Gender Inequalities in South African Schools: New Complexities

Author(s):  
Tia Linda Zuze ◽  
Unathi Beku
2019 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kgope P. Moalusi ◽  
Candice M. Jones

Orientation: Even though there has been a phenomenal increase in the number of women employed in the mining industry, the figures hide many gender inequalities as the gendered impediments to career advancement persist despite South Africa’s remarkable equity policy regime. However, it is unclear, from the perspective of the women themselves, how their career advancement is encumbered.Research purpose: This study reflects on the prospects for career advancement by exploring the work and organisational experiences of women in core mining positions in an open-cast mining organisation in South Africa.Motivation for the study: To reflect on the prospects for career advancement of women in core mining positions.Research approach, design and method: Eight professional women, selected through a purposive sampling procedure, participated in in-depth unstructured interviews. Data were analysed using Creswell’s simplified version of the Stevick–Colaizzi–Keen method, guided by the lens of gendered organisations.Main findings: Three themes emerged: (1) male domination that has marginalised women and compelled them to emulate masculinity has legitimised existing gender barriers, (2) the long, awkward and unpredictable hours of work have deepened women’s time constraints because they have to combine the home or family caretaker role with work, and (3) the essence of being a woman in a mining organisation.Practical/managerial implications: The study may present South African managers with a better understanding of how work and organisational features, policies, daily practices and discourses impede career advancement of women in core mining positions. Organisations should train managers to create conditions that minimise barriers and maximise performance and advancement, and align retention strategies.Contribution/value-add: This study builds on existing knowledge about career advancement of women by providing new and valuable information specific to women in core mining positions in an open-cast mining organisation in South Africa, seen through the lens of gendered organisational theory. The findings highlight the need for organisational theory research that is responsive to the subtle issues and gendered assumptions that sustain encumbrances to women’s career trajectories.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  

The South African government implemented different legislative mechanisms in an attempt to address gender equality in the workplace, discrimination, and empowering women. To review whether there has been any progress after implementing these legislative mechanisms, this paper empirically analyzes the advancement of gender equality in the South African workplace as of 2020. It also provides an overview of different legislative mechanisms implemented by the government of South Africa as an endeavor to achieve gender equality in the workplace and equal opportunities for all regardless of gender. The main objective of this paper is to review gender equality progress in the South African workplace and a qualitative research method has been used to analyze different gender inequalities. Lastly, the paper provides an overview of gender equality analysis in different occupational levels in the South African workplace. The research shows that regardless of the South African government’s different legislative mechanisms to address gender equality, progress is still gloomy as discrimination against women in the workplace continues and the men remain dominant. The data analyses conclude that progress in addressing gender equality has been inert, delaying equal opportunities for all South Africans.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Knowles

This article introduces a research project that works with former Extended Studies Programme students to make knowledge that emerges through online, multimodal collaborations. Knowledge-making is not politically neutral, and the project and article are responding in part to the calls of the 2015/2016 South African student protesters to decolonise and transform university curricula. The project draws on African feminist ideas, emphasising the intersectional oppressions of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, which continue to influence theoretical choices in the knowledge hierarchies of South African and African universities. The “race”, class and gender inequalities that drive success or failure at university and in society become some of the topics addressed in the project, where former students as co-researchers collaborate to devise the topics, responses, and kinds of dissemination. Ntseane’s overlapping principles of a collective worldview, spirituality, a shared orientation to knowledge, and communal knowledge-making are motifs that influence how the project is imagined and run. My positionality as lead researcher and former lecturer of the co-researchers is navigated using African feminist guidance, which also informs the ethical principles of the project.  


2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cora Burnett

The voices of South African feminists and womanists are relatively absent from public debates concerning women’s participation and empowerment in sport. This paper represents a contribution to the gender discourse, drawing on feminist paradigms and reflecting on the marginality of South African women in society and in sport. The findings of two separate studies, undertaken in 1977 and 1999 respectively, are reported. The research focused on the assessment of the impact of the Sports Leaders Programme (as part of the South Africa-United Kingdom Sports Initiative) and the junior component of the sports development programme initiated by the Australian Sports Commission (Super Kidz). Data were collected by means of structured interviews from different stakeholders at macro- (national), meso- (community/institutional) and micro- (individual) levels. A representative sample for the Sports Leaders Programme included 17 co-ordinators and facilitators (at national and provincial levels) and nine sports leaders at community level. To obtain qualitative data concerning the Super Kidz Programme, two provinces were targeted for data collection. A quota sample of seven schools was selected as the experimental group (having introduced the programme) and five schools in close proximity acted as controls. One hundred and forty-four role-players at different levels of participation were interviewed. To obtain some triangulation of data, 110 role-players also participated in focus groups. The data reflecting the position and involvement of women in these programmes were analysed. Against the reality of the majority of women living in conditions of chronic poverty, exposed to patriarchy, being ideologically stereotyped and structurally marginalized, they were, to a large extent absent, and their efforts unrecognised in the institutionalised domain of sport. It was concluded that sport is a severely gendered domain in which male hegemony is acted out and perpetuated whereas women in impoverished communities view access to sport as peripheral in their everyday struggle for material survival. National agencies should therefore not rely on female volunteers to facilitate sports development in impoverished communities but to strategize differently while also redressing ideological and structural gender inequalities in the wider social context.


2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-64
Author(s):  
M. Ntuli ◽  
M. Chitiga-Mabugu ◽  
S. Karuaihe ◽  
F. Alaba ◽  
E. Tsoanamatsie ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
N. H. Olson ◽  
T. S. Baker ◽  
Wu Bo Mu ◽  
J. E. Johnson ◽  
D. A. Hendry

Nudaurelia capensis β virus (NβV) is an RNA virus of the South African Pine Emperor moth, Nudaurelia cytherea capensis (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae). The NβV capsid is a T = 4 icosahedron that contains 60T = 240 subunits of the coat protein (Mr = 61,000). A three-dimensional reconstruction of the NβV capsid was previously computed from visions embedded in negative stain suspended over holes in a carbon film. We have re-examined the three-dimensional structure of NβV, using cryo-microscopy to examine the native, unstained structure of the virion and to provide a initial phasing model for high-resolution x-ray crystallographic studiesNβV was purified and prepared for cryo-microscopy as described. Micrographs were recorded ∼1 - 2 μm underfocus at a magnification of 49,000X with a total electron dose of about 1800 e-/nm2.


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