South Africa

Citation:

Meer, Shamim. 1997. “Gender and Land Rights: The Struggle over Resources in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” IDS Bulletin 28 (3): 133–44.

Author: Shamim Meer

Abstract:

This article argues that the goals of social justice, poverty alleviation and gender equality within the post‐apartheid government's land reform programme are threatened by government's neo‐liberal macroeconomic framework, by shortcomings in addressing gender and because rural women do not constitute an organised social force. The article outlines the key elements of the land reform programme and points to limitations arising from the market‐based nature of the land reform programme. The article highlights innovative mechanisms within the programme aimed at involving women in land reform. These include the requirements of women's participation in land reform pilot programme structures and of gender equality within group ownership entities – the ‘Community Property Associations’. However, the overall approach is to target women without adequately considering gender power relations. The article suggests that while the state can play a significant role in providing an enabling framework, the key to advancing gender equality is women's organisation.

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, Justice Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 1997

Citation:

Annecke, Wendy, Yvette Abrahams, and Nthabiseng Mohlakoana. 2010. “Left Out in the Cold While the Planet Heats Up: How Can Feminists Contribute to Climate Change and Energy Debates and Policy in South Africa Today?” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 24 (83): 36–45.

Authors: Wendy Annecke, Yvette Abrahams, Nthabiseng Mohlakoana

Abstract:

Keywords: gender, climate change, governance and participation

Topics: Class, Environment, Climate Change, Gender, Governance, Infrastructure, Energy, Political Participation Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2010

Citation:

Molyneux, Maxine, and Shahra Razavi, eds. 2002. Gender Justice, Development, and Rights. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Authors: Maxine Molyneux, Shahra Razavi

Annotation:

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Education, Governance, Indigenous, Political Participation, Privatization, Rights, Human Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, Americas, Central America, South America, Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe, Eastern Europe Countries: Chile, India, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Uganda

Year: 2002

Citation:

Annecke, Wendy. 2015. "Whose Turn Is It to Cook Tonight? Changing Gender Relations in a South African Township." Cape  Town: Department for International Development.

Author: Wendy Annecke

Abstract:

This study is set in an urban area, in a township called Khayelitsha in South Africa, where poverty, violence and unemployment are endemic. Since the new democratic order came to power in 1994, there have been two changes in policy that impact on this study. The first is that gender equality has been legislated (with some machinery to enforce this), the second is that an accelerated electrification programme has been implemented so that 75% of the formal houses and shacks in Khayelitsha are electrified. This study uses cooking as the domestic chore that epitomises traditionally gendered domestic relationships to explore the hypothesis that when women have access to modern energy services their daily drudgery is reduced and they are able to improve their own lives. The findings include the resentment felt by some men that they can no longer use force to compel their partners to perform domestic duties to their own satisfaction, and that, backed by strong institutional support for gender equality, access to modern energy services (in this case electricity) can facilitate shifts in gender roles and responsibilities in the domestic sphere

Keywords: gender relations, energy, gender violence, domestic tasks, household electrification

Topics: Gender Roles, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Households, Infrastructure, Energy Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2015

Citation:

Fofana, Ismaël. 2015. "Gender Analysis of the Policy Responses to High Oil Prices: A Case Study of South Africa." Feminist Economics 21 (3): 216-40. doi: 10.1080/13545701.2015.1023330 

Author: Ismaël Fofana

Abstract:

The 2007–8 surge in oil prices has created concern about its impacts on poor and vulnerable populations in developing countries. Government management of the energy crisis was shown to be important in reducing adverse impacts. This study uses an applied general equilibrium framework to examine alternative policy and external shocks with the recent surge in oil prices in South Africa through a gender lens. Simulation results show that although the 2007–8 energy crisis contributed to slowing down South African gross domestic product (GDP) growth and reducing employment and earnings, the distributional impact between men and women has been neutral. This neutrality is driven by an increase in capital inflows, which has mitigated the exchange rate depreciation owing to the oil price hike. Without an increase in capital inflows, the crisis would have significantly depreciated the exchange rate and contributed to decreasing women's market opportunities and increasing women's workload as compared to men.

Keywords: energy policy, gender, household economics, Time use

Topics: Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Gender Analysis, Governance, Infrastructure, Energy Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2015

Citation:

Laite, Julia Ann. 2009. “Historical Perspectives on Industrial Development, Mining, and Prostitution.” The Historical Journal 52 (3): 739–61.

Author: Julia Ann Laite

Abstract:

Prostitution has been linked by many historians and social commentators to the industrial development and capitalism of the modern age, and there is no better example of this than the prostitution that developed in mining regions from the mid-nineteenth century. Using research on mining-related prostitution, and other social histories of mining communities where prostitution inevitably forms apart, large or small, of the historian's analysis of the mining region, this article will review, contrast, and compare prostitution in various mining contexts, in different national and colonial settings. From the American and Canadian gold rushes in the mid-and late nineteenth century, to the more established mining frontiers of the later North American West, to the corporate mining towns of Chile in the interwaryears, to the copper and gold mines of southern Africa and Kenya in the first half of the twentieth century, commercial sex was present and prominent as the mining industry and mining communities developed. Challenging the simplistic images and stereotypes of prostitution that are popularly associated with the American mining frontier, historians have shown that prostitution's place in mining communities, and its connection to industrial development, was as complex as it was pervasive and enduring.

Topics: Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Extractive Industries, Gender, Women, Governance, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods, Multi-National Corporations Regions: Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, Americas, North America, South America Countries: Canada, Chile, Kenya, South Africa, United States of America

Year: 2009

Citation:

Annecke, Wendy Jill. 2000. “Women and Energy in South Africa.” Energy for Sustainable Development 4 (4): 44–47.

Author: Wendy Jill Annecke

Abstract:

The article provides a brief overview of the historical absence of women from the formal energy sector, and their invisibility as users and clients in South Africa. This changed in the last decade of this century when women began to be recognised as an important category of managers of domestic energy for productive and reproductive purposes, and the need for these to be sustainable. It changed even further with the appointment of women as Minister and Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy, and as Chief Executive Officer of the Central Energy Fund. However, there is still a great deal to be done to change the fundamentally unequal relations between people with access to power and resources in South Africa and those without.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Infrastructure, Energy Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2000

Citation:

Lee, Rebekah. 2006. “Hearth and Home in Cape Town: African Women, Energy Resourcing, and Consumption in an Urban Environment.” Journal of Women’s History 18 (4): 55–78.

Author: Rebekah Lee

Abstract:

This article adds to the literature on energy consumption in South Africa through the contribution of a historical and gendered perspective. It focuses on how differing generations of African women in the apartheid (1948–1994) and post-apartheid periods resourced, consumed, and related to various types of fuels. “Energy histories” solicited from twenty-five African female residents of Cape Town across three generational cohorts show women’s broad and complex engagement with the material fabric of the city. In an era of globalized access and technological change, electricity was increasingly seen as essential to a modern, “easy” lifestyle. Electrical appliances themselves provided a medium through which women questioned and brokered household power relations. Yet women also revealed a tenacious loyalty to older patterns of energy use. This was reflective of the historically uneven progress towards electrification of African townships, as well as issues more intimately related to gendered and generational dynamics.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Households, Infrastructure, Energy Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2006

Citation:

Addison, Lincoln. 2014. “The Sexual Economy, Gender Relations and Narratives of Infant Death on a Tomato Farm in Northern South Africa.” Journal of Agrarian Change 14 (1): 74–93. doi:10.1111/joac.12008.

Author: Lincoln Addison

Abstract:

Based on an extended case study of a large-scale tomato farm in northern Limpopo province, the paper examines how the restructuring of agriculture transforms the sexual economy through shifts in the composition of labour and management practices on farms in this area. The employment of Zimbabwean migrants, rather than relatively permanent Venda families, suggests a potentially greater variety of people participating in the sexual economy. While families as units of employment have declined, black supervisors increasingly serve as a primary locus of coercion on the farm and in the sexual economy. The monetization of erstwhile paternalistic services places pressure on women to earn income however they can, including transactional sex. Contested interpretations over the causes of infant deaths on the farm, in the form of hygiene, blood-mixing and infanticide, provide an ethnographic framework for a deeper analysis of the sexual economy and its social effects. While the sexual economy presents opportunities for women to increase their income, it also exposes them to the risks of HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancies, resulting in contradictory implications for the status of women on farms.

Topics: Agriculture, Displacement & Migration, Migration, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Health, HIV/AIDS, Livelihoods, Sexual Livelihoods Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2014