Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37991

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Subject: search.filters.subject.SDG-5: Gender equality

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    A study of South African gay male psychotherapists’ experienced subjectivities
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Owen, Michael; Long, Carol
    Primary objective: This study’s primary objective was to investigate the subjectivities of gay male psychotherapists, with a particular focus on how they conceive of their identities, specifically their gay and psychotherapist identities, the potential overlapping of these identities, and how the overlap may play out intersubjectively in the privacy of therapeutic settings between gay male psychotherapists and their patients. Research design: The research design used a psychosocial approach focused on uncovering how intrapsychic life and work are influenced or mirrored by wider social constructions, using a sample of practising gay male psychotherapists. Methods and procedures: Ten self-identified gay male psychotherapists with at least three years of clinical experience were asked to participate voluntarily in semi-structured interviews. The transcribed data were analysed, using psychosocial methods, and paying particular attention to reflexivity. Main outcomes and results: This research illustrated how the subjective contemplation of overlapping gay and psychotherapist identities ran through the lived experiences of this sample, in terms of their meaning-making and understanding of their professional and personal lives. Themes that emerged around what it means to be a gay male psychotherapist were othering and feeling othered, which closely mirrored developmental considerations and their lived experiences of othering, the complexity of self-disclosure by gay male psychotherapist and problems of erotic countertransference and, finally, powerful novel vulnerable and colliding aspects of considering reflexivity that emerged for both gay psychotherapists and the researcher in the research encounter.
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    Young women’s accounts of intimate partner violence in cohabiting relationships in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Makongoza, Matamela Fulufhelo Beatrice; Kiguwa, Peace; Mayisela, Simangele
    This thesis explores young women’s accounts of intimate partner violence in cohabiting relationships in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province. The constructivism paradigm aided in understanding young women’s experiences of intimate partner violence in cohabitating relationships and how these women navigate their lives in a cultural context that denounces cohabitation, making them vulnerable to possible gender-based violence. Cultural discourse can guide how young women make meaning and respond to their experiences of violence. This study suggests the intersectionality of different African philosophical lenses, including African psychological perspective, Ubuntu, and Vygotsky’s cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). There have been studies on intimate partner violence among young women in South Africa which report on the nature, extent, and severity of intimate partner violence against young women. Scholars focused their research on intimate partner violence against young women in boyfriend- and-girlfriend type relationships from different contextual backgrounds. Some studies also report on the experiences of violence in cohabitation relationships although these were not specifically focused on the context. This qualitative study presents the nature and forms of violence experienced by 10 young women between the ages and 18 and 24 years in cohabiting relationships in the rural Vhembe District, Limpopo Province. Young women were enlisted from the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme. Thematic analysis was used. Although cohabitation is not a new phenomenon in heterosexual relationships, violent incidences in cohabitation relationships are a trend in Africa. Young women reflected on their experiences of intimate partner violence within a cultural context that condemns cohabitation, referring to it as matula (taboo). They acknowledged living in a challenging time, and that forms of violence escalate the already existing problems. They also talked about the dangers of leaving an abusive partner, raised concerns about bystander issues, and shared that some spaces – both private and public – contribute to intimate partner violence against young women, instilling fear in these women. This study presents that young women in cohabiting relationships are more vulnerable because the nature of these relationships is not culturally acknowledged by parents and communities in general. Similarly, some African studies documented in this study found that it is better for young women to denounce cohabiting relationships and opt for marriage instead, or else they risk being disowned by their parents. This research shows that community factors such as gender inequality, social norms which accept violence, lack of support, and financial dependency on the partner contribute to the vulnerability of young women in cohabiting relationships. Interventions which prevent the implementation of rigid cultural norms and traditions, and which change the attitudes of individuals towards intimate partner violence may prevent the escalation of intimate partner violence in general. This study proposes that doing away with bystanders doing nothing, embracing relationship diversity, and revisiting the practice of Ubuntu could reduce the escalation of intimate partner violence.
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    An Exploration of Life and Career Narratives of Black Senior Managers: The Storied Habitus of Career Navigation
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Ramodibe, Refiloe; Canham, Hugo
    This research located black senior managers within a temporal frame that links them with their families, communities, childhoods, socio-political and economic histories. This location shed new light since it illuminated their lives and careers in new ways that are grounded in history and context. It enabled an understanding of black senior managers as bearing histories that they bring along with them into the workplace. To explore the stories of these senior managers, I conducted in-depth narrative interviews with twenty black men and black women who occupy senior positions within the financial services sector. Accessing these histories through the genre of narrative assisted in showcasing what is enabled by storying one’s life, therefore creating circuits of meaning-making that connect seemingly disparate sites of the personal, historical, social and workplace. At its core then, this project was about storying the early lives of black senior managers by locating them as mostly working class, caught up in the struggles against apartheid for democratisation, as benefiting from the opportunities enabled by the transition to democracy, as entering the white and masculine corporate workplace of the financial services sector, and as reaching and navigating seniority in their organisations. The participant’s narratives were read through the lenses of narrative theory, habitus, the black feminist theory of intersectionality, and critical race theory. The basic assumption of habitus is that the way one acts and behaves is influenced by where one comes from and one’s dispositions, including contextually salient identity categories, such as race, class, and gender. The basis of these theories is the assumption that there might be a difference in how people of varying class backgrounds and black men and women narrate their stories of mobility. The stories told by participants highlighted the role of the senior managers’ habitus in shaping their identities and trajectories. Childhood experiences and parental influences were found to have shaped their later behaviours in navigating their career journeys. Access to mentors and sponsors early on in their careers was found to have provided the senior managers with the capital that allowed them to progress to more senior roles. Refuting the existing narrative that black people move between organisations excessively, senior managers’ tenure illustrated that they stayed in their organisations for longer periods than industry norms. Notwithstanding their tenure, their stories suggest that unaccommodating cultures and unconscious bias remain prevalent in the financial services sector. Organisations that had more black people in senior roles were found to drive the transformation agenda iv more intentionally. The black senior managers understood their role as that of influencing the cultures of their organisations while also paying it forward by driving the transformation agenda. In the process of sharing their life and career stories, the black senior managers articulated their experiences and understanding of themselves, others, and the world. Therefore, not only did the personal narratives enlighten us about the participants’ personal and working lives, but they illuminated how their identities as black senior managers working within the financial services sector were shaped over time. A prominent finding from the study was that while the black senior managers shared similar experiences related to race, their experiences differed in terms of their family backgrounds and schooling experiences in their childhood. Black people’s experiences may be common in certain aspects and different in others. This necessitates the importance of exploring heterogeneity in organisational studies. This study contributes to organisational studies, gender and critical race studies, history and social theory.
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    Gendered Affective Economies of Male Sexual Violence Against Men in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Chitiki, Elizabeth; Nkomo, Nkululeko; Kiguwa, Peace
    Within the South African context, sexual violence against men is an under-researched phenomenon, and abuse against men is largely characterized by silence. This study focused attention on discursive and affective dimensions of societal responses to sexual violence against men (heterosexual, gay, bisexual, and transgender men). At the pinna core of this research was the interrogation of how male victim-survivors of sexual violence are constructed within contexts that are embedded with gender, sexuality, and masculinity governing ideologies. Concerning sexual violence against men, dominant sexual constructions of men perceive men as sexually promiscuous and always ready for sex. Then, one ought to pose a question about how men's sexual agency and subjectivity are constructed when one or more of these social constructs are violated in the case of sexual violence. Using data from online radio talk podcasts and virtual ethnographies, I analyse societal responses to male sexual violence. Data were analysed using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis in tandem with Affect theory. The results of this research are presented in three chapters. The first chapter of the analysis discusses victim worthiness and empathy in social constructions of male sexual violence. The second chapter of the analysis shows the humanization of a (de)humanized subject in understanding prison rape via affective tropes. The third chapter of the analysis discusses the unmasking of institutional culpability through affective economies of shared pain and rage. Thus, the findings of the study highlighted that particular discursive constructions and affective tropes are useful in the negotiation, and surfacing of particular subjectivities in connection to male sexual violence.