School of Human and Community Development (ETDs)
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37989
Browse
14 results
Search Results
Item 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, SimangeleThis 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.Item The impact of stalking and harassment in females of intimate partner violence in Johannesburg following the breakup of a relationship(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Du Toit, Marlene; Goldschmidt, LynneStalking and harassment should be considered a gender-based violence crime. Literature suggests that stalking and harassment often occur post-breakup of a relationship. It is often difficult to prove that a person is being stalked and harassed, hence the lack of legal avenues to protect oneself from stalking and harassment discussed herein. This research focused on stalking and harassment by a former intimate partner. The total number of participants was eight. The participants were recruited via Lifeline, an organisation that offers support to community members. Semi-structured interviews were conducted. The participants narrated their experiences and allowed the researcher to explore further during interviews. The interviews were recorded for analysis purposes. Thematic analysis was chosen as a method of analysis. Findings highlighted a form of abuse within the relationship that continued to evolve into stalking and harassment post the breakup. Former intimate partners sometimes used family members and friends to reach their victims. Technology was also used to reach the victims when unwanted visitation proved to be unsuccessful. Victims suffered psychological and physical distress due to stalking and harassment. Participants employed different coping mechanisms and used resources at their disposal, much outside of the judicial realm. There was a need expressed for the justice system to be more supportive and regard stalking and harassment seriously as a crime.Item 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, HugoThis 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.Item Sub-Saharan African Refugee Women’s Lived Experiences of Gender-Based Violence and Their Adaptive Processes(2024) Davis, Catherine; Patel, RubyPolitical refugees from sub-Saharan African countries are often internally displaced and forced to flee from their homes and countries of origin out of fear for their lives. Many sub-Saharan African refugees migrate to South Africa in search for refuge and hope to resettle in the new host country that will award them the opportunities and support to start anew. However, refugee women face significant adversities before, during and after resettlement, with their experiences often characterised by gender-based violence (GBV) violations and daily hardships that cause immense stress, trauma, and at times, psychopathology. This study aims to shed some light on how the sub- Saharan African refugee women experience and navigate spaces of violence, discrimination and oppression, in order to inform future therapeutic interventions and policy focused on addressing inequalities and striving for a more just system and society. Furthermore, despite the refugee women facing such adversities, many refugees demonstrate an enormous ability to adapt, adjust and cope that aids their resilience and resettlement process in the host country. The adaptive processes one employs, and the efficiency of such, is deeply rooted within context and is influenced by cultural, social, economic, political, and personal factors. Accordingly, this study endeavours to contribute to the body of knowledge by using an intersectionality approach to explore sub-Saharan African refugee womens’ experiences of GBV and the adaptive processes they use to manage and cope with the trauma, stress and adversity they have experienced throughout the migratory process. To do this, a qualitative study was conducted amongst 15 sub- Saharan African refugee women from a therapeutic NGO, using source data in the form of therapeutic Intervention Process Notes (IPNs). The findings from the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) reveal themes of perpetual sources of GBV and stress, both within South Africa and their countries of origin of the DRC, Burundi, Ethiopia and Somalia, as well as the pervasive role of patriarchy in contributing to the participants’ experiences of domestic violence and intimate partner violence (IPV). Within each of these themes, various intersectional identities played a role in facilitating and compounding the sub-Saharan African refugee womens’ unique experiences of vulnerability, GBV, oppression and marginalisation. Nonetheless, many of these women have continued to be resourceful, adjust and find creative ways of surviving. Hence, resilience emerged as a fourth salient theme. Their experiences suggest a tumultuous process of escaping and/or enduring violence and establishing a sense of safety and belonging amongst daily multifaceted stressors and inequalities, but also perceive the women as agentic drivers in their ability to hold onto hope, cope and persevere through adversity.Item From Fatherlessness to fatherhood: Experiences of adult Black South African men in the Gauteng Province.(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Senwamadi, Jacob Ramasoane Makgoane John; Matee, HopolangThis study aimed to explore the experiences of Black South African first-time fathers who grew up without their biological fathers, as well as how these men perceive their fathers’ absence to have influenced their experiences of fatherhood. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with five Black first-time fathers between the ages of 25-30. The study followed a qualitative explorative design where the participants were recruited using purposive sampling. The findings of the study revealed that some of the first-time fathers had known their biological fathers’ identities during childhood even though they were not physically or financially present in their lives. Furthermore, they did not form any close relationship with them. The participants reported to have experienced rejection from their fathers while growing up. There was a common thread amongst the participants with regards to the need to feel accepted by their biological fathers. This appeared to be a powerful motivational basis for the men’s’ interpersonal experiences. The experience of rejection in childhood has been found to have many negative effects on an individual’s development later in life. This includes increased aggression, increased internalising of difficulties in adolescence, and psychopathological symptoms in adulthood. It has also been found that individuals with this experience are more likely to hold distorted mental representations that could lead to perceiving rejection and hostility in interpersonal relationships, and to further interpret relationships as being untrustworthy and unpredictable. What the participants experienced in this study is consistent with what has been reported in psychoanalytic literature; fatherhood is defined in connection to the father's function in the Oedipus complex where his function as an intrapsychic construct, also known as the "internal father," and their involvement in child development. It was concluded that in post-apartheid South Africa, numerous factors such as high levels of unemployment, poverty, and inequality are amongst the major determinants of family disruptions particularly among the Black people. The situation is exacerbated by the burden of HIV/AIDS and violence-related mortality. The family and parental practices have been significantly affected leaving so many children growing up without biological fathers, either through rejection or premature death.Item Experiences of Gender Roles in Young Adults Living in Soweto(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-11) Mdunge, Fundiswa Rejoice Lucia; Patel, RubyThe study explores the more contemporary meanings and experiences of gender roles which have been developed by young adults over the years in their small-lived, contemporary experiences within Soweto. The study draws on in-depth interviews conducted with six young adult men and women and is carried out using a qualitative design. In exploring the topic of gender roles, normative patterns of change were identified which can contribute to the future discourse of gender role development. These normative patterns of change were attributed to ecological influences from the individual, their family, and their local and international communities, as well as intersectional influences which were identified as also playing a role in the participants’ experiences of gender. The study reveals participants’ experiences which are related to themes of gendered social pressures and socialisation, generational experiences of traditional and non-traditional gender roles, gendered divides and harmful gender stereotypes, gender identity conflicts in the ecological system, social ostracisation, issues of adultification, and views on patriarchal gendered ideologies and the maternal gatekeepers of these ideologies. The participants’ stories reveal fractures in their contemporary gender role ideology and their gender role development during their upbringing. Despite these fractures, they express hopes to develop gender role experiences which incorporate both traditionally socialised gender roles and non-traditionally developed understandings of gender and gender roles in their future adult years, as a means to create their own personal gendered experiences based on their exposure to different ecological environments.Item Gender-Based Violence: Lived experiences of female students at the University of the Witwatersrand(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Kgolane, Serole Joy; Langa, MaloseThis research aimed to explore experiences of Gender based violence (GBV) among female students at the University of the Witwatersrand. It sought to ascertain how these experiences unfolded as well as the impact they have had on the students. Intersectionality theory was applied as the theoretical framework to observe the impact of overlapping identities on the students’ experiences of GBV. The study consisted of seven female participants who were selected using a volunteer sampling method. Interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyse the transcribed interviews and derive themes from the collected data. Four themes in total were identified: power relations, internal experience, normalization of GBV, and help-seeking. The objectives of the study were used to guide the analysis of the themes. The findings showed that students face stalking, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse perpetrated mostly by fellow male students. Moreover, influences of hegemonic masculinity and gendered power imbalances played a role in the perpetration of violence against the female students. Furthermore, the findings indicate that these experiences had adverse effects on the mental well-being of the students and led the students to adopt various coping strategies while often failing to engage in help-seeking behaviour.Item The Black Homoerotic Oedipus: An Exploratory Multiple-Case Study on the Possible Cross-Cultural Applicability of a Depathologized Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-02) Bloomberg, Jonti Joey; Bain, KatherineClassical psychoanalytic theory famously hypothesises a process in the aetiology of male homosexuality whereby a boy identifies with his mother and takes himself as a love-object. In addition to acknowledging that there may be various mechanisms in the development of a homosexual disposition, contemporary psychodynamic theoreticians have attempted to distance themselves from this view by emphasizing the primacy of the negative Oedipus complex and the ‘heretical’ possibility of one being able to identify with and lust the same object in the development of a homosexual object choice in adulthood. The present study sought to determine the potential cross-cultural applicability of this aforementioned depathologized psychoanalytic theory of male homosexuality by way of three openly homosexual Black South African men. The study found that aspects of both the classical and depathologized psychoanalytic theories might have cross-cultural applicability. It also brought to the fore the many difficulties and forms of discrimination that Black South African homosexual men face within their communities.Item “It’s not you that needs to change, it’s the system that needs to change” – The narratives of South African women professionals working with Gender-Based Violence(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Ramlucken, Roxanne; Kiguwa, PeaceProfessional South African women who encounter gender-based violence in their field have important and potentially transformational experiences to share on addressing this issue. These professionals have experience and in-depth knowledge of the realities of working with gender-based violence. They can use their expertise to conceptualise and explain this phenomenon. They understand how gender-based violence is presented in society and their recommendations are informed by pragmatic reasoning. This study utilised a qualitative research method to obtain the narratives of these women that work in psychology, community health work, social work, legal work and journalism. This paper used a combination of three theoretical frameworks: narrative theory, post-structural feminist theory and African feminist theory. The synergies between these three theories prioritised the voice of the participants and allowed for a critical engagement with the narratives. The use of multiple professions accounts for the complex and multidimensional elements that contribute to the levels of gender-based violence in South Africa. The findings suggest the cultural acceptance of violence and patriarchal values are ingrained into the fabric of society. Gender-based violence is a systemic issue that prevails through insufficient implementation of legislation and the lack of accountability by official personnel.Item Exploring the perceptions of Adolescent’s Black Female Learners in Public School of STEM Careers in terms of its significance towards individual Economic Empowerment: A case study of Bona Comprehensive High School in Soweto, South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06) Sikhosana, Hope Nosipho; Nkomo, ThobekaLow enrolment of females in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers is a persistent problem in South Africa and Globally. The issue was greatly exacerbated by the history of gender-based discrimination and oppression, particularly in the workplace and in education. This unequal way of life between men and women of different races was established and maintained in large part by power structures like apartheid and patriarchy. Women have been underrepresented in STEM disciplines as a result of discrimination and sexism. But as the balance of power shifted over the years, many women—and particularly those from historically marginalized groups—were given encouragement to enter STEM areas. However, despite the efforts, women number in STEM remains low. The study investigated how Black adolescent female students in public schools perceived STEM occupations to better understand the low representation of women in STEM fields. The researcher conducted a qualitative case study at Bona Comprehensive School in Soweto to fulfil this goal. A purposive sampling strategy was utilized to choose 1 Life Orientation teacher, while an intentional snowball sampling technique was used to sample 10 Black Adolescent Female students. In-depth one-on-one telephone interviews were performed to collect data, with a semi-structured interview schedule serving as the research tool. Thematic content analysis was used to examine the data that had been gathered. Results show that female students view occupations in medical favourably because they see them as safe and feminine, whereas they view careers in electrical engineering and construction as dangerous and masculine. Also, the results demonstrate that participants' positive perceptions were influenced by the good pay associated with STEM fields because they felt that economic empowerment was crucial to changing their lives and the lives of their families. The lack of resources from the school for hands-on learning, however, was a challenge for the female students as they pursued STEM degrees. In order to keep and attract female students in STEM fields, there is a need to better support them throughout their academic careers. In the research report's latter sections, recommendations are given.