Browsing by Department "Gender Studies"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 50
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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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    Beyond the record : the political economy of cross border trade between Cyangugu, Rwanda and Bukavu, DR Congo
    (2003) Mthembu-Salter, Gregory; Wilson, Francis
    Bibliography: leaves 138-143.
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    Bioprospecting the African Renaissance: The new value of muthi in South Africa
    (BioMed Central Ltd, 2008) Reihling, Hanspeter CW
    This article gives an overview of anthropological research on bioprospecting in general and of available literature related to bioprospecting particularly in South Africa. It points out how new insights on value regimes concerning plant-based medicines may be gained through further research and is meant to contribute to a critical discussion about the ethics of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). In South Africa, traditional healers, plant gatherers, petty traders, researchers and private investors are assembled around the issues of standardization and commercialization of knowledge about plants. This coincides with a nation-building project which promotes the revitalization of local knowledge within the so called African Renaissance. A social science analysis of the transformation of so called Traditional Medicine (TM) may shed light onto this renaissance by tracing social arenas in which different regimes of value are brought into conflict. When medicinal plants turn into assets in a national and global economy, they seem to be manipulated and transformed in relation to their capacity to promote health, their market value, and their potential to construct new ethics of development. In this context, the translation of socially and culturally situated local knowledge about muthi into global pharmaceuticals creates new forms of agency as well as new power differentials between the different actors involved.
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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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    Constructing rape, imagining self : discourses of rape and gender subjectivity in South Africa
    (2007) Dosekun, Simidele
    This thesis explores the meanings and impact of rape in South Africa for fifteen women located at the University of Cape Town (UCT) who claim to have never experienced rape. Drawing upon feminist post-structuralist theories of subjectivity and taking a discursive analytic approach, the thesis explores how these women construct the phenomenon of rape in their society and thereby imagine themselves. It is based upon empirical data collected through qualitative interviews. Analysis of this data shows that the women discursively construct rape as highly prevalent in South Africa but ordinarily distant from their personal lives, concerning then 'the Other.' However, it is argued that the women also construct themselves as gendered and embodied subjects inherently vulnerable to male violence such as rape. This means that the fear and imagination of rape are not absent from their daily lives, but rather shape their sense of safety, agency, sexuality and citizenship in South Africa. Because these fifteen women deny personal experiences of rape, the thesis shows that they draw on public discourses and their subjective imaginations to theorise rape and rape crisis in post-apartheid South Africa.
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    Dancing with dangerous desires : the performance of femininity and experiences of pleasure and danger by young black women within club spaces
    (2007) McLaren, Mary Gugu Tizita; Salo, Elaine
    This research was carried out in Langa Township, Cape Town and worked with 7 young black women, between the ages of 19 and 26 years old. The aim was to explore the fluidity of identity, in particular gender identity, by exploring the performance of 'normative' femininity and 'hidden/subversive' femininity performed in different spaces. The focus was on 'hidden/subversive' femininity and the experiences of pleasure and danger in clubs spaces in Cape Town. It was found that these experiences centre on appearance, use of alcohol and dancing and expose the way in which young women negotiate between the pleasurable and dangerous that, consciously or unconsciously, push the boundaries of entrenched gender norms. In addition, owing 10 the nature of the research, constructions of masculinity were also explored and discovered to have a profound impact on young women's experiences within club spaces and in their everyday lives, relating to sexual relationships. This study aims to reveal the power and agency of young women, as well as the struggles and restrictions.
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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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    Eating attitudes and behaviours in a diverse group of high school students in the Western Cape
    (2003) Russell, Basil; Louw, Johann; Le Grange, Daniel
    A total of 813 male and female high school students in the Western Cape between grades 10 and 12 completed a questionnaire survey on their eating attitudes and behaviours. The mean age for the sample was 16.77 years. The survey included a Demographic Questionnaire, the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26), the Bulimic Investigatory Test, Edinburgh (BITE), the Questionnaire of Eating and Weight Patterns Revised (QEWP-R) and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.
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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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    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 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 experiences of breast cancer survivors
    (2012-11) UCT Knowledge Co-op
    This research was conducted to contribute to the knowledge base of the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA). Research indicates that breast cancer is diagnosed in approximately one in twenty-nine women in South Africa. Women with lower income often experience lengthy waiting periods between diagnosis and treatment. Very little qualitative research has been conducted to explore lived experiences of patients with breast cancer. This project set out to explore women's experiences at various stages of treatment. Understanding better what it is like for them will help CANSA and others to develop important emotional and other support for women on this journey.
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    Exploring the experiences of breast cancer survivors at various stages of treatment: an analysis of the constructions of breast cancer and of femininity - summary report for CANSA
    (2013-03) Mulder, Anja
    This research was conducted towards an Honours degree in Gender Studies at the University of Cape Town, as well as to contribute to the knowledge base of the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA). The focus of this research was to explore and document the experiences and needs of women with breast cancer, waiting for radiation treatment. By applying a gendered framework through which to view these experiences, emphasis was also placed on breast cancer survivors' conceptualisations of feminine identity and how their breast cancer and treatment trajectory impacted on these. Drawing on the narratives of women's lived experiences, it is my hope that information gained from this study will help CANSA to develop additional emotional support for women.
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    Exploring the Meaning of Fatherhood in Guguletu
    (2013-10) UCT Knowledge Co-op
    This was a study conducted by a Gender Studies Honours student who collaborated with the NGO Ikamva Labantu in Guguletu. The NGO was interested in understanding men's involvement as fathers and what support they needed for this role. The aim of the study was two fold: - to explore the experiences of fathers who were permanently involved in their children's lives, and - to unpack how fatherhood is practiced in South Africa This was done by examining how these men assumed their role, how their experiences were shaped, the demands that follow fatherhood, and highlighting some of the support structures they relied on in times of hardships.
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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.
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    Gay language in Cape Town: a study of Gayle - attitudes, history and usage
    (2014) Luyt, Kathryn M; Mesthrie, Rajend
    This study focuses on the 'language' which emerged primarily from the white and coloured gay male populations of Cape Town during the apartheid years. With its roots in 'moffie' drag culture, the 'language' of Gayle, was last studied by Ken Cage in his 1999 MA dissertation for the Rand Afrikaans University, An investigation into the form and function of language used by gay men in South Africa which was the precursor to his 2003 book Gayle: the language of kinks and queens: a history and dictionary of gay language in South Africa, the only dictionary of Gayle. Gayle?s original function, to give white and coloured gay men a language of secrecy to be able to talk to one another in public without facing prosecution as well as to have an in-group language of belonging, is changing in post-apartheid South Africa. With LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intergender) rights improving in South Africa (same-sex marriages were legalised in 2006 making it the fifth country in the world and the first in Africa to do so), the original function of Gayle, for speakers to avoid prosecution, is no longer a legal threat. With more people openly sharing their sexual orientation and South African citizens in general becoming more educated and accepting of a variety of sexual orientations, Gayle continues to change. Via a comprehensive literature review and a qualitative, quantitative questionnaire, my research discusses the history, attitudes and usage of Gayle by speakers in Cape Town. This topic is important in sociolinguistics, particularly from a language and sexuality perspective as it will bring to light past and current attitudes and usages of gay language in Cape Town and South Africa. Gay rights are topical particularly with South Africa's legal advancements (compared with itself and other countries worldwide). With Cape Town being the 'gay capital of Africa', it is culturally important to document the gay community's 'language', which is reflective of other changes within the community.