark and light to present a cynical view of the world <a href="https://www.normancatherine.com/about">informed by society and politics</a>. </p>
<p>This image can be interpreted as expressing some of the ideas in the Handbook. It gives me a way to approach this book review because my teaching, research and writing deal with understanding how graphic images can convey ideas and carry meaning. I am not proposing that Catherine deliberately set out to visualise whiteness in his image, and acknowledge that my interpretation is my subjective opinion.</p>
<p>Titled “Show & Tell”, it shows a stylised male figure in profile, with slicked back black hair and a skin colour ranging from pale pink, green and grey to a hot magenta and shining yellow.</p>
<p>Catherine’s choice of skin colours illustrates the most obvious thing about people called white, and that is that they are not actually white. As noted by English academic Richard Dyer in his analysis of racial imagery of white people in his 1997 book <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/white/oclc/34547959">White</a>, white people are not literally nor symbolically white.</p>
<p>The figure’s profile lacks a forehead and is dominated by an enormous yellow nose and forward jutting chin, between which a grimacing mouth encircled by a row of blocky white teeth gapes. His black-clad torso is transformed into a similar profile, with glaring white teeth and a flapping pink tongue. I interpret the figure as showing what Dyer identified as “a divided nature and internal struggle between mind (God) and body (man)”, “a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Manichaeism">Manichean</a> (dualism of black:white”, “the presence of the dark within the white man”).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=854&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472842/original/file-20220706-14-ztzj6a.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1073&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Routledge</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such a divided way of seeing and knowing the world contributed to centuries of racism and white supremacy that continues into the present with devastating impact. Challenging and dismantling racism and white supremacy is part of the purpose of the book, edited by academics <a href="https://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/staff/dr-shona-hunter/">Shona Hunter</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/christi-van-der-westhuizen-240334">Christi van der Westhuizen</a>.</p>
<p>Critical Studies in Whiteness matter as it forms, in the words of the editors, part of a “broader project towards racial and social justice, and the end of heteropatriarchy and coloniality”. The editors describe whiteness as (page 3)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a dynamic, shifting, but durable system of domination through, under, against and within which people live, work, and relate. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whiteness can be overt and highly visible, as was the case in apartheid South Africa, or operate invisibly. This book succeeds well in describing and criticising, through many examples, how whiteness works.</p>
<h2>Whiteness across time and space</h2>
<p>To make whiteness visible is a frequently stated goal of whiteness studies and this is shown on the cover in the clearly defined figure. However, Hunter and Van der Westhuizen argue in Chapter 1 that whiteness shifts between invisibility and visibility, to the point of becoming “hyper-visible”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/afrikaner-identity-in-post-apartheid-south-africa-remains-stuck-in-whiteness-87471">Afrikaner identity in post-apartheid South Africa remains stuck in whiteness</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The arguments the editors make in their introductory chapter are complex, layered and not easily summarised. This is not surprising as the book is aimed at researchers, scholars and advanced students in a variety of academic fields. </p>
<p>The Handbook, consisting of 28 chapters, a preface and an epilogue, analyses the operation of whiteness across time and space. It does so through the contributions of a variety of scholars from various disciplinary, geographic and national contexts. A wide range of topics are covered from different perspectives. From histories of whiteness in India, Japan and South Africa, to a critique of trans-racial adoption in Sweden, and the harm done to grassroots organisations in the United States by foundations created by “white, corporate elitists”.</p>
<p>Contributions point to whiteness as being positioned at the heart of a “global colonial world system” and as being implicated with capitalist relations, <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/understanding-heteronormativity">heteronormativity</a> – the belief that heterosexuality is the only natural expression of sexuality – and patriarchy. This is signified in Catherine’s figure with its pinstriped trousers and shiny black lace-ups.</p>
<p>Across the figure’s torso wounds strain against stitches through which various colours show, presumably of the skin beneath the black clothing. This brings to mind an objective of Critical Whiteness Studies which is identified by the editors as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>dissect(ing) whiteness as a distinct power formation within the structures of race, racism, and white supremacy, that rose with and sustained colonialism, and today forms an essential part of coloniality (page xx).</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The backlash</h2>
<p>The inflicting of wounds on and sustained critique of whiteness has, however, not been without counterattacks. The wounded figure responds angrily, mouthing off, dynamic lines swirling around him, indicating that he has been forcefully lashing out.</p>
<p>The defence of whiteness is visible in the rise of the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right">Alt-Right</a>, neo-fascism and various forms of nationalism in recent years. The volume contains incisive critiques of such phenomena. This includes the backlash against feminism — in the form of the active promotion of traditional femininity through <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429355769-7/tradculture-reproducing-whiteness-neo-fascism-gendered-discourse-online-ashley-mattheis">#TradCulture</a> — and the embracing of whiteness as a form of resistance by the Alt-Right.</p>
<p>The rise of such phenomena underscores the fact that the social justice and anti-racist intent of the volume is now needed more than ever. While aimed at an academic audience, many of the chapters are very readable and I hope it finds a broader audience as the arguments it contains must be more widely debated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deirdre Pretorius is related to Christi van der Westhuizen and knows Shona Hunter through her affiliation with the University of Johannesburg.</span></em></p>This book succeeds well in describing and criticising, through many examples, how whiteness works.Deirdre Pretorius, Associate Professor in the Graphic Design Department, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1856482022-07-03T08:10:30Z2022-07-03T08:10:30ZBook on Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe’s legacy has many flaws<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470799/original/file-20220624-17-oop0y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe died in 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Yeshiel Panchia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Development studies professor David Moore’s new <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/mugabes-legacy/">book</a>, Mugabe’s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe, attempts to understand the legacy of <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Robert_Mugabe">Robert Mugabe</a>, who led Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2017, when he lost power in a military coup. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-b-moore-285501">Moore</a> maintains that Mugabe’s legacy revolves around what he terms “the three Cs”: coups, conspiracies and conceits of political power. He shows that “the three Cs” have their origins in the perilous politics of the independence struggle, in which Mugabe was a key participant.</p>
<p>The book consists of a prologue and 10 chapters. The first chapter seeks “to erect a conceptual structure on which the Zimbabwe ‘facts’ will sit”. Chapters two to five set out “the making of Mugabe and his legacy” in the liberation struggle years. Chapters six to nine trace the independence time trajectory of Mugabe’s political career through to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-military-coup-is-afoot-in-zimbabwe-whats-next-for-the-embattled-nation-87528">2017 coup</a>. Chapter ten examines Zimbabwean politics after Mugabe’s fall from power and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49604152">death in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>The scholars <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003026280/personality-cult-politics-mugabe-zimbabwe-ezra-chitando">Ezra Chitando</a>; <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Robert+Mugabe">Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut</a>; <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/11424894/mugabe">Stephen Chan</a>; and <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-47733-2">Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Pedzisai Ruhanya</a>, among others, have debated the legacies of Mugabe’s 37-year rule. </p>
<p>Moore largely ignores the contributions of these important contending studies about Mugabe’s legacies. This is subnormal academic practice. Consequently, the precise ways in which his book surpasses or buttresses competing works about Mugabe’s legacy are indistinct.</p>
<p>Bar an interview with the veteran nationalist politician Edgar Tekere (who had a mammoth lifelong axe to grind with Mugabe) in 2004, Moore did not interview anybody else in Zanu-PF who knew Mugabe well, or worked closely with him for an extended period. For that reason, the book is bereft of exceptionally revealing findings about Mugabe’s leadership, legacy and the politics of Zanu-PF. Moore’s main sources are unremarkable diplomatic cables in Western archives and material already in the public domain such as newspaper articles, NGO reports and published books. They do not make for a groundbreaking book.</p>
<h2>Missing the point</h2>
<p>We live in an age where the decolonisation of the knowledge agenda has, rightly, come to the fore in the academy. In light of this, I expected arguments about Mugabe’s leadership developed by black Zimbabwean scholars based in Zimbabwe to be central to Moore’s analysis. In place of debates about Mugabe by black Zimbabwean scholars, he has the thought of 20th century Italian Marxist intellectual-politician <a href="https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/gramsci-antonio/">Antonio Gramsci</a> as his book’s central point of reference. </p>
<p>Moore invokes Gramsci <em>ad infinitum</em>, without ever properly contextualising his ideas or making clear their illuminating pertinence in debates about Mugabe’s legacy. Nor does Moore use his study of Mugabe’s legacy to extend and refine Gramscian theories. My comprehension of Mugabe, his legacy and Zanu-PF was not enhanced in any novel way after all that Gramsci. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470798/original/file-20220624-22-lqecj8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470798/original/file-20220624-22-lqecj8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470798/original/file-20220624-22-lqecj8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470798/original/file-20220624-22-lqecj8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=882&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470798/original/file-20220624-22-lqecj8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470798/original/file-20220624-22-lqecj8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/470798/original/file-20220624-22-lqecj8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1108&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Discussion of real and imagined coups is an important theme in Moore’s book. This is presented as a key component of Mugabe’s legacy. But, Moore does not engage relevant coup and military rule literature in order to enhance our understanding of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup, and for the coup to advance broader studies about the nature and effects of coups, such as work by <a href="https://yalebooks.co.uk/page/detail/?k=9780300040432">Samuel Decalo</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/african-government-politics-and-policy/when-soldiers-rebel-ethnic-armies-and-political-instability-africa?format=HB&isbn=9781108422475">Kristen Harkness</a>, <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/10989/seizing-power">Naunihal Singh</a>, <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-032211-213418">Barbara Geddes</a> and <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/In+Idi+Amin%E2%80%99s+Shadow">Alicia Decker</a>, among others.</p>
<p>Moore states that he finds coup literature “boring” because it consists of “conservative tracts on the primordial-like prebendal and neo-patrimonial coupishness of Africans” (page 164). Serious coup scholars will bristle at his characterisation of their work as “conservative”, and defined by a propensity to regard Africans as innately prone to coup making because of personalised patronage-based politics. </p>
<p>Moore cursorily engages the African studies scholar <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1973.tb01413.x">Ali Mazrui’s 1973 article</a>, called Lumpen Proletariat and Lumpen Militariat: African Soldiers as New Political Class, about the consequences of coups, to underline why he finds coup literature “boring” and unhelpful.</p>
<p>The problem with this is that Mazrui’s article is dated and was hardly authoritative even in 1973. Moore depicts a crude caricature of a diverse, sophisticated, instructive and evolving coup and military rule literature.</p>
<h2>Portrayal of women</h2>
<p>Feminist scholarship has done much to challenge patriarchal erasure and trivialisation of women in political science. Moore’s book does precisely what feminist scholars have critiqued for decades now. It is laden with unquestioned patriarchal notions and gendered trivialisations that impoverish the study of politics.</p>
<p>Moore writes as if nothing can be gained analytically by treating women (Zimbabwe’s former <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Grace_Mugabe">first lady Grace Mugabe</a>, specifically) seriously. By this I mean methodically tracing, listening to and understanding women’s actual political incentives and experiences. </p>
<p>Moore employs sexist tropes when discussing Grace Mugabe’s role in politics and the 2017 coup. For example, he describes her as “the volatile former secretary”, “the woman who whipped her son’s girlfriend” and “incendiary Grace”. Yet there is no mention of the equally notable emotional volatility of the powerful political men – Mugabe, <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Constantino_Chiwenga">Constantino Chiwenga</a>, <a href="http://www.swradioafrica.com/Documents/Dzinashe%20Machingura.pdf">Dzinashe Machingura</a>, <a href="https://www.colonialrelic.com/biographies/joshua-nkomo/">Joshua Nkomo</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/samora-machel">Samora Machel</a> and <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Josiah_Tongogara">Josiah Tongogara</a> – who he discusses in his book.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Moore did not unearth any treasures in his research of Mugabe’s legacy. He has not even drawn a map that might lead us to an enhanced understanding of the making of Mugabe and his legacy, the politics of Zanu-PF, and coups and their corollaries.</p>
<p><em>Blessing Miles Tendi is the author of <a href="http://www.milestendi.com/books">The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe - Mujuru, the liberation fighter and kingmaker</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blessing-Miles Tendi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Moore did not unearth any treasures in his research of Mugabe’s legacy. He has not even drawn a map that might lead us to them.Blessing-Miles Tendi, Associate Professor in the Politics of Africa, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1679212021-10-04T14:12:25Z2021-10-04T14:12:25ZChange what South African men think of women to combat their violent behaviour<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423587/original/file-20210928-22-12e4587.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thousands of activists protest outside the South African parliament in Cape Town, following a week of brutal murders of young women in 2019.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africans wish to see men and boys change their violent behaviour towards women and girls to stem the worsening tide of male violence against females in the country.</p>
<p>There have been numerous interventions – policies, programmes, campaigns – by government, civil society and the private sector to <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2020-07-24-a-political-response-to-gender-based-violence/">address this scourge</a>. But, these efforts are failing as the problem is getting worse.</p>
<p>In June 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared male violence against women <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-06-18-gender-based-violence-is-south-africas-second-pandemic-says-ramaphosa/">a second pandemic</a> in South Africa, adding that one woman is killed every three hours in the country. The country has one of the highest rates of rape in the world, with <a href="https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rape-statistics-by-country">132.4 incidents per 100,000 people</a>. </p>
<p>Also in 2020, the government’s <a href="http://gbv.org.za/about-us/">Gender Based Violence Command Centre</a>, a call centre to support victims of gender-based violence (GBV), recorded more than 120,000 victims in the <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-09-01-shocking-stats-on-gender-based-violence-during-lockdown-revealed/">first three weeks of the lockdown</a>.</p>
<p>The reason for the failure of the various interventions is because they are not addressing its psycho-social causes. My <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137014740_2">research</a> on the subject shows that to change male violent behaviour towards females, there is a need to focus on changing male thought patterns that drive gender-based violence and femicide. </p>
<p>Controlling or reducing violent behaviour requires uncovering the linkage between people’s perception of situations and their behaviour.</p>
<p>I am a gender and development expert and have consulted for the United Nations Population Fund and the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government since 2011. I recently contributed to the province’s gender strategy plan 2020-2024. The yet to be published plan outlines, among other things, the need for the change of behaviour by boys and men towards girls and women as a way of promoting safety for girls and women in the province.</p>
<p>Across the country, the problem of gender-based violence and femicide is structural and fuelled by inequalities that transect race, class, gender, sexuality and age. It is prevalent throughout the life-cycle stages for women – from infancy, girlhood, adolescence and adulthood. The economic costs for the country <a href="https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/za/pdf/2017/01/za-Too-costly-to-ignore.pdf">have been huge</a>. </p>
<h2>What research says</h2>
<p>Several studies have sought to explain the causes of gender-based violence in South Africa. Many of these fall under four broad categories; socio-cultural, economic, legal and political.</p>
<p><strong>Socio-cultural:</strong> For example, patriarchy and the gender inequality it produces have been implicated as the root cause of violence against women. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691050500100724">Studies</a> show that rape is mainly caused by ideas of masculinity that fuel male sexual entitlement to female bodies. Others highlight how particular understandings of masculinity legitimate unequal and <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0029590#">often violent relationships with women</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Economic:</strong> Poverty and unemployment are disproportionately borne by females, and makes them vulnerable and <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/voices/the-link-between-economically-vulnerable-women-and-gender-based-violence-20201230">susceptible to abuse by male providers</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Legal:</strong> There is a difference between the public and private spaces which gender equality legislation and policies <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0376835X.2011.570069">do not cover</a>. For example, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1998-116.pdf">Domestic Violence Act</a> in itself has not deterred male violence against women which occurs in the informal and personal spaces of gender relations. </p>
<p><strong>Political:</strong> Although there is political will to make gender equality legislation and policies, there is little or no will especially at lower levels of government to implement them. For instance, political leaders themselves perpetrate gender-based violence, sometimes <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/reinstatement-of-former-mec-proof-that-gbv-is-not-a-priority-for-anc-mpumalanga-2020-11-26">with support from their parties</a>.</p>
<p>An important point to note though is that no single factor can explain this violence in South Africa – or any society for that matter. A myriad of factors contribute, and their interplay lies at the root of the scourge. </p>
<h2>The gaps</h2>
<p>As the literature overview on the causes of gender-based violence in South Africa shows, little or no attention has been paid to its psycho-social causes – the interrelation of social factors and individual thought and behaviour. In this case, they are the thought patterns that inform how men and boys see women and girls, and how these perceptions in turn inform violent masculine behaviours towards women and girls. Neglecting this has implications for addressing the problem.</p>
<p>This gap in literature is also reflected in the responses by government, activists and civil society, which have failed to arrest the scourge in spite of the efforts and resources put into it since democracy in 1994. </p>
<p>Government’s latest policy response, the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/content/national-strategic-plan-combat-gbvf-2020-2030">GBVF National Strategic Plan 2020–2030</a>, which has significant activist and civil society inputs, reflects this gap. Its six pillars focus on leadership accountability, prevention, enforcing justice, victim support, economic empowerment and research. These are useful priorities. But, none of the plan’s six pillars and their intended outcomes reflect any psycho-social priority. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Graphic showing the six pillars of the South African government's plan to combat gender-based violence" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421098/original/file-20210914-15-1ksi2in.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421098/original/file-20210914-15-1ksi2in.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421098/original/file-20210914-15-1ksi2in.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421098/original/file-20210914-15-1ksi2in.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421098/original/file-20210914-15-1ksi2in.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421098/original/file-20210914-15-1ksi2in.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421098/original/file-20210914-15-1ksi2in.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Presidency, South Africa.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why what men think of women matters</h2>
<p>As I have argued in my <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137014740_2">research</a>, people are the product of their cultural environments, which define their behaviour. </p>
<p>In other words, our cultural learning largely determines what we are consciously aware of, and how we conceptually structure that awareness into behaviour. </p>
<p>Findings from focus group discussions with working class men (35 years average age) in Umhlathuze Municipality (KwaZulu-Natal) and university students (20 years average age) at the <a href="http://www.unizulu.ac.za/">University of Zululand</a> and the <a href="https://ukzn.ac.za/">University of KwaZulu-Natal</a>, show how these thoughts <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137014740_2">influence dangerous masculine behaviour</a>. </p>
<p>According to one of the older men:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I see women (and my wife) as public enemy number one who must be curtailed always. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The younger men expressed similar views of women. <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137014740_2">According to them</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>women are mentally strong while men are only physically strong, so when we cannot cope with their mentality, we beat them. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Combating violence against women</h2>
<p>Given the link between perception and behaviour, it is understandable how oppositional and stereotypical perceptions men hold of women can foster violent masculinist behaviour. For instance, seeing females as “properties” can produce an entitlement mentality among males. This makes it difficult for them to let females live in peace when they end romantic or marital relationships. </p>
<p>It is the feeling of “ownership” that give males the audacity to want to keep controlling and brutalising females they are no longer involved with. Therefore, to change and possibly eradicate male violence against women in South Africa, intervention efforts must be targeted at changing how males see females. </p>
<p>When males are socialised to start seeing female as humans with rights too, just as they were perceived <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=KeZUhtDhujsC&oi=fnd&pg=PP8&ots=fGktld2BV1&sig=tHa7jPnuDanmDzIhyb1S5ZdW-Dk&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">in pre-colonial times</a>, they will start treating women with the decency, due regard and respect that they deserve. </p>
<p>Changing perceptions cannot be legislated. This perhaps explains why a legalistic or policy approach alone is not cutting it. Changing perceptions to change behaviour, which usually occurs at the private and personal levels of gender relations, will require specific interventions aimed at re-socialising boys and men. </p>
<p>Some of these include changing the curriculum from primary school to tertiary education to place women alongside men in history and social studies. Co-parenting from birth to break the backbone of patriarchy is another possible long term strategy in this regard. These are doable and can be implemented alongside other interventions to combat male violence against females in South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Isike does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The problem of gender-based violence and femicide in South Africa is structural and fuelled by inequalities that transect race, class, gender, sexuality and age.Christopher Isike, Professor of African Politics and International Relations, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1659272021-08-12T13:57:13Z2021-08-12T13:57:13ZPrince Andrew: the monarchy has a long history of dismissing women’s suffering<p>Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied claims of sexual assault, stemming from his friendship with convicted sex offender and underage sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Now, he faces a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58153711">civil lawsuit</a> in New York by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who claims Andrew sexually assaulted her three times.</p>
<p>There are conflicting accounts of how much assistance Andrew has given to the investigation. In January 2020, then-New York attorney general Geoffrey Berman <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/27/prince-andrew-jeffrey-epstein-us-prosecutors-fbi-seek-interview">said the prince</a> had given “zero cooperation”. The same month, the Metropolitan Police were <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-wont-say-prince-andrews-21261789">criticised</a> for rejecting freedom of information requests that could help establish Andrew’s whereabouts on the night that Giuffre accused him of assault.</p>
<p>Rather than giving formal evidence, Andrew was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/17/prince-andrew-fresh-questions-raised-by-tv-interview">interviewed</a> by BBC’s Newsnight in November 2019. The sit-down was staged within Buckingham Palace – very much within the royal fold. Despite the intention to “prove” his innocence, his assertions became increasingly far-fetched, including a spurious Pizza Express alibi and a medical condition that prevents perspiration, to undermine the allegation that he was “dripping with sweat” after dancing.</p>
<p>The interview was met with widespread derision, and he eventually resigned from public duties for the “foreseeable future”. In July 2020, although he attended, he was not <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-andrew-princess-beatrice-wedding-edoardo-mapelli-mozzi-queen-jeffrey-epstein-a9626746.html">visible</a> in photographs of his daughter Princess Beatrice’s wedding. This suggests deliberate impression management to remove the problematic individual from official royal representations.</p>
<p>The royal family’s behaviour and media coverage of the scandal, suggest that he is viewed as a “black sheep” in the monarchy. But, as Hannah Yelin, an expert in celebrity culture and women in the public eye, and I <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539520308141">argued in recent research</a>, Andrew is far from exceptional in the long history of the royal family’s treatment of women.</p>
<p>Andrew has been consistently dismissive and complacent about the claims made against him. In the Newsnight interview, he showed neither sympathy towards Epstein’s victims nor regret for his friendship with Epstein because “the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given … were actually very useful”. His power and business deals appeared to take priority over concern for anyone Epstein may have hurt. </p>
<p>Likewise, the monarchy has been historically complacent about the patriarchal nature of the institution, and the suffering of women within it. </p>
<p>Consider Henry VIII. Representations of Henry VIII and his six wives are recounted in British history curriculums, including the beheading of two when they failed to birth a male heir. This history is devoid of any engagement with ideas of violence against women, patriarchy, misogyny or male entitlement. Rather, it is narrated as a quirk of historic custom; a fairy tale about the eccentric private lives of royalty. </p>
<p>Royal wives might not be beheaded today, but as I argue <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526158758/">in my book</a> Running the Family Firm: How the Monarchy Manages its Image and Our Money, there is still forensic interest in the contents of princesses’ wombs. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/dec/03/pregnant-kate-gossip-false-claims">Speculation</a> about whether they are pregnant begins immediately after the wedding (for royal babies should not be born out of wedlock), and there is typically a <a href="https://www.independent.ie/style/royal-baby/new-mum-kate-will-feel-the-lack-of-privacy-acutely-29440212.html">media frenzy</a> outside the hospital while journalists wait for the royal heir to be born. </p>
<p>And let’s also not forget the reports from Princess Diana and Meghan Markle about their struggles with mental health while in the monarchy. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/diana/panorama.html">Diana said</a> her bulimia was a sign she was “crying out for help”, but rather than dealing with her mental health she felt “the firm” merely dismissed it as her being “unstable”. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/harry-meghan-and-a-right-royal-battle-for-control-129715">Markle told Oprah Winfrey</a> earlier this year that she had felt suicidal, and was told by a senior official that it “wouldn’t be good for the institution” for her to seek help.</p>
<p>Just as the royal family prioritised the image management of hiding Andrew from official royal photographs over insisting on his co-operation with the investigation, it also seemingly put the appearance of the institution over Markle’s wellbeing. In both cases, it is women who are suffering.</p>
<p>Moreover, Andrew is not the only contemporary prince consorting with notorious sexual abusers. Prince Charles had a 30-year friendship with Jimmy Savile, whose OBE for “charitable services” was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/oct/09/jimmy-savile-knighthood">not revoked</a> even with Savile’s 214 confirmed sexual offences. Despite multiple public allegations before Savile died, Charles “led tributes” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/oct/29/jimmy-savile-behaviour-prince-charles">sending</a> public condolences after his death. </p>
<h2>Changing times?</h2>
<p>There have been recent shifts in the gendered history of the royal family. </p>
<p>The law of male-preference primogeniture, which prioritised male heirs to the throne, was <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/20/notes">altered in 2013</a>. While is is a welcome change, it says a lot about an institution to prioritise male inheritance well into the 21st century. </p>
<p>Accounts positioning Andrew as a <a href="https://www.newidea.com.au/prince-andrew-to-be-hidden-from-public-on-christmas-day">“black sheep”</a>, giving an otherwise respectable family a bad name, erase the structural patriarchy that upholds monarchical power. Although this is best exemplified in the recent sexual abuse accusations, it is a history spanning centuries, etched into the stories that Britain tells about itself. </p>
<p>While Andrew should undoubtedly answer to Giuffre’s claims in court, perhaps it’s also time to ask bigger questions about the ideologies of the institution that seems to be protecting him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Clancy has received funding from the ESRC and the AHRC.</span></em></p>Prince Andrew has been described as the “black sheep” of the royal family, but his alleged behaviour is part of the monarchy’s long history of dismissing women.Laura Clancy, Lecturer in Media, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1546232021-03-04T17:02:35Z2021-03-04T17:02:35ZGang rape exposes caste violence in India and the limits of Me Too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387598/original/file-20210303-20-1wgn1zt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=279%2C148%2C5211%2C3252&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People protesting the gang rape and killing of a woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, hold onto each other as policemen try to detain them in New Delhi, India, in September 2020. The gang rape of the woman from the lowest rung of India's caste system sparked outrage across the country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After details of a violent gang rape in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, were released to the public last year, protests broke out all over India. <a href="https://thewire.in/women/hathras-gang-rape-and-murder-case-a-timeline">The story of four upper-caste men brutalizing a 19-year old Dalit woman, and her subsequent death from injuries</a> sent shock waves throughout the country. It set off new conversations about violence against marginalized women in India, challenging both traditional spaces and the urban middle- to upper-class Me Too movement. </p>
<p>The Hathras case follows a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-51969961">2012 Delhi gang rape</a> that galvanized a national debate on the treatment of women. The Hathras story is a reminder of the ongoing violence Dalit women in India experience. </p>
<p>Although India’s caste system was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35650616">officially outlawed in 1950</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/@Bahujan_Power/the-dalit-bahujan-guide-to-understanding-caste-in-hindu-scripture-417db027fce6">caste-based discrimination</a> is still very much in practice. It positions Dalit women at the bottom of the social hierarchy and normalizes rape and sexual violence by upper-caste men. The Dalit community makes up about 25 per cent of India’s population. Indigenous communities (Advasis) have also been marginalized. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman carries a placard that reads 'Stop violence against women'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384892/original/file-20210217-23-127fk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C61%2C4067%2C2666&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/384892/original/file-20210217-23-127fk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384892/original/file-20210217-23-127fk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384892/original/file-20210217-23-127fk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384892/original/file-20210217-23-127fk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384892/original/file-20210217-23-127fk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/384892/original/file-20210217-23-127fk6f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester holds a placard during a demonstration against the gang rape of a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh, India, on Oct. 10, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Anupam Nath)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Despite the awareness, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/india/India994-11.htm">the levels of violence against marginalized women in India continue to rise</a>. According to the <a href="http://cdn.ipsnews.net/Library/2020/11/PDF-FILE-1-NCRB-LATEST-CRIME-DATA.pdf">National Crime Records Bureau</a> 26 per cent of reported violent cases against women are instances of men raping Dalit women. The government data reveal that at least <a href="https://www.equalitynow.org/india_caste_system_preventing_justice_nov2020">10 Dalit women and girls</a> are raped daily in India, although the figure is likely much higher as many do not report these incidents out of shame, stigma and fear of violence from the perpetrators. </p>
<h2>Systemic caste violence</h2>
<p>Even after police departments all over the country faced both international and local pressure to deal with the issue, problems with policing continue. Apart from the stigmatization and shame associated with rape, there is limited legal or social support available to women for redressing the violence. </p>
<p>In Hathras, police not only delayed registering the <a href="https://thewire.in/women/hathras-gang-rape-and-murder-case-a-timeline">first information report</a>, but also provided little support to the victim’s family. The failure and apathy to hold perpetrators accountable contributes to systemic impunity for upper-caste men who enable violence.</p>
<p>Explaining the caste system in India, social reformer <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/ambedkar/2015.71655.Annihilation-Of-Caste-With-A-Reply-To-Mhatma-Gandhi.pdf">B.R. Ambedkar</a> noted that Brahmins, or the upper caste, maintained the hierarchy by systematically excluding lower-caste Dalits. The Dalits, once called “the untouchables,” help to preserve the notion of <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/retrospectives/issues/volume4/retrospectives_iv_2015_-_sarah_gandee.pdf">upper-caste “purity” and rank</a>. </p>
<p>Ambedkar said the <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/retrospectives/issues/volume4/retrospectives_iv_2015_-_sarah_gandee.pdf">systematic internalization</a> of the caste hierarchy prevents lower-caste people from challenging the system. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.36251/josi.103">The patriarchal view</a> of upper- and lower-caste women are vastly different. Upper-caste female bodies have historically been constructed as desirable, racially pure and protected, so as to maintain caste-purity. On the other hand, lower-caste and Dalit women’s bodies are constructed as readily available and without any subjectivity. Religious customs and social norms have allowed upper-caste men to have easy access to Dalit women’s bodies. Caste-supremacy is <a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20201125013415-sqvxe/">maintained through Dalit women’s bodies</a>.</p>
<h2>Seeking intersectional feminist solidarity</h2>
<p>The Me Too movement has enabled many Indian women to forge bonds over shared experiences of sexual vulnerabilities allowing them to <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/decisn/v46y2019i2d10.1007_s40622-019-00212-x.html">hold their abusers accountable</a>. The movement has contributed towards a sense of public acknowledgement of the pervasiveness of sexual violence in India and an abuse of power in the workplace dominated by upper-caste men. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5682%2C3819&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman carries a placard which reads: punish rapists and murderers without delay." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5682%2C3819&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382381/original/file-20210204-20-57952m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester carries a placard in front of the Indian parliament in New Delhi in 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Oinam Anand)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, feminist solidarity in India will take a huge blow if women’s movements don’t acknowledge the role of caste in the perpetration of sexual violence against women. Many upper-caste women remain complicit in caste-hierarchy as it benefits them and affords them social mobility and access to <a href="https://feminisminindia.com/2020/08/05/me-too-movement-rural-india-margins/">economic benefit</a>.</p>
<p>Feminist writer and researcher <a href="https://asiatimes.com/author/sanjana-pegu/">Sanjana Pegu</a> argues that feminist activists need to move beyond the individualist narratives of sexual harassment in the workplace and at home to develop inclusive documentation of women’s experiences of sexual violence. </p>
<p>Marginalized “working class” women without access to social media have limited access to the Me Too movement, which is limited to urban women with a fair amount of social mobility. </p>
<p>Many upper-caste women have spoken about their personal experiences of violence without acknowledging how their lives have benefited from keeping Dalit women in the margins. Feminist movements in India need to collaborate on and advance the demands for justice over sexualized crimes. To do so, organizations need to develop an intersectional approach, allowing Dalit women to take the lead. Doing this work could help challenge caste bias in the legal and institutional systems. </p>
<p>Indians need to acknowledge the plight of Dalit women. The Indian government needs to start calling it what it is — caste-based gendercide — and take action now.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154623/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deeplina Banerjee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Because of its extreme violence, the Hathras rape sent shock waves throughout India: it is a disturbing reminder of the normalization of rape culture there and should be seen as a call to action.Deeplina Banerjee, PhD Student, Gender, Sexuality and Women Studies, Western UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1440872020-08-07T08:35:40Z2020-08-07T08:35:40ZHow women in academia are feeling the brunt of COVID-19<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351591/original/file-20200806-18-epd02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the productivity of women could see many leave academia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent public health response of lockdown has brought into sharp relief the constraints faced by women across the board.</p>
<p>We have been keeping a keen eye on the impact it’s having on women in academia – our field of work and research. What we’re observing, and what’s being backed up by research, is that women are facing additional constraints as a result of COVID-19. </p>
<p>These range from the added burdens and responsibilities of working from home, through to the fact that fewer women scientists are being quoted as experts on COVID-19, all the way to far fewer women being part of the cohort producing new knowledge on the pandemic.</p>
<p>None of these constraints are new. Earlier research confirms that women academics <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01294-9">carry large teaching burdens</a>, with relatively little time for <a href="https://www.thelily.com/women-academics-seem-to-be-submitting-fewer-papers-during-coronavirus-never-seen-anything-like-it-says-one-editor/">research and publication</a> compared to their male colleagues, many of whom do not carry equivalent domestic responsibilities. </p>
<p>Increased pressure on women academics caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is magnifying this fractured landscape of gender parity in academia. The impact is being felt <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-are-getting-less-research-done-than-men-during-this-coronavirus-pandemic-138073">in terms of productivity</a>. This is manifesting itself in terms of public exposure, knowledge generation and who is being called on to provide advice.</p>
<h2>Academic output</h2>
<p>An <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/women-science-are-battling-both-covid-19-and-patriarchy">article</a> in the World University Rankings points to the bias towards men experts in media coverage of COVID-19. Written by a group of women scientists, the article points out that women are advising policymakers on the outbreak, designing clinical trials, coordinating field studies and leading data collection and analysis. But, when it comes to media coverage, there is a bias towards men. While epidemiology and medicine are women dominated fields, men get quoted far more often than women about the pandemic. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/africas-research-ecosystem-needs-a-culture-of-mentoring-143030">Africa's research ecosystem needs a culture of mentoring</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A June 2020 article in the correspondence section of a leading medical journal, <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31412-4.pdf">The Lancet</a>, makes the same point. It points out that women have made up just 24% of COVID-19 experts quoted in the media and 24.3% of national task forces analysed. </p>
<p>Women’s outputs are being affected in other ways too. A <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200709121230.htm">recent article</a> in Science News shows that fewer women were first authors on articles related to COVID-19. This was especially so in the first months of the pandemic. They compared 1,893 articles published in March and April 2020 with those from 2019 in the same journals, and found that first authorship for women declined by 23%. </p>
<p>This they attribute to the <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200709121230.htm">increased demands of family life during the pandemic</a>. </p>
<p>The Guardian newspaper also reported a decrease in women’s academic outputs, with the journal Comparative Politics reporting that submissions by men <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/12/womens-research-plummets-during-lockdown-but-articles-from-men-increase">went up by 50% in April</a>.</p>
<p>The Lancet article makes the same point. </p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31412-4.pdf">data</a> from the US, the UK and Germany suggest women spend more time on pandemic-era childcare and home schooling than men do. This is particularly difficult for single-parent households, most of which are headed by women.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-personal-journey-sheds-light-on-why-there-are-so-few-black-women-in-science-91165">A personal journey sheds light on why there are so few black women in science</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Domestic constraints</h2>
<p>The article by women scientists in The Lancet makes it clear that none of the challenges are new.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Challenges women in academia face are well documented in non-pandemic
times. These challenges include male dominated institutional cultures, lack of female mentors, competing family responsibilities due to gendered domestic labour, and implicit and subconscious biases in recruitment, research allocation, outcome of peer review, and number of citations. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But, they write, COVID-19 has led to unprecedented day care, school and workplace closures exacerbating challenges.</p>
<p>For decades, women in academia and professional practice have striven to achieve work-life balance, juggling professional and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13106038_Constraints_facing_the_female_medical_practitioner_in_private_family_practice_in_the_Western_Cape">domestic responsibilities</a>.</p>
<p>Institutional support for women in terms of maternity leave, childcare facilities, lactation rooms, flexible working hours and protected research time varies across institutions in South Africa. It is <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-09-20-00-advancing-gender-equality-in-academia/">lacking in many</a>.</p>
<p>And now women are working from home, where they are also expected to take care of children and elderly parents, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/upshot/pandemic-chores-homeschooling-gender.html">do home schooling</a>, clean, cook and <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-are-getting-less-research-done-than-men-during-this-coronavirus-pandemic-138073">shop</a>.</p>
<h2>Addressing the problem</h2>
<p>This disproportionate effect on productivity of women has the potential to bleed women from academia. This will have a negative impact on the diversity that is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01294-9">critical for excellence in academia</a> and in civil society.</p>
<p>None of this is factored in to promotion criteria or performance assessments, when women in academia compete directly with their male counterparts. Consequently, women are seriously underrepresented in academic leadership, perpetuating a patriarchal institutional culture in tertiary educational institutions.</p>
<p>Some global funding agencies, among them the European and Developing Country Clinical Trial Partnerships and the National Institutes of Health, have recently started to consider constraints facing women scientists <a href="http://www.edctp.org/web/app/uploads/2019/05/EDCTP2-Work-plan-2019-web-20190527.pdf">in grant applications</a>. This effort needs to be seriously expanded. </p>
<p>This could be done via revisions to existing policies and proactive development of new policies to create optimal gender balance in research. Funders also have a responsibility to explore how institutions that financially benefit enormously from research funding via indirect costs support women scientists in academia.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-scientists-lag-in-academic-publishing-and-it-matters-82521">Women scientists lag in academic publishing, and it matters</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Scientific journals are becoming sensitive to gender balance and diversity with respect to authorship. But the requirement for gender equity in terms of participants included in research studies and authorship <a href="https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202006-589IP">must be tightened</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, conference panels and keynote speaker selection are in dire need of appropriate representation of women, especially those from the global South, whose voices are underrepresented in international academic meetings and scientific conferences. Anything less than these efforts will perpetuate pre-COVID-19 levels of gender inequity and lack of diversity. Sadly, academia will be the poorer for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keymanthri Moodley receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. She is affiliated with the Women's Forum, Stellenbosch University. All views expressed are her own. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Gouws holds a SARChI Chair in Gender Politics, funded by the NRF</span></em></p>Increased pressure on women academics caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is magnifying the fractured landscape of gender parity in academia.Keymanthri Moodley, Director, The Centre for Medical Ethics & Law, Stellenbosch UniversityAmanda Gouws, Professor of Political Science and SARChi Chair in Gender Politics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1383572020-05-17T08:49:24Z2020-05-17T08:49:24ZHow water scarcity adds to women’s burden in northern Ghana<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334512/original/file-20200512-82375-115a3ti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women spend considerable time finding water for their homes</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/melanieandjohn/72055739">John and Melanie/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by the year 2030 is considered fundamental in attaining the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956247816628435">Sustainable Development Goal 6</a>. But about <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/2/e1500323">4 billion people</a>, nearly two-thirds of the population of the world, face severe water scarcity and over 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress.</p>
<p>Water supply is not equitably distributed across the globe. In sub-Saharan Africa, about <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/water-inequality/">40%</a> of the population lacks safe drinking water.</p>
<p>Another dimension of water inequality is gender. A <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/water/wwap/">study</a> conducted in 25 sub-Saharan African countries by UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme in 2019 estimated that women spend not less than 16 million hours daily to collect drinking water, whereas their male counterparts spend 6 million hours.</p>
<p>These inequalities are evident in Ghana. About <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222514952_Water_and_sanitation_in_Ghana">38%</a> of the population lack access to potable water and there are regional <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-local-solutions-are-best-for-urban-water-supply-in-ghana-133236">disparities</a> and urban-rural dichotomies in water supply. Discussions about supply have paid little attention, though, to the disproportionate effects of water insecurity on women. </p>
<p>To fill the gap, our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13549839.2020.1744118">study</a> examined the gendered implications of sporadic water supply for livelihoods in Tatale-Sanguli District.</p>
<p>We discovered that water shortages affected both men and women in the district, but weighed more on women than men. Women and girls were found to be the primary drawers of water for household needs, because of patriarchal cultural norms. </p>
<p>Our findings should inform policy intervention through the district assembly. Interventions that diversify livelihoods could reduce the vulnerability
of women to water shortages. </p>
<h2>Water supply in the district</h2>
<p>The study was conducted in the Tatale Township and two neighbouring communities of Yachado and Kpalbutabo in the Tatale-Sanguli District of the northern region of Ghana. Subsistence agriculture is the predominant economic activity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/334517/original/file-20200512-82393-4w4ynv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Potable water is just a dream for many women in sub-Saharan Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/hancindex/10727426273">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The district experiences a short rainy season and a long and more pronounced dry season. The main sources of water supply are streams, rivers, shallow ponds, hand-dug wells, boreholes and rainwater. While water supply systems are generally inadequate, the problem worsens during the dry season, when most of the streams dry up. </p>
<p>Although technologies such as rooftop harvesting for rainwater for domestic use and agriculture exist, storage facilities are lacking. Consequently, supply is sporadic in the dry season from November to May.</p>
<h2>Who is more burdened, how and why?</h2>
<p>The population of the district is 60,039 and females constitute 50.4% of it. Most women are engaged in some form of agricultural activity. </p>
<p>Water is required for different productive activities pursued by both men and women. But the responsibility of fetching water in the study communities rests heavily on girls and older women. The strict gender roles and cultural norms in the Tatale-Sanguli District make the collection and use of water a gendered issue. </p>
<p>A male participant in Kpalbutabo put it this way:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Men don’t suffer like women when the entire household lacks water … women are more concerned about water because they take care of children. Women don’t expect their husbands to bath children or wash their clothing. It is their responsibility. So when water becomes scarce, women tend to have no peace of mind. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A combination of reproductive and productive workload makes women more susceptible to the drudgery of sporadic water supply than men. According to 65% of female participants who took part in the survey, they spent about three to four hours travelling over a long distance daily to fetch water.</p>
<p>Water shortage often creates rancour and tension at home and with neighbours at public water supply points. One woman in the study noted that when water is scarce women have less sleep and go to farm late; life generally becomes difficult for them.</p>
<p>When the water supply becomes critical, men and boys sometimes help by fetching it on bicycles, motor bikes or tricycles. Women lack these assets. Thus, disparities in access to physical assets in favour of men add to women’s burden.</p>
<p>Another aspect of gender disparities is that during menstruation, the cultural norm is that women must have a separate container of water for their own use. They have to fetch enough water for men to use before their period starts because it is a taboo for some men to drink water collected by women who are menstruating. </p>
<p>When water supply for agriculture is limited, some younger women and men move away temporarily to find different ways of earning a living, leaving older family members behind. </p>
<h2>How to relieve women’s burden</h2>
<p>To relieve the people of the Tatale-Sanguli District from the drudgery of limited water supply, we recommend that the local government and non-governmental organisations should intensify their water provision efforts in the district. They can do this by expanding systems of pipes, boreholes and hand pumps to reach communities.</p>
<p>Their efforts should recognise the gendered effects and differentiated burdens of water use. One way would be for the district assembly to aim at diversifying livelihoods.</p>
<p><em>This article was co-authored with Emmanuel Bintaayi Jeil. He holds an MPhil in Geography and Rural Development from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi-Ghana.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138357/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kabila Abass does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The study confirms that collecting water for daily use weighs more heavily on women, making life more difficult for especially older women.Kabila Abass, Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography and Rural Development, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1212862020-04-20T14:05:02Z2020-04-20T14:05:02ZPhones aren’t giving girls more power in their lives after all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/326028/original/file-20200407-110267-1tg81t5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women's agency is still mired within wider structures of patriarchy and chronic poverty</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Women_on_a_phone.jpg">Nebiyu.s/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past decade mobile phones have often been credited with the potential to improve the lives of poor people in low-income countries. Phones are seen as a tool to use in contexts like health, micro-enterprise and education. A common thread is that they should be able to improve the lives of women and girls.</p>
<p>Mobile technologies put a world of information in a woman’s hand, the reasoning goes. And with information comes the power to learn, make informed choices, connect to the broader world and earn a living. </p>
<p>GSMA, which represents mobile operators worldwide, <a href="https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/resources/the-state-of-mobile-internet-connectivity-report-2019/">reported</a> in 2019 that by the end of 2018, there were 456 million unique mobile subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa: 44% of the population. Mobile technologies and services were estimated to generate 8.6% of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP and support almost 3.5 million
jobs (directly and indirectly). But these estimates don’t shed much light on young women’s access to phones or the impact that phones have on their lives. And most of the academic studies of the subject have focused on adult women. </p>
<p>We wanted to know more about girls and women aged 9-25. These are the years when the direction of young lives is so often shaped by the presence or absence of opportunities to access social, economic and less tangible assets. We carried out our <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02681102.2019.1622500">research</a> in a variety of settings in Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. These three countries offer very diverse contexts but all feature gender inequality. South Africa ranked 113th of 159 countries on UNDP’s <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/data">2018 gender equality index</a>, Ghana 142nd and Malawi 172nd. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/child.phones/">research</a> looked at several aspects of the way young people use phones: how usage shapes their interactions with older people; livelihoods; education; and health advice. One theme emerged strongly: gender. Interviews with girls indicated that access to phones has done little to empower them. Instead, it has often reinforced existing inequalities. </p>
<p>Better understanding of the role of mobile phones in young lives is highly pertinent to addressing <a href="https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5">Sustainable Development Goal 5</a>: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. </p>
<h2>Researching phone stories</h2>
<p>We conducted research from 2012 to 2015 in 24 sites across Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. They included poor, high-density urban, peri-urban and rural locations, some with services and others remote. We conducted in-depth interviews with more than 1,600 people, and surveyed 4,500 young people – all face-to-face. We also drew on our earlier research with a smaller group of children aged nine to 18 in the same sites in 2006-2010, to learn about change over time.</p>
<p>Our surveys show dramatic <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02681102.2019.1622500">expansion</a> in ownership of phones in our study sites. For example, 0.4% of girls in Malawi had a phone in the first survey but 6.2% had a phone in the follow-up survey. In South Africa, more than half of the girls surveyed had a phone in 2015, up from less than a quarter. In most but not all categories, boys had greater to access to phones than girls did.</p>
<p>Most were still basic phones in 2013/14 though internet-enabled smartphone ownership was expanding rapidly in urban sites. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328508/original/file-20200416-192709-dof3tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328508/original/file-20200416-192709-dof3tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328508/original/file-20200416-192709-dof3tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328508/original/file-20200416-192709-dof3tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328508/original/file-20200416-192709-dof3tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328508/original/file-20200416-192709-dof3tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/328508/original/file-20200416-192709-dof3tt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A phone vendor at her shop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Yaounde_Cell_Phone_Vendor.jpg">FischerFotos/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Phone use among young girls was already starting to raise concerns among parents and teachers in 2006-2010. Many suspected that if a girl had a phone, it might have been received as payment for sex. This remained a concern in the second study. </p>
<p>We found that girls and boys regularly take their phone to school, whether the school allows this or not. Our data suggest that the educational benefits are mostly limited to calculator use and occasional information searches. There can be many negative impacts, though, including bullying. Both boys and girls reported negative impacts. But girls also frequently face propositioning from male teachers by phone. And widespread phone circulation of pornography (mostly by boys) makes many girls highly uncomfortable. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mobile-phones-are-disrupting-teaching-and-learning-in-africa-59549">How mobile phones are disrupting teaching and learning in Africa</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Phones are regularly promoted as tools for female entrepreneurship. In Ghana, in particular, we found young women entrepreneurs using phones, especially in urban areas. Direct employment of females in phone-related businesses is usually restricted to areas such as airtime sales, where competition is high. Better-resourced males are able to set up higher-value enterprises to sell, repair and charge phones. </p>
<p>The precariousness of many women’s businesses is also evident from comments about sacrifices required to “feed” the phone. Overall, our data suggest that while many women now perceive the phone as an essential tool for promoting work opportunities, it has not transformed their livelihoods. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/access-to-mobile-phones-wont-magically-fix-youth-unemployment-in-africa-88786">Access to mobile phones won't magically fix youth unemployment in Africa</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Phones, romance and sexual relationships</h2>
<p>Most young people we interviewed, in all three countries, from their early teens onwards, referred to the part that phones play in romantic and sexual relationships. Having a phone is key. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am going to have a new phone tomorrow (and then) girls will easily agree to have an affair with me (14-year-old, South Africa)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Etiquettes of calling and airtime purchase come into play. Women expect to have their communication funded so that they can respond to boyfriends’ calls. But that can put them under surveillance too. Men often feel justified in controlling phone contact lists and calls.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once they buy you things they start to think that they own you. (Woman, 24 years, South Africa). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our findings point to the importance of girls’ and women’s relationships with men in shaping whether and how they use phones and to what effect. Any expansion of female autonomy, whether through a business venture, education or a health decision, can be seen to pose a threat by husbands and boyfriends who expect total control in the relationship. </p>
<p>Use of the phone as a “digital leash” to check women’s whereabouts appears to be a growing feature of many relationships and conflicts. The phone is also used as a lure. </p>
<p>When mobile phones are socially and culturally embedded in patriarchal sexual relationships, it complicates the potential for female empowerment. Phones offer both opportunities and hazards.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121286/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gina Porter works for Durham University, UK. This paper is based on research conducted with Kate Hampshire, Durham University; Albert Abane, Augustine Tanle and Samuel Owusu, University of Cape Coast Ghana; Ariane de Lannoy, University of Cape Town; Alister Munthali and James Milner, University of Malawi; and Elsbeth Robson, University of Hull. We received funding for the research from the UK Economic and Social Research Council and UK DFID, Grant no. ES/J018082/1.</span></em></p>Phones sometimes serve as a ‘digital leash’ to check women’s whereabouts - a growing feature of many relationships and conflicts.Gina Porter, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1326082020-03-05T14:21:21Z2020-03-05T14:21:21ZSpoken word poetry challenges gender-based violence in Namibia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318326/original/file-20200303-66064-xxlpny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">namibia</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.languageisavirus.com/poetry-guide/performance_poetry.php#.Xl5gPqgzZPY">Performance poetry</a> – or spoken word poetry – has gained a foothold among young urban Namibians ever since the early 2000s. It has given a voice to many viewpoints, but perhaps the most significant impact has been on young feminists and <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/kicking-at-namibias-closet-doors-20180708-2">LGBTI</a> individuals.</p>
<p>Namibian society remains deeply patriarchal, with a <a href="https://evaw-global-database.unwomen.org/en/countries/africa/namibia">high rate</a> of gender-based violence.</p>
<p>The national <a href="https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/fr298/fr298.pdf">demographic health survey</a>, done seven years ago, stated that one in three Namibian women between the ages of 15 and 49 reported having experienced physical, sexual or emotional violence from their spouse. Only 4% of the sample reported the violence to the police. More worryingly, 20% of women and 22% of men said they believed that a husband was justified in beating his wife for reasons such as that she “burns the food” and “refuses to have sex with him”.</p>
<p>Queer women face additional challenges. Some commentators have said that homophobia appears to have abated in recent years. But LGBTI Namibians are still denied direct protection under anti-discrimination laws, and are often <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0891243209354275">not welcome</a> at government institutions.</p>
<p>Protests against <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/sexual-and-gender-based-violence.html">gender-based violence</a>, and to a lesser extent other forms of discrimination against women, have become a <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/a-specter-of-gender-based-violence-looms-over-namibia/">regular part</a> of the Namibian political scene. They often take place after an incident like the murder of an intimate partner. But concerns have been raised that little is done to keep up the <a href="https://ippr.org.na/publication/landscaping-gender-based-violence-in-namibia/">pressure for change</a>.</p>
<p>As I have shown in <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/mata/50/2/article-p444_11.xml">my research</a>, poets, especially women poets, have responded to this social context by highlighting violence and bodily autonomy as central concerns. They have placed gender-based violence in the context of a general disregard for minorities, the poor and the marginalised. They have also challenged ‘romantic’ or ‘idealised’ Western notions of womanhood and childhood.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/318357/original/file-20200303-66069-3xejkm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Namibian singing and spoken word duo Roya Diehl and Tanyaradzwa Daringo on stage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hugh Ellis/Screengrab</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Some spoken word poets of Namibia</h2>
<p>The performance poetry movement is a space in which young urban Namibians feel they can discuss ideas freely. The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/spokenwordnam/about/">Spoken Word Namibia</a> organisation was started by students and young professionals in Windhoek. Spaces like the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/openmicnightwhk/">Windhoek Open Mic Night</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/franco-namibian-cultural-centre/the-gathering/176060706328459/">The Gathering</a> have developed along a similar model. </p>
<p><a href="https://acs.r4d.org/2020/01/vital-voices-the-feminist-irene-garoes/">Irene //Garoes</a>, a human rights activist, centres the struggle for equality and for freedom from violence within her own body. In her poem <em>My Space</em> she writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are spaces we create within ourselves</p>
<p>Those deep, dark,</p>
<p>Only I know myself,</p>
<p>How to pleasure myself spaces,</p>
</blockquote>
<p>…</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And then there are spaces created by systems and institutions</p>
<p>Those ‘I didn’t give birth to a boy, girl or was it boy, leave!’ spaces</p>
<p>Those, ‘it is clearly written in the black book,</p>
<p>We are not worshipping with you in this holy house, get out!’ spaces</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Throughout the poem, the idea of a safe space for women is contrasted with the idea of the unsafe space where state, church or male power is imposed upon the body.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XsmuNMgiPAg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nesindano Namises and Christian Polloni of the group Blend perform the poem “I come from women”. Video courtesy Hugh Ellis.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work of these poets often puts discrimination and violence in a broader context of societal problems, which contrasts with governmental discourses of national progress. In <em>O.P.D.</em>, the music and poetry group Blend, composed of the poet and singer <a href="http://monochromemagazine.net/2018/03/30/what-feminism-means-to-me-with-nesindano-namises/">Nesindano Namises</a> and guitarist <a href="https://www.namibian.com.na/149158/archive-read/The-Musical-Legacy--of-Christian-Polloni">Christian Polloni</a>, calls out various social ills in Namibia. The speaker mockingly refers to her anger as a mental disorder.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>O.P.D.: Obsessive pissed-off disorder</p>
<p>That’s what I think I might have</p>
<p>Because I’m obsessively, not so orderly</p>
<p>Pissed off with so much shit in my country</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oPb-TBlnNGE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Singer Roya Diehl with poet Tanyaradzwa Daringo perform Summertime. Video courtesy Hugh Ellis.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But some poetry takes a playful turn, humorously overturning traditional ideas of ‘ideal’ womanhood. A good example of this is how the poet <a href="https://twitter.com/bytanyaradzwa">Tanyaradzwa Daringo</a> and singer Roya Diehl adapt the jazz ‘standard’ <em>Summertime</em>, originally composed by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward and perhaps best known as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. In their version, Diehl sings the original lyrics and Daringo’s spoken word poetry redefines their meaning:</p>
<p>(Diehl)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Summertime, and the livin’ is easy</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Daringo)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This unpoliticised nor uncriticised breath of love has never felt this pleasing</p>
<p>Fabricated by a place filled with so much hate and deceive</p>
<p>Naive childlike minds like mine which have no choice but to believe, you see</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Diehl)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Fish are jumping</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Daringo)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For they too realise the importance of change</p>
<p>That rejuvenated feeling when you supposedly flip a new page</p>
<p>Temporarily gauge, you don’t even realise that they have long placed them in their cage, but, but…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The song or poem also bears out the difference between the women’s experiences. Diehl is white, singing about an idealised summertime; Daringo, who is black, speaks about the realities of oppression. The connection is made specific in the following verse:</p>
<p>(Daringo)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Your summertime</p>
<p>Never met our summertime, mined and decoded into a time of slavery</p>
<p>Oppressed by our dear friend named “desperation”</p>
<p>Folks screaming “you wouldn’t even dare practise an act of bravery”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The juxtaposition of “summertimes” hints at the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/n%20no-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination">concept of intersectionality</a>, the idea that marginalised people frequently have to deal with multiple interrelated systems of oppression – sexism, racism and homophobia – at the same time. </p>
<h2>A safe space?</h2>
<p>Poetry gives voice to women’s resistance to patriarchal institutions in Namibia. This resistance has not yet fully translated into a movement that challenges the government in a political way and demands political representation. But it is highly visible in the media and can lay claim, at least indirectly, to some achievements.</p>
<p>Several poets, such as Irene //Garoes and <a href="https://twitter.com/flo8try?lang=en">Florence /Khaxas</a>, are activists in feminist organisations. The performance of poetry has also become common at feminist rallies and protests. </p>
<p>Beyond this, the spoken word poetry movement gives a safe space for women (and some men) to challenge patriarchal norms and express their experiences. </p>
<p>The challenge is for feminist poets to take their art and activism beyond urban, chiefly middle-class communities – and into a movement that can change public policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132608/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As well as being an academic based at the Namibia University of Science and Technology, Hugh Ellis is also a poet who has performed his own work at Spoken Word Namibia and Windhoek Open Mic Night events.</span></em></p>In urban Namibia, performance poetry provides a safe space for women to share their experiences and challenge traditional ideas.Hugh Ellis, Lecturer: photojournalism and digital media, Namibia University of Science and TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1280652020-02-24T13:17:50Z2020-02-24T13:17:50ZWe found a way to reduce gender bias in Malawi’s nutrition policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314705/original/file-20200211-146690-1wvnra4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ronald Jackson sells dried fish on the roadside in Mangochi, Malawi. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Aaron Ufumeli</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Policymakers often struggle to disentangle themselves from their upbringing, not least when they think about gender. For example, many policies emphasise the role of women in nutrition policies – those intended to ensure peoples’ good health through informed access to safe, healthy and adequate food – because in many societies cooking is considered to be a woman’s responsibility. By focusing on women, these policies are thought to be <a href="https://genderandenvironment.org/2015/08/stop-being-so-sensitive-the-shift-from-gender-sensitive-to-gender-responsive-action/">gender-responsive</a>. But that’s often not the case.</p>
<p>In 2016, Malawi set about renewing its nutrition policy, which had been in place since 2007. We conducted a policy dialogue to assess whether the new draft policy incorporated gender appropriately. </p>
<p>Participants in the dialogue included officials from the departments of nutrition and gender, civil society organisations, NGOs, donors and community members. We offered them a <a href="http://bit.ly/38tGSC3">methodology</a> we’d developed to reveal policymakers’ gender bias. </p>
<p>Using this analytical tool, we found that the existing policy reinforced the stereotypes of women’s roles, such as providing childcare. The policy acknowledged that men had a shared responsibility for housework and looking after children. But it suggested that men’s involvement was important only to give women more time to care for children. </p>
<p>A new policy was drawn up and accepted in 2018. We then conducted a <a href="http://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/133470/filename/133685.pdf#page=182">case study</a> of Malawi. This pulled together the findings of <a href="https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-018-1669-5">research</a> that had informed the policy making process, and showed how the policy was improved. It also offered insights into why nutrition policy doesn’t always take proper account of gender.</p>
<p>By identifying that Malawi’s initial nutrition policy overemphasised women’s roles in nutrition, which in turn perpetuated gender stereotypes, policymakers were better able to understand this bias. They could then develop gender-responsive policies which foster cooperation between men and women.</p>
<h2>Background to the dialogue</h2>
<p>The first observations we had into incorporating gender in policy in Malawi was a <a href="https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-018-1669-5">study</a> that began in 2015 that focused on men’s involvement in maternal and child nutrition. It pointed out that traditional gender roles tended to get in the way of women and children accessing the nutrition they needed. </p>
<p>But the research also found that gender dynamics were changing in the country. Some men were helping to cook, clean and look after children. This gave women more time to earn income and pursue their own interests. This was a shift from older traditional roles. </p>
<p>The study suggested that policymakers should consider men’s role in nutrition. </p>
<p>We also conducted an <a href="http://bit.ly/2XanW6M">analysis</a> of whether these changes in gender roles were reflected in Malawi’s 2007-2012 National Nutrition <a href="https://cepa.rmportal.net/Library/government-publications/National%20Nutrition%20Policy%20and%20Strategic%20Plan.pdf">Policy</a>. We wanted to know if the policy was gender-responsive, <a href="https://www.definitions.net/definition/gender-blind">gender-blind</a> or <a href="http://bit.ly/31kNOix">gender-tepid</a>. </p>
<p>This background work formed the basis of the methodology we used in the dialogue with policymakers in 2016.</p>
<p>We created an integrated <a href="http://bit.ly/38tGSC3">framework</a> for gender analysis in nutrition policy by combining two existing gender analysis tools. These were the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation gender mainstreaming in nutrition <a href="http://bit.ly/36LEYwP">framework</a> and the <a href="http://bit.ly/2K0UMSi">World Health Organisation</a> gender assessment tool. </p>
<p>We used the framework to assess Malawi’s first nutrition policy, developed in 2007. </p>
<h2>Dialogue</h2>
<p>We found that Malawi’s first nutrition policy was silent on the role of men. It didn’t challenge the idea that women are the only ones responsible for nutrition. Even in focusing on women, the policy did not consider the constraints they face in accessing nutritious food. For example, women in rural Malawi typically do not control household income and expenditure. They often can’t make independent decisions about buying food and improving the household’s nutrition.</p>
<p>But there were opportunities to get around these barriers. For example, the <a href="https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-018-1669-5#Sec11">2015 study</a> found that when men received information on nutrition during their partner’s pregnancy, they tried to ensure that their partners got the food they needed. Men took pride in making sure that their families were healthy.</p>
<p>Policymakers had not considered the changes in gender roles and responsibilities that were taking place in communities. They had missed an opportunity to use these changes to improve nutrition. </p>
<p>We concluded from our study that the policy was gender-blind. One of the reasons for this is that nutrition experts aren’t necessarily gender experts. Their upbringing also influences how they interpret gender. </p>
<h2>Informing policy</h2>
<p>Our dialogue helped policymakers analyse the draft nutrition policy and identify gaps. As a result, some changes were made to the final <a href="https://www.fantaproject.org/sites/default/files/resources/Malawi-National-Multi-Sector-Nutrition-Policy-2018-2022.pdf">policy</a> that was passed in 2018. It acknowledges that men should share responsibility in housework and childcare so that women have more time to pursue other activities.</p>
<p>This process also informed the development of Malawi’s nutrition <a href="https://www.fantaproject.org/sites/default/files/resources/Malawi-National-Nutrition-Strategic%20Plan-2018-2022.pdf">strategy</a>. The strategy highlights the important role traditional leaders play in influencing how men and women interact. It emphasises the role of traditional leaders in motivating men to participate in activities that have traditionally been performed by women.</p>
<p>Our methodology to reveal gender bias has since evolved into an <a href="http://bit.ly/38tGSC3">animated series</a> that guides policymakers, researchers and others through the process of conducting a gender analysis. </p>
<p>The journey from background research to dialogue and policymaking has been documented in our 2019 <a href="http://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/133470/filename/133685.pdf#page=182">case study</a>. </p>
<p>Our work in Malawi provides a template for other countries. It shows that nutrition policies offer opportunities for rethinking socially imposed gender roles. But the first step is to make policymakers aware of their assumptions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128065/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Mkandawire received funding from the USAID Feed the Future Food Security Policy Innovation Lab. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheryl L Hendriks receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation and USAID Feed the Future Programme. She is a member of the Malabo Montpelier Panel. </span></em></p>Nutrition policies offer the chance for us to think differently about men and women’s roles in society.Elizabeth Mkandawire, Postdoctoral Fellow and Coordinator: UN Academic Impact Hub for SDG2, University of PretoriaSheryl L Hendriks, Professor in Food Security; Director, Institute for Food, Nutrition and Well-being, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1281302020-01-15T14:09:03Z2020-01-15T14:09:03ZWhat’s behind violence in South Africa: a sociologist’s perspective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305337/original/file-20191205-39023-d6vnqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters march against gender-based violence and femicide in South Africa</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Global-Peace-Index-2018-2.pdf">2018 Global Peace Index</a> listed South Africa as one of the most violent and dangerous places on earth, and getting worse. </p>
<p>South Africa has a long history of violence. It was used as a tool of power and governance by colonialists to repress and control the indigenous people. The apartheid regime <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">from 1948</a> used violence as part of its repertoire to gain and maintain social and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/many-faces-apartheid-repression">political control</a>. </p>
<p>Such a culture of violence is hard to stop, especially when it has become a legitimised and institutionalised form of coercion. </p>
<p>South Africans are living with this legacy. </p>
<p>But, to understand the level of violence in democratic South Africa, it is useful to engage with the work of the Norwegian sociologist <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/422690?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">Johan Galtung</a>. He identified three main sources of violence: direct, structural and cultural. These provide a useful lens to understand the underlying causes of conflict that fuel violence and <a href="http://www.activeforpeace.org/no/fred/Positive_Negative_Peace.pdf">undermine positive peace</a>.</p>
<h2>Direct violence</h2>
<p>Direct violence or personal violence includes a physical or psychological component to produce hurt and harm, to the point of killing. It can occur between individuals, groups and nations and is an act of violence with a clear subject, object and action. </p>
<p>This includes war, torture, fighting, gun violence, and physical and emotional abuse. In South Africa, these acts of direct violence are reflected in the high levels of violent crime – including rape and murder as well as domestic and gang <a href="https://africacheck.org/factsheets/factsheet-south-africas-crime-statistics-for-2018-19/">violence directed at people</a>.</p>
<p>While not peculiar to South Africa, direct or personal violence is facilitated by easy access to weapons, a general climate of lawlessness, <a href="https://scientiamilitaria.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/985">high levels of violent protests</a> and corruption within the criminal justice system. Without doubt, this has contributed to the public feeling unprotected, and has increased distrust in the police, while <a href="https://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/the-terrible-consequences-of-police-corruption/">allowing crime to flourish</a>.
But such direct, visible acts do not explain the underlying causes of the violence.</p>
<h2>Structural violence</h2>
<p>Underlying direct violence is structural violence entrenched in unequal power relations embedded within society. Structural violence is defined as social and personal violence arising from unjust, repressive and oppressive political, economic, and social structures that affect people’s chances in life. </p>
<p>These structures control access to quality education, employment and health care. They affect the basic human needs of survival and welfare. In education (the most crucial, in my view), these inequalities are growing. The fact that only a few people can afford to send their children to well-resourced, fee-charging schools <a href="https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/educational-inequality-the-dark-side-of-sas-education-system-2/">widens inequalities</a>. </p>
<p>For example, the higher education participation rate is just 15.6% for black South Africans, while for Indian and white people (aged 20–24) it is <a href="https://www.news24.com/Analysis/south-africas-deficient-education-system-20180507">49.3% and 52.8%</a>. This dictates future employment. Similar discrepancies exist in access to basic health care, between those who can afford private health care, and the poor majority who depend on the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6556866/">failing public health care system</a>.</p>
<p>This indirect, silent violence affects more people than direct violence as it erodes one’s ability to gain access to goods and services necessary for survival <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-wont-become-less-violent-until-its-more-equal-103116">through legitimate means</a>.</p>
<p>It is this social and economic inequality that fuels violent crime and protest in the country. Since 2008 more than two million people have taken to the streets in protest every year as a result, a clear indication of the <a href="https://journals.assaf.org.za/sacq/article/view/3031">“rebellion of the poor”</a>. A recent example of such violent protest and the effect of widening conflict into surrounding communities is seen in the <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Companies/Mining/rio-tinto-shuts-richards-bay-mine-halts-r67bn-expansion-project-amid-violent-protests-20191204-2">decision</a> by Rio Tinto, the mining group, to shut its Richards Bay operations and freeze an expansion project.</p>
<p>Such events have been met with higher levels of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2018.1503831">direct police violence and brutality</a>.
Yet this does not provide the complete picture. Rising levels of crime and violence are linked not only to the country’s economic, social and political woes, but to other <a href="https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/norms.pdf">underlying cultural factors</a>. </p>
<h2>Cultural violence</h2>
<p>Cultural violence is symbolic violence where, for example, language, religion and ideology are used to legitimise or justify direct and structural violence. This feeds into a social culture of discrimination, racism, prejudice and sexism, which contributes to the vicious cycle of violence.</p>
<p>This is reflected in the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-05-24-rape-culture-is-a-product-of-systemic-and-institutionalised-patriarchy/">high levels of sexual violence</a> and systemic institutionalised patriarchy that foster the <a href="https://www.sahrc.org.za/home/21/files/RESEARCH%20BRIEF%20ON%20GENDER%20AND%20EQUALITY%20IN%20SOUTH%20AFRICA%202013%20to%202017.pdf">culture of violence against women</a>.</p>
<p>Cultural violence is strongly influenced by prevailing attitudes, beliefs and messages that surround people in everyday life. A culture has developed in the country where direct violence is seen as the most effective means to respond to conflict. </p>
<p>A discourse has emerged that glorifies the use of violence, through war narratives, by some political leaders who use military values, symbols and rhetoric to mobilise and <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/is-mob-violence-out-of-control-in-south-africa">gain support</a>. This perpetuates militarism as an ideology that embraces social practices that regard the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320718313454">use of violence as normal and desirable</a>. One can see this <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-shining-the-light-on-police-militarisation-and-brutality-in-south-africa-44162">within the police</a>.</p>
<h2>Turning the tide</h2>
<p>The challenge is how to turn the situation around, as all three forms of violence are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. Seeking to suppress violent crime in South Africa through the threat of direct violence by the state, such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-army-is-being-used-to-fight-cape-towns-gangs-why-its-a-bad-idea-120455">deploying the army to combat gangsterism</a> in the Western Cape, is not the solution. </p>
<p>It reinforces the notion that violence is to be met with violence, without addressing the deeper underlying structural and cultural issues that perpetuate conflict. </p>
<p>Addressing structural and cultural violence is a lot more difficult than addressing direct violence, but lies at the root of the violence experienced in South Africa. Failure to do so may lead to even more severe levels of violence that could potentially destabilise the state, putting the safety and security of people in even greater jeopardy. Sadly, the country continues to focus on direct violence instead of addressing the causes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindy Heinecken does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Underlying direct or personal violence is structural violence that is entrenched in unequal power relations in society.Lindy Heinecken, Chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1276312019-12-05T14:49:39Z2019-12-05T14:49:39ZMethodist Church Southern Africa enters new era as women take up top positions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305348/original/file-20191205-39023-1lvud7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Purity Malinga, the new Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Reverend Purity Malinga has just become the 100th Presiding Bishop to be elected by the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. She is the first woman in the church’s 200-year history to be elected to this position. As Rev Jennifer Samdaan, a prominent female minister in the church, <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-11-18-rev-purity-malinga-inducted-as-first-female-bishop-of-methodist-church-of-southern-africa/">points out</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There had been 99 men before her. For her to be chosen to lead us is wonderful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Rev Madika Sibeko <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-11-18-rev-purity-malinga-inducted-as-first-female-bishop-of-methodist-church-of-southern-africa/">noted</a> in isiXhosa: <em>“zajiki’izinto”</em> (things are changing). Indeed, things are changing in the Methodist church. </p>
<p>The Methodist church is South Africa’s <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/hts/v73n2/01.pdf">largest</a> “mainline” Christian denomination, with its roots in the <a href="https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Wesleyan+revival">18th century Wesleyan revival</a>. Methodism quickly spread throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia and to Africa. In part this was because of the zeal of missionary societies, but also because of the spread of the British empire.</p>
<p>The Methodist Church of Southern Africa became an independent church in 1889. It is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in South Africa and has a predominantly black African membership.</p>
<p>Having a woman elected as the presiding bishop is of great significance to the denomination and the region. In this role Bishop Malinga will be the church’s most senior leader, with responsibility to guide the regional bishops and the ministry and mission of the church in the six southern African countries. These are South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Eswatini and Botswana. Her personality and inclusive style of leadership are likely to bring some important changes to the culture and identity of southern African Methodism. </p>
<p>She previously served as the first (and only) woman bishop of a regional synod, the Natal Coastal District (until 2008). She is a widely respected minister who first qualified as a teacher before entering the ministry and completing her theological studies at Harvard University in the US.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305218/original/file-20191204-70133-1p89vpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Methodist Church of Southern Africa has a history of challenging tradition, and being at the forefront of working for justice and the rights of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14769948.2018.1554328">oppressed people</a>. Among the other notable southern Africans who were Methodists are Nobel laureate <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/14102">Nelson Mandela</a>, the first democratically elected president of South Africa, as well as <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2008-02-27-a-man-of-god-to-the-end/">Robert Sobukwe</a>, the respected Africanist. Another prominent Methodist is <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/graca-simbine-machel">Graça Machel</a>, the Mozambican and South African women’s rights campaigner. </p>
<p>Bishop Malinga’s induction heralds a new era in southern African Methodism, and indeed church leadership in the region. Her election as the first woman to the post coincided with three other women being elected as regional bishops in the six countries that the church serves. These women are Bishop Yvette Moses (Cape of Good Hope District), Bishop Faith Whitby (Central District, the largest district, covering parts of the Gauteng and North West provinces), and Bishop Charmaine Morgan (Namibia). </p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>Methodism first landed on South African shores in 1795 cloaked in the guise of colonialism and the empire. This date was just four years after the death of <a href="http://www.trentonunitedmethodistchurch.org/Wesley%20and%20Methodism.html">John Wesley</a>, the founder of the movement. This makes the Methodist Church of Southern Africa one of the oldest Methodist or Wesleyan churches in the world. </p>
<p>The first record of a Methodist in the region was in the Christian Magazine and Evangelical Repository (1802). The article tells of a British soldier named John Irwin who had been stationed at the Cape of Good Hope from 1795 to protect colonial interests in the region. It records that he hired a small room and began to hold prayer meetings and services. </p>
<p>The formal mission of the church began in 1816 under the leadership of Rev Barnabas Shaw. The Methodists of the Cape were entwined in colonialism, as were most missionary movements that emanated from Britain at the time. Nevertheless, they sought to minister not just to the colonisers, but to the indigenous people living in the area and to slaves. </p>
<p>This got them into trouble with the British colonial authorities. An example was the refusal by the governor of the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset, to let Rev Shaw establish a congregation at the Cape.</p>
<p>So began a history of civil disobedience. Rev Shaw’s response to <a href="https://cmm.org.za/missionaries-and-martyrs/">Somerset’s refusal was blistering</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Having received this answer I therefore left His Excellency and determined to commence preaching without it. My resolution is also fixed never again to ask any mere man’s permission to preach the glorious Gospel.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Methodist Church continued to show <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/4511">great courage</a> in addressing social, political and structural injustice. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/305347/original/file-20191205-38988-m6fkez.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bishop Purity Malinga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The church also failed in many instances. And there was often a gap between the ordinary members and local congregations, and the more progressive aims of the denomination’s leadership.</p>
<h2>New era</h2>
<p>It’s fair to ask why it’s taken almost 200 years for women to be elected to leadership positions in the church.</p>
<p>The most obvious reason is that Christianity in general remains a <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=n9_VqCYug5wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=men+in+the+pulpit+women+in+the+pew&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi42LfphIjmAhWSgVwKHaabBeQQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=men%20in%20the%20pulpit%20women%20in%20the%20pew&f=false">patriarchal religion</a>. The Methodist Church of Southern Africa is no different: men dominate the leadership and formal structures at almost every level.</p>
<p>The church first allowed women ordination 43 years ago. By 2016 only 17% of the clergy were women, only 4% of regional leaders (circuit superintendents) were women, and there were <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1017-04992016000100013">no women bishops</a>. </p>
<p>Some ascribe this to <a href="http://www.dionforster.com/blog/2019/6/14/worthy-women-sexual-bargaining-for-a-place-in-utopia-or-dyst.html">religious patriarchy</a>, and others to the dominance of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4066604#metadata_info_tab_contents">patriarchy in African cultures</a> of the region. There have been women in senior leadership roles in other regions of the world where Methodism is present, such as the United Kingdom and the United States. However, in many contexts, such as Africa and parts of Latin America, the denomination has been less progressive in recognising and appointing women to senior leadership.</p>
<p>In her address to the 130th annual conference of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa at which her election was confirmed, Rev Malinga echoed the words of <a href="https://methodist.org.za/download/presiding-bishop-elect-rev-purity-malingas-address-to-conference-2019/">Oliver Tambo</a>, the late anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress in exile, who said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No country can boast of being free unless its women are free. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her election, and those of Moses, Morgan and Whitby, bring South Africa a step closer to reaching that true freedom. </p>
<p><em>The article was updated to remove incorrect reference to Chief Albert Luthuli as having been a Methodist. Although he did study and teach at a Methodist institution, he was never a member of the church.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dion Forster is an ordained minister of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.</span></em></p>Bishop Purity Malinga is the first woman to be appointed Presiding Bishop in the Methodist Church of Southern African in over 200 years.Dion Forster, Head of Department, Systematic Theology and Ecclesiology, Professor in Ethics and Public Theology, Director of the Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1272452019-11-19T14:33:57Z2019-11-19T14:33:57ZResearch finds South African men spend childcare grants wisely<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302387/original/file-20191119-111655-unl1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>As is true in other countries, the makeup of South Africa’s families is diverse. The “nuclear” family (two biological parents and their children) has become an outdated framework in which to view the composition of households.</p>
<p>That’s why all caregivers, no matter their age and gender, are entitled to receive the country’s <a href="https://www.gov.za/services/child-care-social-benefits/child-support-grant">child support grant</a>, to provide for the children in their care. More than 12 million child support grants are <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/National%20Budget/2019/enebooklets/Vote%2017%20Social%20Development.pdf">disbursed every month</a>.</p>
<p>The design of South Africa’s grant highlights the fact that looking after children is not for women only. When initiated in the late 1990s, this was unusual: peer countries that were also expanding their child-centred social assistance at the time, like Brazil and Mexico, explicitly stated a preference for mothers as beneficiaries of the grants. They <a href="https://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/eng/PRB55EN_Bolsa_Familia_gender_relation.pdf">still do so</a>.</p>
<p>While the South African grant is progressive in its gender-neutrality, only 2% of those who collect the child grant are men. This reflects widespread father absence and the fact that South African women continue to bear overwhelming responsibility for the care of children. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/uj:32390?site_name=GlobalView">PhD study</a> is a first attempt at knowing more about the minority of men who receive the child support grant.</p>
<h2>The study</h2>
<p>The study mined insight from analyses of both the <a href="https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/NIDS/about">National Income Dynamics Study</a> – a nationally representative household survey that tracks people over time – and interviews held with men who receive the grant in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto">Soweto</a>, the sprawling black urban settlement southwest of Johannesburg. </p>
<p>The survey analysis debunks the myth that men are more likely to spend the money on alcohol, tobacco and gambling. Their children are also not more likely to be malnourished. These findings are important because, around the world, grants are <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/617631468001808739/pdf/WPS6886.pdf">explicitly targeted at women</a>. Or, in South Africa’s case, male uptake is not encouraged despite equal eligibility. This is frequently justified on the grounds that men are less responsible, less capable, or more self-oriented parents than women.</p>
<p>But this simply reflects traditional and artificial ideas about the gendered division of labour within the household: women are often regarded as naturally more altruistic and caring, and therefore best suited to childcare.</p>
<p>Men, on the other hand, are considered to be more competitive, and more suited to the cut and thrust of the world of work and politics. These ideas are frequently invoked to justify an unequal status quo where women are expected to sacrifice time and resources to childcare when men don’t have to.</p>
<h2>The views of men</h2>
<p>In-depth conversations with 13 men revealed that they all believed that taking responsibility for one’s children, and being involved in their lives, was an important part of what constitutes being a man and a father. In most instances, this was the first idea expressed in response to questions about the kind of fathers they saw themselves as.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, half the men in the survey held onto the idea that women are primarily responsible for raising children, and that the work they were doing is “feminine”. These men were raising children because they believed they have no other option. In addition, raising children was embarrassing for some, who had isolated themselves from their male friends. Some had made peace with being caregivers by recasting their work as “masculine”: a person who takes responsibility and rises to challenges.</p>
<h2>How money is spent</h2>
<p>The men we interviewed said the spending of the child support grant money was linked to the child’s needs. Questions about how the grant was used were almost always followed by a detailed description of spending on food and schooling, and how the grant was a useful income supplement to defray these substantial costs.</p>
<p>This suggested that the men were using the grant for its intended purposes. This echoes the findings of multiple studies <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/PSPPD%20Family%20contexts%20full%20report_Patel_single%20web%20pages.pdf">that have shown that this is what women do</a>.</p>
<p>While we cannot rule out bias in the responses, some factors mitigate against
it. One was the level of detail with which most of the men talked about care work. They provided detailed descriptions and schedules relating to cooking, cleaning, and ironing, along with discussions of what is difficult and what’s not. </p>
<p>Another factor was the consistent linking of care work with the responsibility and perseverance that are universally regarded as the central components of being a good man and father. Finally, the statistical findings - which indicated that there isn’t a tendency for male grant recipients at the national level to misspend household income - provided a source with which we could triangulate the findings from the interviews in Soweto.</p>
<h2>Food for thought for policy makers</h2>
<p>The rationale for focusing on men receiving the child support grant was that the roles of men in child-centred social assistance are under-studied. </p>
<p>The evidence shows that men are capable of parenting and wouldn’t necessarily spend the grant money any differently than women would. This suggests that more men should be motivated to claim the grant and to enact associated caregiving roles. This could relieve women’s burden of childcare. </p>
<p>In addition, this study highlighted that men needn’t be bound by the damaging norms and beliefs they would have grown up with. In particular circumstances, men can reconstruct their notions of gender and care because of their own experiences, and because of their perceptions of what their children need. This points to the flexibility of what are often assumed to be rigid gender norms, and to the possibilities for men to reformulate and redefine for themselves what masculinity and fatherhood means and how they should enact it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127245/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The PhD study which is the basis of this article was supervised by Professor Leila Patel. It was funded by the DST/NRF South African Research Chair in Welfare and Social Development, the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Europe - South-Africa Partnership for Human Development (EUROSA).</span></em></p>The South African child support grant is progressive in its gender-neutrality, yet men make up only 2% of those who collect it.Zoheb Khan, Researcher, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1232852019-09-18T13:41:46Z2019-09-18T13:41:46ZMalawi study highlights the importance of men in childcare and nutrition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/292204/original/file-20190912-190050-159bra5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman and baby on a bicycle taxi in Salima, Malawi. Some Malawian men are becoming more involved in childcare. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Malawi, as in many other societies, women have historically been responsible for housework, food and childcare. Women’s household responsibilities have often left them with heavier workloads than men. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.nsomalawi.mw/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=209&Itemid=97">report</a> showed that the time Malawian women spent caring for children was six times higher than men. The women’s multiple roles and responsibilities typically prevented them from participating in activities to earn income. </p>
<p>Past <a href="http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll2/id/127110">studies</a> have also shown that women spend more of their income on food and children’s education than men do. </p>
<p>But times are changing. Malawian men are increasingly becoming involved in maternal and child health as well as household chores such as growing, buying and preparing food.</p>
<p>Other <a href="https://reproductive-health-journal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4755-8-36">studies</a> show that changes in the role of men in mother and child health are gaining momentum, particularly with increased government efforts in the country’s northern and central regions. Many of these changes are driven by health sector policies.</p>
<p>Walking into a local clinic in Malawi, you will likely find posters with images calling on men to take a more active role in housework and children’s and mother’s health. Such messages have become a common feature, attesting to changing times in the country. </p>
<p>Our study of one community in rural central Malawi set out to investigate how interventions by NGOs, the Ministry of Health and traditional leaders – which aim to involve men in mother and child health – are changing the role of men in growing, cooking and buying food for the household.</p>
<p>As the custodians of culture, traditional leaders in Malawi have been central to influencing changes in household roles and responsibilities. They play an important role in assisting in policy implementation in the areas they oversee.</p>
<p>Our study began by reviewing international as well as Malawian policy documents to understand how men’s participation in mother and child health emerged. We conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with both men and women, as well as with policymakers.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221623">findings</a> show that some men are becoming more involved in looking for food and cooking. They are also helping women with other chores, including cleaning and caring for children.</p>
<p>What has led to this change?</p>
<h2>Findings</h2>
<p>We found that while not all men are willing to become involved in women’s and children’s health, there are specific situations that force them to take on “women’s work”. For example, regulations passed by clinics and traditional leaders encourage women to stay at <a href="https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/maternal_perinatal_health/MSM_96_21/en/">maternity waiting homes</a> from their eighth month of pregnancy.</p>
<p>These maternity waiting places are located close to the hospital to prevent women travelling long distances when they are in labour. The waiting homes have played a central role in reducing mother and child deaths.</p>
<p>But women who stay at these facilities frequently leave other children at home, forcing men to take responsibility for cooking, cleaning and looking after children. Such interventions are unravelling the typical roles men and women are expected to play.</p>
<p>Along with <a href="http://menengage.org/regions/africa/malawi/">messages</a> from the government and NGOs on gender equality, these interventions are helping undo traditional beliefs about the roles men and women play. </p>
<p>Men who accompany their spouses to antenatal visits are provided with information on the importance of helping women with housework when they are pregnant. As a result, more men are now actively helping women to grow, prepare and buy food.</p>
<p>These interventions are increasing cooperation between men and women, which is important for building well-functioning families.</p>
<p>Besides participating in general housework, men also take children to the hospital and attend antenatal visits with their partners. Thus, men and women in the community work together to make sure that their families are healthy and have food. One woman said,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We work together with our husbands in order to make ends meet. If we see that the food, we have harvested is not enough, we make decisions together with our husbands to say that we should buy some food to top up.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Positive changes</h2>
<p>A new understanding of the concept of gender equity is emerging in this community. Gender equality is understood as men and women working together, as opposed to the common misconception that gender initiatives target only women.</p>
<p>Although the men are becoming involved in “women’s work”, when women are pregnant, these changes offer opportunities for policymakers to harness the potential of men in meeting the food needs of the household, and addressing gender equality at the same time.</p>
<p>Although other <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/a-i2050e.pdf">studies</a> have suggested that women play a central role in food and nutrition, both women and men in our study felt that it was also men’s responsibility to look for food. In many ways this resonates with the traditional hunter role of men. So food, nutrition and agriculture policies that pay attention only to women overlook the important role men can play in promoting their families’ well-being.</p>
<p>Interventions implemented in Malawi’s health sector are creating positive changes in the way in which men and women interact. Agriculture, food security and nutrition policies need to leverage these changes to increase the capacities of men and women to work together in ensuring that their families have access to food.</p>
<p>The important role men play in food and nutrition has long been neglected. Harnessing the complementary role of men could improve food security and gender equality at the same time. This is particularly important as <a href="https://www.unicef.org/media/55921/file/SOFI-2019-full-report.pdf">hunger</a> increases globally.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Mkandawire receives funding from the USAID Feed the Future Programme. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheryl L Hendriks receives funding from the USAID Feed the Future Programme. She is affiliated with the Malabo Montpelier Panel. </span></em></p>While not all men are willing to become involved in women and children’s health, some situations force them take on ‘women’s work’.Elizabeth Mkandawire, Postdoctoral Fellow and Coordinator: UN Academic Impact Hub for SDG2, University of PretoriaSheryl L Hendriks, Professor in Food Security; Director, Institute for Food, Nutrition and Well-being, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1162062019-05-02T14:32:41Z2019-05-02T14:32:41ZBreast ironing: a harmful practice that doesn’t get sufficient attention<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272193/original/file-20190502-103045-lqz7eq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mothers iron their daughters' breasts as a way of preventing early marriage and keeping their daughters in school for longer. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent news reports in the UK of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/mar/04/breast-ironing-victims-urge-stronger-action-to-root-out-dangerous-custom">breast ironing</a> portray yet more ways in which culture causes harm to young girls. The reports followed renewed calls for stronger action against the <a href="https://fic.tufts.edu/assets/Understanding-breast-flattening.pdf">practice</a>, which is observed to prevent the development of a girl’s breasts and subsequently reduce the sexual attention she may receive. It involves using an object to massage, pound, or press the breasts flat. </p>
<p>Breast ironing is <a href="https://fic.tufts.edu/assets/Understanding-breast-flattening.pdf">common</a> in West and Central Africa, including Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Togo, Benin, Guinea-Conakry, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya and Zimbabwe. It’s particularly prevalent in <a href="https://www.athensjournals.gr/health/2016-3-4-5-Vitalis-Pemunta.pdf">Cameroon</a>: there, the number of girls who have been subjected to breast ironing is estimated be as high as one in three (around 1.3 million). </p>
<p>According to the United Nations, <a href="https://www.athensjournals.gr/health/2016-3-4-5-Vitalis-Pemunta.pdf">3.8 million teenagers</a> worldwide have been affected by breast flattening. It’s estimated that about <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/71429/what-is-breast-ironing-and-how-common-is-it-in-britain">1 000 girls</a> from West African communities across the UK have been subjected to the practice, but the figure could be much higher. </p>
<p>While reports on the horrors of female genital mutilation, forced marriage and so-called honour killings are common, people are perhaps less aware of the practice where young girls, as puberty sets in, have their breasts ironed flat. </p>
<p>I have established this during 15 years of research into “<a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/isbn/9781472428882">harmful cultural</a> practices” around the world. The practice mirrors ugly misogynistic beliefs and values that underpin other abusive practices. It is ultimately reflective of a power dynamic that demands female submissiveness and complete control over the sexuality of women and girls. </p>
<h2>The socialisation of young girls</h2>
<p>Breast ironing has been an embedded part of the socialisation of young girls from affected communities for quite some time. The medical consequences can be severe. The practice can include the use of grinding stones, spatulas, brooms and belts to tie or bind the breasts flat. Sometimes leaves which are believed to have medicinal or healing qualities are used, as well as plantain peels, hot stones and electric irons. </p>
<p>The practice is usually carried out by mothers, shamans and healers. Some midwives perform the practice. This makes it a source of income, in a way that’s similar to <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1464993416674299">female genital mutilation</a>. </p>
<p>The growth of a girl’s breasts during puberty is seen as linked to the emergence of her sexuality; if left unchecked, this will bring “problematic” and “destructive” implications for family and community <a href="https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/women-violence-and-tradition-taking-fgm-and-other-practices-to-a-secular-state(cfa5fe44-a87c-4593-980e-69cbe830c159).html">status quo</a> (patriarchy). </p>
<p>However, this gendered reading of the practice is further complicated by <a href="https://fic.tufts.edu/assets/Understanding-breast-flattening.pdf">research</a> that suggests mothers begin ironing the breasts of their daughters as a way of trying to prevent early marriage and keep daughters in school for longer. </p>
<p>In other words, if a girl’s breasts can be held back from developing they will not be <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-47695169">viewed</a> as ready for marriage and childbirth and so will be free to continue with their education for longer. </p>
<p>Understanding the <a href="http://news.trust.org//item/20131205132047-15osx/">drivers</a> behind the practice is obviously critical if routes to change are going to be identified. Clearly breast ironing is not the answer to child marriage. But in contexts where there are few choices, it seems to offer some mothers the only viable way of giving their daughters a little longer to become educated enough to have options.</p>
<h2>A global problem</h2>
<p>Female genital mutilation and breast ironing needs to be situated within a broader ideology that sees female sexuality as shameful and something to be hidden and denied. </p>
<p>Globally, there are efforts to reverse this mindset. UK Aid, for example, funds a social movement called <a href="https://www.thegirlgeneration.org/">The Girls Generation</a> which works throughout Africa to reverse the social norms underpinning female genital mutilation. </p>
<p>The replacement of harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and breast ironing with other new rituals that celebrate the female body will hopefully, in time, help reverse these negative views. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-target-resources-in-efforts-to-end-female-genital-mutilation-109805">How to target resources in efforts to end female genital mutilation</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Unravelling the prevalence of this practice and the reasons behind it will not be helped by <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/71429/what-is-breast-ironing-and-how-common-is-it-in-britain">news reporting</a> – as happened in the UK – that depicts breast ironing as evidence of yet more horrors harboured by “other cultures”. </p>
<p>The focus needs to be on the underlying structural inequalities that continue to devalue the bodies of women and girls. This is a global problem and not something unique to specific parts of the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116206/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tamsin Bradley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Close to 4 million teenage girls are subjected to breast ironing worldwide. This harmful cultural practice, which is most prevalent in West and Central Africa, needs to stop.Tamsin Bradley, Professor of International Development Studies, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1099712019-01-16T15:25:55Z2019-01-16T15:25:55ZColette: writer, feminist, performer and #MeToo trail blazer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254145/original/file-20190116-163274-16lew65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C371%2C378&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colette, photographed by Henri Manuel.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The French writer Colette was indifferent and even hostile to the feminist movement in the early 1900s. But both her writing and the way she lived her life represent a vibrant and radical feminism in tune with the #MeToo spirit of today.</p>
<p>Born in rural Burgundy in 1873, Sidonie Gabrielle Colette (the abbreviated pen name came later) belonged to a middle class but unorthodox family. Raised by a mother who was as sceptical of religion as she was of bourgeois respectability, she was 20 when she married Henri Gauthiers-Villars (“Willy”), the 33-year-old charming but dissolute writer son of a family friend. </p>
<p>The marriage was both a good and a bad move for Colette. Willy introduced her to the rich Bohemian culture of the Parisian demimonde, and launched her career by insisting (despite her reluctance) that she write down memories of her schooldays. </p>
<p>But his serial infidelities distressed and depressed her. And as an unscrupulous literary entrepreneur, Willy cheerfully sold his wife’s semi-autobiographical <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Claudine-School-Paris-Married/dp/0374528039">“Claudine” novels</a> under his own name. </p>
<p>The stories of a spirited, tomboyish heroine rapidly became a <a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781786941565/">publishing sensation</a>, with profitable sales of related merchandise including Claudine cigarette holders. But the profits were all Willy’s. </p>
<p>When, in her early 30s, Colette decided to leave the marriage, she had to find a way to support herself. Energetic and resourceful, she began to publish under her own name and took classes in dance and mime. She trained in the gym and went on stage, becoming the only great French author (to my knowledge) to have alternated writing with dancing semi-nude on stages all over France. </p>
<p>She combined her careers, writing both fiction and non-fiction set behind the scenes of the music hall, giving a voice to the underpaid women performers who featured so often from a male perspective in paintings and novels of the time. She also began a passionate affair with a cross-dressing lesbian aristocrat, Missy, and scandalised the nation by sharing a passionate kiss with her on stage. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254095/original/file-20190116-163283-j1tj8i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/254095/original/file-20190116-163283-j1tj8i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254095/original/file-20190116-163283-j1tj8i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254095/original/file-20190116-163283-j1tj8i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254095/original/file-20190116-163283-j1tj8i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254095/original/file-20190116-163283-j1tj8i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/254095/original/file-20190116-163283-j1tj8i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In the 1907 pantomime which included a kiss with a woman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5437928/">Wash Westmoreland’s recent film</a> about Colette takes us to this point in her colourful career. She would go on to write prolifically as a journalist, novelist, essayist and innovator in the blended genre of “autofiction”. </p>
<p>She would nurse in World War I, marry twice more, bear a daughter at the age of 40, bolster her flagging finances by opening a beauty parlour – and finally become, for the French, “our great Colette”. But a whiff of scandal was still attached to her name, and acceptance of her as a great writer was slow. </p>
<p>The Catholic Church even refused to grant her a religious funeral (although she would have agreed with the Church, for religion formed no part of her passionate love of life.)</p>
<h2>Sex and sensuality</h2>
<p>Westmoreland’s film, starring the British actor Keira Knightley, shines a deserved spotlight on an important feminist figure. From the Claudine series on, Colette gives us a serenely irreverent perspective on a patriarchal culture. </p>
<p>She reverses the gaze of heterosexual desire to provide sensual, detailed descriptions of male bodies, and writes with equal sensuality and precision of same-sex desire. She writes movingly of romantic love and motherhood but insists, in her novel <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/BREAK-DAY-Sidonie-Gabrielle-Colette/dp/0374528322">Break of Day</a> that both are also peripheral to a woman’s life:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once we’ve left them both behind, we find that all the rest is gay and varied, and that there is plenty of it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In life, as in writing, she places female friendship centre-stage, sometimes subverting the eternal triangle by making its primary focus the relationship between a man’s wife and his mistress. She often published in women’s magazines, right up to her death in 1954 (Elle serialised her final books), and wrote comically and caustically of trying to make her own robust, food-loving body fit into the willowy fashions of the inter-war years. </p>
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<p>In a very public life, as in her fiction, she exemplified financial and social independence and shame-free sexuality – what we would now call “gender fluidity”. She possessed a generous optimism that went against the grain of the angst and despondency which characterised so much male literature of the 20th century.</p>
<p>She remained, throughout, a popular writer. An author read for pleasure, for the sensuality of her prose, the dry note of humour that peppers her eloquence, the lightness of touch that means her seriousness is never heavy or self-important. </p>
<p>One of France’s greatest – and certainly most unconventional – writers, she has been translated – often brilliantly – into other languages. Her appearance on cinema screens should bring her even more readers.</p>
<p>
<section class="inline-content">
<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249588/original/file-20181210-76968-jfryp4.png?h=128">
<div>
<header>Diana Holmes is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/43097/">Middlebrow Matters: Women’s reading and the literary canon in France since the Belle Époque</a></p>
<footer>Liverpool University Press provides funding as a content partner of The Conversation UK</footer>
</div>
</section>
</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109971/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Holmes is affiliated with the UK Labour Party (as a member).
Diana Holmes received a LEVERHULME Fellowship grant in 1999-2000 to work on a book on the author Rachilde, and has received British Academy Small Grants for conferences /workshops on French literature, cinema, popular culture.</span></em></p>The French writer’s work and life make perfect cinematic subjects.Diana Holmes, Professor of French, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/944562018-04-22T09:53:59Z2018-04-22T09:53:59ZHow Rwandan girls with disabilities are fighting sexism at school<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213546/original/file-20180406-125155-1t5u4f7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rwanda needs to push its pledge to remove all obstacles against women’s development.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Adam Cohn</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the 1994 genocide against Tutsi, Rwanda has made considerable progress towards gender equality, now <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/how-rwanda-beats-almost-every-other-country-in-gender-equality/">ranking</a> fifth in the world on the Global Gender Gap Index. </p>
<p>It pursued sociopolitical reforms that favour disadvantaged groups. For example, constitutional <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/ELECTRONIC/94009/110188/F-1576743982/RWA-94009.pdf">reforms</a> now mean women and people with disabilities are guaranteed membership in the national parliament. Other initiatives include giving disadvantaged young people access to nine years free education under and the “Nine Year-Basic Education” <a href="https://www.thecommonwealth-educationhub.net/goodpractice/nine-year-basic-education-fast-track-strategies/">programme</a>. </p>
<p>Despite these steps towards inclusion, girls with disabilities, who already grapple with social structures that put them at a disadvantage, continue to struggle against male domination in schools.</p>
<p>As described by Joy, a student at one school:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Boys seem to openly dominate in all class discussions and responses…(It’s common to see them) ridicule girls who make simple mistakes…They use (sayings) such as “she is a girl after all” or, when she is assertive in her responses, “she is a man”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the girls are fighting back. We discovered this in research that we did that involved 51 in-depth interviews with disabled Rwandan pupils and community stakeholders, </p>
<p>We investigated how disadvantaged girls with disabilities resist and challenge male domination in Rwanda’s oldest and largest public school, <a href="http://www.gatagara.org/what.html">Gatagara School</a>. The school caters for students with disabilities, initially starting as a rehabilitation centre in 1962 and opening its doors to children with various disabilities in 1973. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13603116.2018.1433725">research shows</a> that girls resist male domination by either directly and assertively confronting it, or by using more subtle tactics. In doing so, they challenge domination and stereotypes and affirm their capacity for leadership in a male-dominated setting. </p>
<h2>Resistance strategies</h2>
<p>The girls use two distinct resistance strategies: assertive resistance and subversive resistance. </p>
<p><strong>Assertive Resistance</strong></p>
<p>This includes challenging boys, pursuing and holding prominent school leadership roles and advocating for the recruitment of more female teachers and support staff. </p>
<p>For instance Ruth, a 20-year-old 11th grader, asserts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I know that boys and girls with disabilities have to struggle in our society, but we are not in the same position in school…I’m not afraid to challenge boys in class. I know I am as smart – and may be more. I want us to have a better life, a better time in school…it’s hard enough being a girl in Rwanda, and even harder to be a poor girl with disabilities…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rene, an 18 year-old in grade 10, emphasises the importance of more equitable gender relations among people with disabilities. She posits that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(G)irls with disabilities, can do even better and contribute even more to our country if we are enabled to excel in school and not feel pitied or put down because we are girls with disabilities. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Subversive Resistance</strong></p>
<p>Those who practice assertive resistance openly criticise sexism in the school. Subversive resistance, on the other hand, is more subtle. In this strategy the girls allow for periods of prejudice, with the view of eventually reversing it. </p>
<p>For example 25 year-old Peace, who recognises the influence of patriarchy in prescribing “good girl” behaviour, argues that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are more boys with disabilities here at Gatagara than girls with disabilities…we don’t have many female teachers to support us. That is why it is difficult for me…I can play by their rules until I am in charge and can change the rules…I am going to be a scientist…When I am in power, boys will not be able to treat me or any other girl with disabilities in a bad way. I will use my power…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Peace’s short-term compliance – being polite, kind, calm and amenable – can be interpreted as a survival strategy in a male-dominated society given that acting otherwise might be seen as subversive in a male-dominated society such as Rwanda. </p>
<p>Jeanette, a 23 year-old grade 11 student, justifies this restrained resistance on a different note. She says that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>one has to know what her goal is to win the battle…I want power for the future…when I can really get boys to change their ways….</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Unified policy approaches</h2>
<p>While the paper points to a significant disconnect between Rwanda’s international reputation for gender equality and lived realities on the ground, the girls’ experiences provide valuable insights into compounded inequalities. </p>
<p>Their experiences call for a proactive national strategy that involves multiple sectors, namely; education, labour and politics. The strategy must be specific to girls with disabilities in schools and ensure that they are properly represented in public and private sectors. This is key to making Rwanda’s pledge – to remove all obstacles against women’s development – a more substantive reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Evariste Karangwa works with the University of Rwanda, which is a public Institution funded by the Government of Rwanda. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeannette Bayisenge works with the University of Rwanda, which is a public Institution funded by the Government of Rwanda</span></em></p>Rwandan girls with disabilities are challenging domination and stereotypes in a male-dominated setting.Evariste Karangwa, Dean, School of Inclusive & Special Needs Education, University of RwandaJeannette Bayisenge, Lecturer, Center for Gender Studies and School of Social, Political and Administrative Sciences, University of RwandaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/828582017-08-24T19:28:48Z2017-08-24T19:28:48ZThose who brought Zuma to power shouldn’t be forgotten, or forgiven<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182996/original/file-20170822-30494-lc6f1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The SACP and Cosatu have spoken out against South Africa's President Jacob Zuma.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flcker/GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is now a matter of record – rather than an issue for serious debate – that the presidency of Jacob Zuma has been an unmitigated disaster for South Africa. </p>
<p>Zuma’s stewardship – if his tenure since 2009 can be dignified with such a description – has been one long narrative of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-20/jacob-zuma-blamed-for-south-africa-s-woes">national decline</a>. The fact that he remains in office is testament to the moral and intellectual decay of the governing African National Congress (ANC) over the course of his presidency. </p>
<p>That the party which produced such giants of the liberation struggle as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chief-albert-john-mvumbi-luthuli">Albert Luthuli</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/his-life-and-legacy-oliver-tambo">O.R. Tambo</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> should have repeatedly endorsed the leadership of such a compromised individual provides cause for great sadness at the humbling of a once great political movement.</p>
<p>But, as his presidency staggers on it has become noticeable that some in the ANC’s “broad church” are beginning to peel away in disgust. Over the last two years veterans of the movement have expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s direction and there have been frequent <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-04-06-anc-veterans-tell-president-zuma-to-step-down">calls for Zuma to stand down</a>. </p>
<p>There have been two unsuccessful attempts to unseat him at meetings of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (in <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/jacob-zuma-faces-confidence-vote-161128125939169.html">November 2016</a> and <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/breaking-motion-of-no-confidence-tabled-against-zuma-at-anc-nec-20170527">May 2017</a>. And eight motions of no confidence have been tabled against him in parliament. In the latest, 26 ANC MPs voted with the opposition, with a further <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-40869269">nine abstaining</a>.</p>
<p>In addition, the ANC’s alliance partners, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have both <a href="http://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1473832/full-statement-sacp-calls-for-zumas-resignation/">called for his resignation</a>. Cosatu even barred Zuma from attending its gatherings, an unprecedented humiliation for an <a href="https://www.thesouthafrican.com/zuma-barred-from-speaking-at-any-official-cosatu-events/">ANC leader</a>. </p>
<p>Yet these expressions of revulsion at Zuma’s leadership should be placed within their proper historical context. It is important to recall the role these two organisations had in helping facilitate this disaster in the first place.</p>
<h2>Complicity and fantasy</h2>
<p>Between 2005 and 2007 the SACP and Cosatu were <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president">fervent cheerleaders</a> for Zuma in his successful campaign in 2009 to supplant Thabo Mbeki and become ANC president, and thus <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/jacob-zuma-presidency-2009-2017-march">president of the country</a>. The left projected their own ideological fantasies onto Zuma: they saw in him hope for a “left turn” and a repudiation of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/south-african-communist-party-sacp">neo-liberal economics</a> which they associated with Mbeki. </p>
<p>This was always a bizarre position. There was nothing in Zuma’s record to inspire confidence that he would engineer a shift to the left. As the country’s deputy president from 1999 to 2005, he failed to strike a single dissenting note about the ideological direction of <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/other/gear/all.pdf">Mbeki’s macro-economic policy</a>, far less set out an alternative left-wing prospectus.</p>
<p>There was also a significant body of evidence suggesting his politics were highly reactionary, with strong overtones of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00847.x/full">sexual and ethnic chauvinism</a> which should have set alarm bells ringing for any self-respecting socialists. </p>
<p>For example, Zuma was acquitted of a rape charge <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-10-09-breaking-news-khwezi-jacob-zumas-rape-accuser-has-dead-family-confirms">in 2006</a> after deploying a defence that was deeply sexist and patriarchal. Zuma also uttered the notorious comment which would come to haunt him – that he had intercourse with his accuser knowing she was HIV positive but took a shower afterwards as a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4879822.stm">precaution against infection</a>. This was a comment so steeped in ignorance that it should have immediately disqualified him from ever holding high political office.</p>
<p>But it didn’t end there. Throughout the rape trial his supporters gathered outside the court each day to hurl vicious sexist abuse at his accuser. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/may/09/southafricasonemanwrecking">“Burn the Bitch”</a> was a favourite. Her name and address were also circulated in a contempt of court, actions that paved the way for harassment which eventually caused her to <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-05-11-zumas-rape-accuser-flees-south-africa">leave the country</a>. </p>
<p>Not once when addressing his supporters at the end of each day’s proceedings, did Zuma condemn the abuse, or reproach his supporters. Instead, in a display of machismo, he chose to whip up the mob with <a href="http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Will-Zumas-Letha-umshini-wami-Bring-my-Machine-gun-song-win-him-second-term-20120514">militaristic anthems</a> from the ANC armed struggle era. All of this in a country blighted by <a href="https://theconversation.com/gender-based-violence-in-south-africa-whats-missing-and-how-to-fix-it-78352">violence against women</a>.</p>
<h2>Rise of kleptocracy</h2>
<p>Zuma also commenced his presidency with <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2017/04/21/zuma-and-npa-appeal-hearings-against-reinstatement-of-783-criminal-charges-to-be-consolidated">783 unresolved charges</a> of fraud, money laundering and embezzlement hanging over him relating to the notorious arms deal scandal of the late 1990s and early 2000s. But the SACP and Cosatu leadership chose to view those charges as evidence of a <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/cosatu-admits-they-could-be-wrong-about-zuma-251585">“conspiracy”</a> against Zuma and an attempt to sabotage a socialist presidency.</p>
<p>They would now prefer their unconditional support for Zuma to be considered merely as an unfortunate historical footnote which has not tarnished their ideological credentials. They are wrong. Their willingness to overlook such egregious failings was a cynical betrayal of progressive values. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182999/original/file-20170822-22283-1e3tdad.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Julius Malema, once a staunch Zuma supporter, is now his fierce critic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Equally, Julius Malema, now the leader of the <a href="http://www.effonline.org/">Economic Freedom Fighters</a>, has sought to reinvent himself as a passionate opponent of Zuma. Yet as head of the ANC Youth League back in 2006-2007 he championed Zuma’s candidacy with a messianic fervour usually laced with threats against his opponents such as the infamous <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/kill-for-zuma-gets-life-of-its-own-406340">“shoot to kill for Zuma”</a> slogan.</p>
<h2>Mea culpa</h2>
<p>Ten years on the chickens have come home to roost, and the grim reality of the Zuma presidency is now visible. The South African state has become little more than a plaything of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-03-24-00-the-gupta-owned-state-enterprises">Zuma patronage</a> network. This descent into kleptocracy has been documented in <a href="https://www.outa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2.-REPORT.pdf">rich detail</a> by a number of <a href="https://www.outa.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2.-REPORT.pdf">reports</a>. </p>
<p>Consequently, the SACP and Cosatu have been compelled to recognise that Zuma and his corrupt support networks are indeed a cancer in South African politics, shamelessly enriching themselves in a country still defined by <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10334">poverty</a> and extreme inequality with <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-01-sa-unemployment-rate-rises-to-14-year-high/#.WZ1FgrpFzug">unemployment at 27.7%</a> in the first quarter of 2017, and youth <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=9960">unemployment standing at 38%</a> </p>
<p>The SACP and Cosatu may have found their voices over the last six months in lamenting this appalling record. But this has been a deathbed conversion, occurring much too late to carry any real conviction.</p>
<p>The monster that is the Zuma presidency has wrought massive damage on South Africa and is rightly reviled. The role of the SACP and Cosatu as architects of that debacle should be neither forgotten nor forgiven.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Hamill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The twilight of Jacob Zuma’s ruinous presidency coincides with growing revulsion at his misrule of South Africa. But, it’s important that his erstwhile supporters acknowledge their complicity.James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824572017-08-17T16:30:36Z2017-08-17T16:30:36ZNew research pokes holes in the idea that men don’t look after their kids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182074/original/file-20170815-16750-dkx6kx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men who had to take responsibility for younger siblings growing up were not concerned about conforming to dominant ideas about manhood.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa has one of the highest rates of absent fathers in sub-Saharan Africa. As many as 60% of children in the country under the age of 10 don’t live with their <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/3337/2013febFamily%20Policy.pdf">biological fathers</a>, the second highest rate of absence in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3710932/#S3title">sub-Saharan Africa</a> after Namibia. This compares to one third in the <a href="http://www.fatherhood.org/fatherhood-data-statistics">US</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa’s statistics are influenced by the history of migrant labour. Expropriation of the land of black Africans by colonial authorities, coupled with the levying of taxes, forced men (and later, women) to move to the growing cities to earn an income, while their wives and children stayed in the rural reserves or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3710932/#S3title">“homelands”</a>.</p>
<p>But there are other factors at play too. These include gender norms about childcare and the different roles attached to fathers and mothers. These norms also generally lead to men – even if they are physically present – making minimal contributions to unpaid care and household work.</p>
<p>A large volume of research – including the Centre for Social Development in Africa’s <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/Absent-fathers-full-report%202013.pdf">“ATM Fathers”</a> – has shown that among both men and women, fathers are widely considered as primarily being responsible for supporting the family financially. These attitudes frequently lead men – or enable them – to sidestep non-financial care responsibilities. </p>
<p>But in a context of <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/jobs-not-grants-only-way-out-of-poverty-says-pali-lehohla-20170807">widespread unemployment</a>, inability to earn an income and fulfil the “provider” role often leads men to <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/Absent-fathers-full-report%202013.pdf">abandon their children</a>. This leaves women with the double burden of being the sole breadwinner as well as the person primarily responsible for unpaid care and household work. This, in turn, reinforces gender inequality as women have less time to pursue market work, education, leisure and civic life, and are expected to sacrifice their own interests for those of children.</p>
<p>But there are men who choose to be involved fully in the care of their children despite economic difficulty. We have done research into the reasons for this involvement, and the different forms that it takes. The <a href="https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/338575">initial research</a> has been done by <a href="https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/342417">Masters students</a> Manon van der Meer and Hylke Hoornstra, and forms part of my PhD which is due to be published early next year. We also examined men’s attitudes towards gender, and how they define their masculine and paternal identities in the context of caring for children. </p>
<p>We found that a significant number of men are doing this in progressive ways - ‘doing’ fatherhood and manhood in ways that differ from the patriarchal archetypes that sustain gender inequality. Their examples point to the possibility of creating a more gender equal society.</p>
<h2>The research</h2>
<p>The first group of men we interviewed were fathers working in low income jobs in Johannesburg – mostly security guards and fast food restaurant staff. All were cohabiting with their partners and children. Almost all emphasised that providing for the family financially was central to their definitions of a good father. Given their low-paying jobs, they were constantly worried about their inability to do this which often led to feelings of inadequacy as a father.</p>
<p>But most men saw their father roles as encompassing more than just financial provision. Almost all spoke of a need to be available emotionally for their children, and to spend time with them. Most also had no problem with performing care work (such as changing nappies, bathing children, helping children with schoolwork) or household work (cleaning, cooking, laundry, and ironing). But importantly, most saw the mother as primarily responsible for this work, only stepping in to help when asked or required. This was frequently related to gendered ideas about competence: that women were naturally more suited to these tasks.</p>
<p>The second group of men we interviewed were receiving a <a href="http://www.gov.za/services/child-care-social-benefits/child-support-grant">child support grant</a> on behalf of their children. The grant is a means tested monthly cash transfer provided to low-income caregivers to support childcare, and has a value of R380 (around US$29). This group makes up only a fraction of those who get the grants – 98% are women according to data provided by the South African Social Security Agency. </p>
<p>Most of the men we interviewed in Soweto had applied for the grant because a female partner had passed away, or because their female partner was not a South African citizen.</p>
<p>Almost all the men were unemployed. Most put far less emphasis on providing financial support. They considered “being there” for their children – by providing love, guidance and protection – a key component of their masculine and paternal identities. </p>
<p>They frequently described taking care of their children, and not abandoning them or being otherwise neglectful, as central to what it means to be a man.</p>
<p>As with the first group, many in the second group also subscribed to dominant gender norms about who should do what in the household. Care and household work were viewed primarily as mothers’ or women’s responsibility. Nonetheless, almost all regularly carried out these tasks, even those who were either living with female partners or who could rely on the support of female relatives - thus revealing a discrepancy between their beliefs and how they behaved. </p>
<p>Most men in both groups spoke about the pressure to conform to social expectations and the sanctions imposed on them if they didn’t. Sanctions could take the form of disapproval when they were seen to be doing “women’s work”. Also, some men who received the child grant said they were seen as “undateable” by women they encountered at the local social grant offices. </p>
<p>All men said they experienced some form of pressure. But some seemed less bothered by it than others. This was particularly true of those who held gender-equal ideas about “male” and “female” responsibility. Men who had always done this work – for example those who were brought up by single mothers, or who had to take responsibility for younger siblings growing up – were similarly unconcerned about conforming to dominant ideas of what it means to “be a man”.</p>
<h2>Doing gender differently</h2>
<p>Fathers in South Africa are often denigrated for being un-involved and neglectful. But this research sheds light on fathers who, despite significant economic and social pressure, choose to remain involved in meaningful ways in the lives of their children, and to incorporate traditionally feminine behaviours and roles into their own masculine and paternal identities for the well-being of their children. </p>
<p>We hope that the research findings will inspire other men to “do gender” differently – for the benefit of their children and South African women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoheb Khan receives funding from the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>About 60% of children in South Africa under 10 years don’t live with their biological fathers. But research sheds light on those who despite the pressures remain involved in their children’s lives.Zoheb Khan, Researcher, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.