3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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    BUA PUO PHA: A women’s Transgenerational Dialogue on the struggle between personal and cultural expectations in Ntoane Village
    (2019) Thalhuli-Nzuza, Mammatli
    This research explores the tension between women’s personal wellbeing, expectations and desires and the expectations imposed by cultural practices, customs, beliefs and norms. We know that there are harmful traditional cultural practices which violate the rights of women and that policies and legislative instruments have been put in place to outlaw these practices. Examples of such practices in South Africa include marriage by abduction, child marriages and virginity testing (Wadesango, et al., 2009). So far, the nature of interventions that deal with women’s rights in rural South African communities tends to focus on advocacy and education, but fail to recognize the existence of intergenerational conflict among women. This conflict compromises the ability for interventions focusing on women’s rights to have sustainable impact on the community and gives opportunity for further violation of women’s rights through harmful traditional cultural practices. This study demonstrates and offers the use of Story, in Applied Theatre and Drama (Chinyowa, (2001), Fox (2006), Mutwa, (1965), as a tool to engage women on traditional cultural practices which violate their rights. It takes a Generational Approach (Howe and Strauss, 2007) to understanding the underlying causes of the continuation of such practices by engaging with the personal narratives of an intergenerational group of women from Ntoane Village, Limpopo, South Africa. Using Narrative Inquiry (Hinchman & Hinchman, 1997), Reflective Practice (Schon, 1987) and Narrative Practice (Gubrium and Holstein1998) in partnership with Story, women from Generation X and Y cohorts embarked on a four-day process which revealed how the characteristics and behavioural patterns of each generation impact and determine the positioning of women in the community and ultimately women’s experiences of traditional cultural practices. The research findings suggest that applying a Generational Approach to social development processes in rural South African communities, as it proves in this research, may contribute to the sustainability of sociological interventions in such environments.
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    Exploring the perceptions of male student activists in relation to gender transformation and equality: the case of Wits
    (2017) Nyaose, Thandazile
    This research report explores how male Wits university students, who are actively involved in SASCO, a student organisation that advocates for amongst other things, none sexist society, perceive gender transformation and equality. The research approach utilised was qualitative and exploratory in nature with a broad aim of explaining the perceptions of the male students. Informal interaction and semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with ten male student activists and a key informant as methods of data collection. The data, in the form of interview transcripts was than analysed using the IPA approach. Although the participant’s perceptions of gender transformation and equality varied, it was evident, however, that all of the participants agreed that women have been previously and currently disadvantaged in society. The main findings that show the concepts of gender transformation and equality are much more digestible on paper and policies but difficult to implement. It becomes unreasonable to aspect individuals when they get into institutions of higher learning to now unlearn patriarchy and disown patriarchal privileges and benefits that they have enjoyed for most of the lives. The introduction of sustainable gender transformation and equality needs a complete overhaul of gendered societies and societal injustices. Gender injustices should be afforded the same attention that is given to economic inequalities, access to education and political instabilities.
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    Hyperembodiment a jewellery creation hub + community for women
    (2016) Dewar, Katherine Jane
    Hyperembodiment is an approach to negotiating the interface between spaces for women (in Johannesburg’s inner-city) and jewellery as a connector of the body – especially for women – to place. The inner-city, a space that is male-dominated and where women are present but seem to be largely excluded, or to feel unsafe and vulnerable - especially because of what the female body represents in an ‘unsafe’ male space, is also full of vibrancy and activity and has the potential for a positive and radical cultural change, but remains disconnected, nonprogressive and stagnant in thinking as well as non-inclusive of all people. The spatial investigations into places for women (modern feminist spatial concepts) and jewellery as a ‘site’ or interface between the body and architecture, and the interesting parallels it draws between feminist views, space, psychology and the body (process and development of body adornment and jewellery theories), are powerful ways of thinking about space that could suggest an appropriate architectural approach that could realign both spaces for women, a modern approach to the act of making, and creative jewellery practices in Johannesburg. The spatial connotations of the word ‘hyper’ is something that is ‘very’, ‘beyond’, or ‘very active’ and those of the word ‘embodiment’ is something ‘embodying’, ‘representing’ or ‘expressing’ a space. The compound word ‘Hyperembodiment’ used here means beyond embodiment, or very actively personifying a space and its innate properties of land, earth, materials, and the bodies (people) in it. It is also all the layers of embodiment – physical, historical, social layers – that are collaged together in one time and in one space to create a high-intensity and complex expression of place. Jewellery as a connector; for the body and for woman to place, would be these collaged layers made into a physical object and symbol made from the materials, earth, historical and social layers. It is a simultaneous case of the wearer embodying the place, and the place embodying the wearer.
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    Women in mining : occupational culture and gendered identities in the making
    (2016) Benya, Asanda
    This research contributes to an understanding of how female mineworkers make sense of themselves and how gender identities are constructed in mining. Mine work has for a long time been seen as allowing for particular masculine self-formations and mineworkers embodying specific mining masculine subjectivities. The entrance of women in South African mines from 2004 and their allocation into occupations that were previously exclusively reserved for men is a significant challenge and a disruption to masculine subjectivities and the occupational culture. This thesis illustrates what transpires when socially constructed gender boundaries are crossed. This is what the women are doing with their entry into underground mining. For ten and a half months, between 2011 and 2012 I worked in the mines and lived with mineworkers. During this period I completely submerged myself into the life world of mine workers to get an in-depth understanding of the ways female mineworkers understand themselves and navigate the masculine mining world. I managed to get the subtle, nuanced, instantaneous and unnoticeable ways which produce and reproduce the fluid and contested gender identities. Drawing on insights from a range of feminist theorists and feminist readings of theories I argue that the construction of gendered identities in mining is an ongoing embodied performative process which is articulated in fluid ways in different mining spaces within certain structural, relational and historical constraints. The thesis presents a typology outlining four categories of femininities; mafazi, money makers, real mafazi and madoda straight, that are performed and produced underground by women mineworkers. At home these performances are unstable and disrupted as women attempt to reconcile their role as mothers, wives and their workplace 2 identities as underground miners with their notions of femininity. This necessitates a renegotiation of gender ideologies, performances and identities. In this thesis I succinctly present the fluid, multiple, contradictory and contested processes involved in constructing gendered identities; above ground, underground, and at home. Drawing from this evidence I conclude that women do not approach the workplace or labour process as empty vessels or act as cogs-in the mining machines but are active agents in the construction of their gender identities. The key elements I use to analyse gendered identities are; gendered spaces, embodiment, social and material bodies (as sites of control, resistance and agency) and performativity. I argue that all of these converge and are central to the construction of gendered identities. Key Words: Women in mining, gendered identities, subjectivities, femininities, masculinities, gender performances, embodiment, gendered spaces, gender transformation.
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