Browsing by Author "Bennett, Jane"

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    A Journey through trauma: a memoir about grief, healing, memory, trauma, spiritual quest and social justice
    (2019) Gwala, Dela; Bennett, Jane
    I am finally getting used to being home. Two weeks into 2013, I have the kind of routine reserved for unemployed recent graduates. I wake up and try to convince myself to run. On the days where the tedium of being in Centurion wins out, I lace up, push the gate open and put my earphones in. I take a breath whilst Florence Welch's vibrato nudges me to get going. My feet slowly shuffle up the cul-de sac that winds around the corner and ends at the security gate. The best time to jog midweek in the suburbs is after the school run.
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    "All the world's a stage": 'gendered performativities of 'transitional' masculinities within a South Africa female-to-male (FTM) transsexual context
    (2009) Kinoti, Patricia; Bennett, Jane
    The theoretical framework for this research was designed through contemporary work, both international and South Africa, on questions of gender, performativity, and masculinities. In addition, questions of social justice for those marginalized by gender conventions created the context for a qualitative research process in which transgender men's experiences of their subjectivities as 'men' served as a route through which to explore questions of gender surveillance in a post-democratice South Africa...The research contributes significantly to knowledge on often silenced and marginalized communities within African societies, where the majority of alternative sexualities and gender identities are often regarded as 'un-African'. The research concludes that the Trans men's masculinities play a pivital role in the deconstruction of the gender institution as 'natural' by presenting alternatives states of being as viable options within seemingly static boundaries.
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    An exploration of the gender and sexual dynamics for women performers in the Cape Town jazz community
    (2020) George, Aimée; Tiffin, Amanda; Bennett, Jane
    This research explores the dynamics of gender, sexuality and power for women performers within the jazz community in Cape Town. Although the history and development of South African jazz has been extensively researched, very few texts mention the presence and impact of women performers and has yet to include how questions of gender, power and sexuality influence both the cultures of jazz and the experiences of women jazz artists. The current study is strongly influenced by feminist theory, which seeks to uncover experiences obscured by patriarchal epistemologies. A qualitative methodology is used to ensure each narrative remains at the forefront of the research. Interviews were conducted with jazz women musicians involved in various roles within the jazz industry in Cape Town. These semi-structured interviews allow for these women to narrate their turbulent musical journeys. What is revealed and subsequently further explored are the rich identity politics involved in being women “performers”, what is assumed and expected of them, the role “boys clubs” play in their exclusion, and the pressures and implications of stringent gender stereotypes, beauty ideals and vicious hyper-sexualization. Moreover, I explore the analytics of power within this specific culture and its' effect on jazz women. Their accounts reveal how the Cape Town jazz community remains saturated with gender stereotypes and is seemingly committed to continuing violent displays of misogyny. The study argues that despite the prevalence of this misogyny, women jazz artists actively design strategies which skilfully and innovatively allow them to pursue influential careers, deepening the meaning of “jazz” in Cape Town and beyond. The research thus both extends the analysis of feminist jazz theorists in Cape Town, and suggests that understanding the contemporary dynamics of gender and sexuality in South African jazz artists' experience deserves more research.
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    An exploration of the meaning of social justice for survivors of domestic violence in Zimbabwe
    (2023) Zvobgo, Ellen Farisayi; Bennett, Jane
    Globally, the WHO (2014: 10) estimates that one in three women experiences sexual and physical violence at the hands of their intimate partner over their lifetime. According to a Violence Against Women (VAW) Baseline study (2013: 11) in Zimbabwe- two in every three (68%) women who were interviewed reported having experienced some type of gendered violence during their lifetime. Although legislation on the prevention of domestic violence has become, globally, part of many countries' legal frameworks, Zimbabwe instantiated its Domestic Violence Act only in 2007. This came as a result of decades of feminist advocacy at state, legal, and NGO levels which theorized the rights of survivors of domestic violence, usually women as essential to Zimbabwean citizenship. These rights included criminalization of domestic violence and full access to legal processes. As in many other contexts, the weak implementation of this legislation has been widely researched, suggesting that Zimbabwean domestic abuse survivors remain vulnerable (Burton, 2008). Alongside the need for more research lies the question at the heart of this dissertation. Feminist theory has established that the vulnerability of domestic abuse survivors comprises both the legal and the social. Theorists of social justice focus on questions of recognition and redistribution (Fraser, 2008), empowerment (Kabeer, 2016) and the notion of capabilities as intrinsic to fair and equitable social systems and processes (Nussbaum, 2011). This study asks whether and how the provision of shelter space to the survivors (for which provision is made in the Domestic Violence Act) can be theorized as a form of social justice, despite the weakness of the system of courts. In carrying out the study, I worked with one particular shelter, Musasa, in Gweru, Zimbabwe, and explored the experiences of those who had worked with the shelter in multiple ways. This built what I called an “exploded view” of the representations of living and working at a specific place. The concept of “exploded view” comes from architecture and connotes a perspective able to understand different parts of a system or process separately to revise the whole. Data gathering was through in-depth interviews and involved listening to the voices of those who imagined and created the shelter and also those running it. At the centre of the study were twenty women who experienced the shelter as a space in which they lived and their voices were critical in theorising sheltering. Data were analysed using both thematic and content analysis and aimed to tease out the multiple threads of meaning through which people associated with the shelter in different ways made sense of its location and importance for tackling domestic violence in Zimbabwe. While the study is aware of its limitations as a case study, the dissertation's theorization of shelter work as social justice contributes to a feminist theorization of redress for survivors of domestic abuse in Zimbabwe.
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    Black feminist intellectual activism: a transformative pedagogy at a South African university
    (2016) Hames, Mary Margaret Philome; Bennett, Jane
    This dissertation engages with critical pedagogic theories and activism from a black feminist perspective. The central argument is that education is not only confined to the formal classroom but also takes place in the most unlikely places outside the classroom. This work is premised on the educational philosophies of liberation, embodiment and freedom of the oppressed and the marginalised. The qualitative research is largely presented as ethnographical research, with the researcher located as both participant in the evolvement of the two educational programmes and as writer of this dissertation. Both educational programmes deal with performance and performativity and aim to give voice to the marginalised bodies and lives in the university environment. The research demonstrates how two marginalised groups claim space on campus through performativity involving the body and voice. In the Edudrama, Reclaiming the P…Word, young black women, via representation of word and body, transform the performance space into one in which the misogynistic and racist gaze is transformed. This feminist theatre is intrinsically related to the feminist political work of reclamation of the black female body, which became invisible and objectified for abuse under colonialism, apartheid and patriarchy. The various feminist elements and processes involved in creating feminist text and theatre are discussed. The praxis involved in these processes is then theorised in terms of critical pedagogy as black feminist intellectual activism. In the case of the lesbian, gay and transgender programme, Loud Enuf, the bodies and voices are used differently in the public campus domain to challenge homophobia. This programme is used to raise awareness about sex, sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity. This programme is intensely political and challenges ambiguous understandings regarding the notion of equality in South Africa post-1994.
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    Bodies across borders : embodiment and experiences of migration for southern African international students at the University of Cape Town
    (2010) Moll, Tessa; Bennett, Jane
    In context of increasing global migration and its correlation to heightened tensions around the meaning of a "foreign" body, this research questions the experiences of bodies crossing borders into the social and historical space of Cape Town, South Africa. Grounded in theories of surveillance, embodiment, and feminist geography of fear of crime, the study employed a feminist methodology using qualitative group interviews with international students from the Southern African Development Community at the University of Cape Town. The transcribed data was analysed through the participants' use of discourses and their descriptions of experiences. Questions arose around the meaning of surveillance and notions of respectability in transition. Furthermore, participants navigate amid new spaces of fear and insecurity in relation to their subjectivities, particularly as "foreigners". The research suggests that fear becomes a fundamental attribute of bodies in migration through which individuals mitigate through "passing" subverting expressions of embodied nationalities, knowledge gathering of the local terrain, among others. The challenges and techniques to overcome these fears become part of a process to re-establish the "self" in a foreign context.
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    Caring from the margins: Community HIV/AIDS care work as social reproduction in the era of HIV/AIDS
    (2012) Meintjes-Moakes, Ingrid; Bennett, Jane
    I come to my research interest through experiences as an activist, holding firm to the belief that community HIV/AIDS care work is profoundly deprivational for the women who do it. With a commitment to feminist research, I was interested in exploring what care work meant for gender equality and commensurate development consequences. Employing the theoretical framework of feminist development economics, I adopted a qualitiative methodology to explore my interests in women community HIV/AIDS care workers' experiences. Feminist epistemology holds that all in the study terrain have epistemic agency, and as such I was interested in making meaning of care workers' own representations of their experiences, and what their representations could mean for theorising about care work as a new form of social reproduction, situated in the specific space of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa.
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    Circles and Circles: Notes on African Feminist debates around gender and violence in the 21 Century
    (2010) Bennett, Jane
    This article set out to sketch a terrain in which there are multiple, differently rooted, conversations among African feminists about gender and violence. There are few resolved debates, and many ways in which discussion which leads, in a pan-African gaze, towards mutual understanding and cohesive strategizing remains a naÁ¯ve idea. It is safe to suggest that the terms “gender” and “violence” remain simultaneously deeply entwined and infinitely separable. In the past few years, there have been vibrant, critical discussions on the nature, shape and direction of “women’s movement” organizing, and in African contexts, there are four overarching debates which have circled continually through intellectual writing on “women’s movements”, activist organization at several levels, and within numerous fora. The first debate concerns the meaning of the state. This debate is interlinked with a second: the meaning of the interaction between the North and diverse initiatives concerned with “women’s human rights,” “South-based feminisms,” and “gender-alert social justice”. The third debate concerns the very existence of a “women’s movement” and the fourth concerns access to reproductive health and to freedom from gender based violence.
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    The country we want to live in: hate crimes and homophobia in the lives of black lesbian South Africans
    (HSRC Press, 2010) Mkhize, Nonhlanhla; Bennett, Jane; Reddy, Vasu; Moletsane, Relebohile
    Based on a Roundtable seminar, held during the 2006 16 Days of Activism for no Violence against Women and Children, the text engages the heteronormative focus of the campaign, profiles aspects of the dynamic conversations, and builds strong arguments about violence against lesbians. The country we want to live in: Hate crimes and homophobia in the lives of black lesbian South Africans offers a refreshing perspective on violence perpetrated against black lesbians. It also profiles the voices of women who are central to the activism around hate crimes and homophobia. In capturing key aspects of the lively discussion of 2006, an update of subsequent events that have bearing on the original seminar is provided, concluding with recommendations that have relevance for research, policy and practice. The country we want to live in makes an impassioned plea about citizenship, belonging and social justice, confirming that silence about these issues is not an option. PART I: Context and History: *Context and socio-political background; *Language and vocabulary; *The delimitations of this report; PART II: Perspective and Profile: *Roundtable Seminar on Gender-Based Violence, Black Lesbians, Hate Speech and Homophobia; PART III: Current and Future Prospects; *Legally-focused campaigning; *Conclusions and Recommendations: a way forward?
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    Discourses of gendered vulnerability in the context of HIV/AIDS: An analysis of the 16 Days of Activism Against Women Abuse Campaign 2007 in Khayelitsha, South Africa
    (2009) Monte, Loredana; Bennett, Jane; Salo, Elaine
    This thesis explores discourses on gender and gender based violence produced in the 16 Days of Activism Against Women Abuse campaign 2007 in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The public awareness campaign united a number of local, community based organisations that work in the overlapping fields of HIV/AIDS and gender based violence. For the purpose of this study, three of the most vocal organisations in this campaign were chosen as research participants; The local branch of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) Khayelitsha, the Rape Survivors Centre Simelela, and the youth drama group Masibambisane. Assuming that discourses are embedded in unequal relations of power, this study adopts a discourse analytical approach to the 'gendering' of HI VIA IDS to reveal how knowledge and meanings are produced, reproduced and contested between more powerful institutions and a marginalised community. The thesis first explores dominant discourses on HIV/AIDS and gender in development discourse and social and biomedical research, and uncovers how HIV/AIDS risks are mostly related to women's lack of power and inherent vulnerability to violence. Such hegemonic discourses are then also found in international and national guidelines and policy frameworks that address the 'gendered' risks of HIV and AIDS, while at the same time these frameworks also promote approaches to HIV/AIDS that acknowledge contextual and societal factors that shape vulnerability. Eventually, a review of international and national frameworks that address the 'dual epidemics' shows how the so called 'community sector' is often highlighted as a crucial partner in multi-sectoral approaches to HIV/AIDS. The empirical study then aims at locating such discourses in a localised, South African context, and explores the ways in which dominant discourses are reproduced, contested, and redefined by community activists. Empirical data is collected through participant observation with the organisations coordinating the campaign, recording of speeches delivered during the public events, and semi-structured, qualitative interviews with five key members of the organisations. A discursive analysis of the data reveals that femininity and masculinity are mainly constructed in rather conservative ways, portraying women as inherently vulnerable and men as either perpetrators of violence, or protectors of women and children. These constructions of gender are based in a patriarchal, hegemonic notion of masculinity as powerful and responsible for the suffering or salvation of weak and vulnerable women. However, within these hegemonic gender notions, women speakers simultaneously contest their victimhood status by claiming their rights as citizens of South Africa, by relocating power in their collective struggle, and by reframing their vulnerabilities as embedded in intersecting inequalities of gender, class and race, and as members of a community largely marginalised by the state. The multitude of discourses at play in the public campaign point at the necessity for a re-reading of the intersections of HIV/AIDS, gender inequality and gender based violence beyond victim-agent dualisms.
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    Empowering women activists : creating a monster : the contentious politics of gender within social justice activism
    (2007) Eriksson, Asa; Bennett, Jane
    This Master's Research Project has sought to investigate the discursive space for 'gender struggles' within contemporary South African class based social justice activism. It has done so in the form of a qualitative case study, analysing particular 'gender' interventions designed by a left-wing popular education organisation during 2006, and how these are theorized and contextualised against this specific moment in time in post-apartheid South Africa. The research has looked at how and why the organisation is presently trying to challenge gendered power inequalities in its internal and external work, strengthening women activists in the Community-based organisations and Social Movements which it targets, and contribute to putting women's strategic gender interests on the agenda of these movements, while simultaneously seeking to theorize the meaning of 'political' gender work in relation to its dominant perspective of class justice. The researcher has followed a specific empowerment initiative targeting women activists during the year, and has also engaged closely with the institutional dynamics in the organisation under study. The data has been gathered through interviews with staff members and women activists, and through participatory observation in educational events and office meetings. The theoretical framework for the study was designed in relation to Shireen Hassim's investigations of the "discursive space" for South African feminist groups to articulate their demands while continuing to work within the dominant, male-led resistance movements (Hassim, 2006:14-19), and to Amanda Gouws' theorizing of citizenship as including 'embodied' participation in political processes and activism (Gouws, 2005:1-16,71-87). It furthermore builds on contemporary theories on social movements and grassroots mobilisation in South Africa (recaptured by Ballard et. aI., 2006:3-19), on feminist consciousness-raising (Kaplan, 1997) and on organisational change for gender equality (Rao and Kelleher, 2003). Some of the suggestions made, while analysing the data against this theoretical framework, include; That the conflict which has emerged in the organisation under study in relation to the new 'gender programme' is indeed a contestation over the meaning of 'political' gender work, and over who can be a legitimate 'political actor' (Hassim, 2006: 17); simultaneously and contradictive, there is an awareness in the organisations that the nature of the 'working class' is shifting in pace with neo-liberal globalisation processes, and that rank-and-file members in working class organisations are now the unemployed or the casual workers, a majority of them being women (although leadership structures largely remain male territory), which theoretically should also prompt a shift in the focal organisations approach to 'political' gender work, but in practice, this is still a struggle; the empowerment programme which the research has followed closely throughout the year has led to women participants being ostracised, after surfacing issues of sexual harassment in the movements, but the rational/intellectual, spiritual and emotional learning which has happened in the group is analyzed as having been empowering on both an individual and collective level, inspiring new women's network to develop within movements of both men and women. The study suggests that engaging 'gender' and expanding the notion of 'political work' and who can be a 'political actor' is crucial if left-wing education and support organisations seek to remain relevant within a rapidly changing context.
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    An exploration of the experiences of Zimbabwean women informal cross-border traders at the Zimbabwean/South African BeitBridge border post
    (2014) Garatidye, Serita; Bennett, Jane
    Much research on economically-enforced migration between Zimbabwe and South Africa locates women as partners of men, rather than as economic agents in their own terms. Research on cross-border trade, however, has theorized that gender dynamics may empower women traders as they learn to negotiate new business networks and as they develop economic independence; a different perspective on gender dynamics suggests that far from empowerment, women cross border-traders face particular abuse and harassment. This research worked with eleven Zimbabwean cross border traders to explore the theoretical tensions between notions of ‘empowerment’ and notions of ‘disadvantage’ arising from the traders’ experiences. The study concentrated in particular on the traders’ representation of their experiences at the Zimbabwe/South Africa Beitbridge border post crossing point. Analysing the material qualitatively, the dissertation argues that while gender dynamics can be seen to afford the traders both opportunities and great challenges, the traders’ representations of the interplay of official corruption and the impact of economic pressure on all border-players reveal the border-post itself as a complex site of micro-negotiations whereby survival becomes the ‘business’ itself.
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    Exploring Community Creation: Conversations of Young Black Women
    (2024) Ngandi, Asemahle; Bennett, Jane; Hurst Ellen
    In order to showcase the significance of the often-trivialised act of women talking to each other, the purpose of this research project was to explore how young black women use talking to create community with each other. The purpose of this research is to explore how young black South African women talking to each other, having conversations with each other, work to create bonds and ultimately community with each other – or, in bell hooks' (2000) terms, a Sisterhood. This act of women talking – black women, no less – to each other goes against the grain, it is a revolutionary act that they have been conditioned against precisely because of its revolutionary nature and because of the power that lies in the unpredictability of it. Along with staying silent, women are conditioned into not having bonds or relationships with each other because they are natural enemies, because all that would come from such relations would be unimportant, because they would tear each other down – as such, women cannot and should not bond with each other (hooks; 2000:43). This is reflected in the literature, particularly literature on Africa. The literature available on the socio-linguistic study of language and language varieties is expansive on the embodiment of these varieties by young African men. This solidifies the notion that [young African] women are not talking – not to young men, not to each other, not to anyone. Due to the COVID-19 induced travel restrictions, the research used virtual ethnography principles applied to past synchronous one-one-one WhatsApp chats to collect data. Using a Speech Act Analysis on the emojis used in the chats, it was discovered that these play various roles in these conversations, including mitigating serious conversations, to contextualise seemingly negative messages and to convey emotions between the interlocutors. Additionally, focussing on and analysing the code switches that occurred in the conversations revealed that switches were also used to provide comedic relief in heavy conversations and/or to make the other person laugh and code switches did friendship maintenance work. From the WhatsApp conversations, one can therefore deduce that these young black women's use of language and linguistic matter – albeit in a virtual space – play an important role in creating community in that both emojis and code switches insist on the fragility of the people in conversation and create a community that not only accommodates this fragility, but one that allows and accepts it.
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    Exploring discourses of access and sexual harassment in higher education A study of students' perceptions of University of Nairobi's Institutional Culture, Kenya
    (2013) Muasya, Juliet Njeri; Bennett, Jane; Gatumu, Jane
    Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.
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    Exploring discourses of masculinity within women track athletes' lives in South Africa
    (2022) Sauzier, Regine Francoise Eva Gabrielle; Bennett, Jane
    This research dissertation explores discourses of masculinity among university-level women track athletes across South Africa. Many scholars have delved into the narratives of racialization and masculinity among black women athletes, muscularity as a premise of athleticism, ‘tomboyism' and gender fluidities, as well as the policing and disciplining of women athletes' bodies in accordance with gender ideals. Nonetheless, as it stands, literature on women's masculinities within sports in South African contexts, along with the idea of meshing masculinities and women's experiences together remains scarce. Interviews were conducted with women sprinters attending universities across South Africa on the online platforms, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, due to the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions in place at the time. An analysis of their narratives surrounding experiences and discourses of masculinity as cisgendered heterosexual women athletes was carried out. The research concludes that upon reaching adulthood and maturation, the gender binary recloses around the women track athletes so that a "temporary boyhood" is no longer granted to them, and they must negotiate their performative proximity to discourses of masculinity without the safety of the "tomboy" label. Rigid power structures continue to dominate, leaving little to no room for the women track athletes within South Africa to explore a heteronormative female masculinity as part of their gender identities.
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    Exploring gender dynamics in sexuality education in Uganda's secondary schools
    (2005) Muhanguzi, Florence Kyoheirwe; Bennett, Jane
    Within international theory of gender and education, sexuality is implicated as one of the major factors responsible for the differential participation of boys and girls in schooling and the persistent gender inequalities in education in Sub-Saharan African countries and Uganda in particular. In spite of multiple interventions to address the inequalities, gender disparities remain apparent and such disparities continue to entail increased vulnerability to sexual abuse, HIV transmission, unwanted teenage pregnancies, sexual exploitation and the overall silence about sexual experience, for those gendered as girls and women. Comprehensive gendered sexuality education is widely seen as a valuable site of intervention for addressing these problems, thereby facilitating the process of attaining gender equality and equity in society. The relationship between sexuality education and gender dynamics remain, however, complex at multiple levels of the educational process. The main objective of this study is to explore the operation of gender dynamics in school sexuality education. The research interrogates the interactions between contemporary curriculum based ideas of sexuality education in Uganda and the gendered realities of key participants in the pedagogic process. The substantive focus of my study is on secondary school students' and teachers' experiences and interactions with formal school sexuality curriculum. Under the notion that the community of pedagogy for students comprises parents, the research includes an exploration of parents' engagement with the school-based sexuality education. My study draws on qualitative data obtained through qualitative methods namely observation, in- depth and key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Template and thematic analysis was used. The study theorises that the current sexuality education being conducted in Uganda's secondary schools is deficient in terms of content and approach and is based on gender biased materials and textbooks. Overall the education offered is inadequate, largely prescriptive and feminized, generally divorced from students' personal experiences, and sometimes even contradictory. The study reveals complex gendered sexual experiences of students that position boys and girls differently often causing gender inequalities in sexuality education classrooms. The study illuminates the need for a rigorous re-examination of the current curriculum learning resources and advocates an empowerment approach that integrates considerations of gender dynamics throughout the approach to formal sexuality education in a bid to challenge gendered discrimination.
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    Exploring the meaning and experiences of women with disabled children living in Ocean View and Masiphumelele
    (2002) Lagerdien, Kashifa; Galvaan, Roshan; Bennett, Jane
    Bibliography: leaves 115-120.
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    'Feminisation and outsourced work' : a case study of the meaning of 'transformation' through the lived experience of non-core work at the University of Cape Town
    (2008) Bardill, Lindiwe; Bennett, Jane; Grossman, Jonathan
    This dissertation examines the meaning of university 'transformation' from the perspective of workers in 'non-core' zones of work. Mergers, outsourcing, retrenching and rightsizing, have become features of the post-apartheid higher education landscape; and they seem set to remain. Through higher education restructuring work has been divided into 'core' and 'non-core' zones of work and 'non-core' work has largely been outsourced. The men and women working in the outsourced zones of 'non-core' work engage in the 'reproductive work' of the university and yet they largely remain hidden from institutional debates of transformation.
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    Football, Femininity and Muscle: An exploration of Heteronormative and Athletic Discources in the lives of elite-level women footballers in South Africa
    (2010) Engh, Mari Haugaa; Bennett, Jane
    Normalised constructions of masculinity and femininity within a heteronormative social structure have shaped beliefs about women's capacities, characteristics and bodies, and have constructed a hegemonic feminine ideal that has historically excluded the possibility of being simultaneously feminine and athletic. However, following developments in Europe and North America (such as Title IV and WIS) and the increased production and consumption of globalised sports, new and more athletic feminine ideals have emerged and opened spaces for women to form sporting and athletic subjectivities. As a part of this process, women's football, across the world, has grown exponentially, in popular support and participation rates, since the first World Cup was organised in China in 1991 (Hong, 2004; Cox and Thompson, 2000). In South Africa, the development of structures for women's football was late, and women's football is not yet fully professional. In South Africa football is viewed as a game for men, and it remains a flagship masculine sport that serves to maintain and support masculine domination (Pelak, 2005). Because women's participation in a sport like football is considered a transgression, there is a heightened need to mark women's bodies as feminine, so as to reinforce the heteronormative and dichotomous constructions of male/female and masculine/feminine. This thesis presents an exploration of the ambivalent relationship between empowerment and surveillance as it presents itself in the lives of elite level women footballers in South Africa. It discusses empowerment and surveillance as they appear at the most intimate levels of women's sporting experience, and impact on the ways in which women footballers discipline and regulate their bodies within the expectations of heteronormativity, femininity and athleticism. The discussion is based on qualitative, informal interviews with 18 elite level women footballers in South Africa, 12 of which are currently members of the 5 senior women's national football team, Banyana Banyana. The remaining 6 participants are members of one of Cape Town's oldest and most successful women's football teams. The interviews took place at a national team camp in Pretoria in October 2008, and in Cape Town between August and November 2008. Utilising discourse analysis and postmodern feminist standpoint theory this thesis concludes that the empowerment and transformation sport has the potential to offer women should not be assumed to follow directly from participation. Women's access to sports participation and sporting subjectivities is stratified, and a complex and ambivalent relationship exists between empowerment and surveillance. This tense relationship between is particularly evident in analyses of gender/race/class intersections, heteronormativity and through examining women's participation at a professional level. Although the neo-liberal feminine athletic validates sporting subjectivities and offers women in elite-level South African football an arena for physical expression and freedom, this empowerment is deeply embedded within the regulatory schemes produced through constructions of a heteronormative feminine aesthetic.