Research Publications (Women & Gender Studies)

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Food shaming and race, and hungry translations
(Taylor & Francis, 2023) Lewis, Desiree
Eating While Black: Food Shaming and Race in America by Psyche A. Williams-Forson (2022) and Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability by Richa Nagar (2019) deal with food and hunger in relation to the very different geo-political regions of North America and India. At the same time, they enter into dialogue with each other in exploring how socially situated bodies � othered in gendered, raced and neoliberal systems and discourses � navigate and resist oppressive food politics. As both authors also show, critical approaches to food politics should entail much more than attention to who gets to eat well, or why certain groups are able to waste food obscenely while most of the world�s population starves, cannot make informed and healthy food choices, or inhabits food deserts, those foodscapes of near-starvation created by the corporate food industry�s hunger for profits. As the authors show, exploring the politics of food, eating and hunger should focus also on the languages and attitudes surrounding how these are connected to radical struggles for human freedom. By focusing on the represented and imagined connections between human desires and experiences on one hand and food and hunger on the other, Williams-Forson and Nagar also encourage us to interrogate and re-imagine our relationships to both humans as well as nature and other living beings. These books� perspectives from different continents invite us to consider the trans-continental context of multiple subaltern struggles through the lens of food.
Greener on the other side: Tracing stories of amaranth and moringa through indenture
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023) Naidoo, Pralini
My research, with its focus on women and food seed through the lens of indenture, has led me into the world ofleafy green vegetables and their intimate connection to women who had been brought to South Africa to servicecolonial plantations. Leafy greens are currently buzzwords in thefitness, health, vegan, and vegetarianvocabulary. Occasionally, another leaf isdiscoveredby the doyens of fancy cuisine, researchers orexperts,elevating anunknowndark green leaf to superfood status. In the past few decades moringa and amaranthhave gained popularity in scientific and culinary circles. This sudden spurt of interest in a food that has been traditionally eaten for years in ex-indentured communities, among many others, has often elicited from this community, wry amusement, confusion at its celebrity status or pride at its recognition. Delving into research transcripts and fieldwork notes, I observe, not only, how these communities consume moringa and amaranth, but the variety of ways the human and other-than-human stories are entangled. I also consider the impact/benefits of the commodification of foods and seeds such as moringa and amaranth, on the many invisible people who have been propagating, consuming and storying the plant before its discovery.
Parents resist sexuality education through digital activism
(SAGE Publications, 2022) Ngabaza, Sisa
South Africa has high rates of HIV infection among its young population, high rates of unintended pregnancy among the youth, and extremely high rates of gender-based violence. Given all this, it is essential that young people be taught skills that will enable them to manage their sexuality. Schools have been shown to be best placed to provide accurate and relevant information on young people�s sexualities. Through the Life Orientation (LO) curriculum, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) offers age-appropriate sexuality education as a response to these concerns. However, research in sexuality education shows that there is a lack of guidance and preparedness by educators, and this hampers how sexuality education is delivered in South African schools. A recent attempt by the DBE to upscale and strengthen the sexuality education curriculum in South African schools was met with resistance from parents and other lobby groups. This resistance was driven across many different media platforms, and particularly through an online hashtag #LeaveOurKidsAlone, largely on Facebook and Twitter. Through this resistance, we are introduced to parents/adult response to the teaching and learning of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in South African schools, a voice that has been missing to a great extent in this debate.
Be a little careful: Women, violence, and performance in India
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Arora, Swati
In this article Swati Arora analyzes a contemporary Indian feminist performance, Thoda Dhyaan Se (A Little Carefully, 2013), by framing it in the spatial ecosystem of the city of Delhi and exploring its engagement with feminist discourse and the national imaginary of India. It highlights the workings of the cultural economy of the city, which is defined by its spatial contours as well as the privileges of caste, class, sexuality, and ethnicity, and at the same time explores the heterogeneous nature of the country's feminist movement through an intersectional perspective. Swati Arora argues that the concerns raised by Thoda Dhyaan Se are limited to urban, middle-class, and upper-caste women and overlook the oppressive realities of women from non-urban, lower-class, and lower-caste backgrounds. With conversations around gender focused through campaigns like #MeToo and #TImesUp, it is important to contextualize the voices that are articulated and those that are excluded. Swati Arora is an Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape.
Under construction: Toward a theory and praxis of queer peacebuilding
(Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, 2023) Ritholtz, Samuel; Serrano-Amaya, Jos� Fernando; Judge, Melanie
| This article explores what queer as a concept brings to peacebuilding, presenting a guiding framework and introduction for a special issue on queer peacebuilding. It offers an initial approach to the topic, which means to center queer and trans perspectives of peace and bring queer epistemologies to bear on how peace is constituted so as to rearticulate the concept both in theory and praxis. In doing so, it addresses an unexamined gap in peacebuilding efforts to achieve gender justice and inclusive security in conflict-affected societies, namely the unique experiences of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer) individuals and their collective efforts to achieve social justice in these contexts. The authors approach the topic of queer peacebuilding through three questions: What is queer peacebuilding?, �Why is queer peacebuilding important? and What can queer peacebuilding contribute? While the impacts of queer peacebuilding in sites of contentious politics around the globe are visible, it remains an emergent and somewhat elusive concept, still under construction within peace and security scholarship and practice.
Participatory relationships matter: Doctoral students traversing the academy
(SAGE Publications, 2022) Veronica, Mitchell; Gredley, Susan; Carette, Lieve
In this article, we take our thoughts for a walk through our three different doctoral journeys and experiences with the Post Philosophies and the Doing of Inquiry Webinar Series (2020�2021). The webinars presented an example of Slow scholarship, enabling us to think deeply and differently from others and develop new ideas to take further. The online connections offered opportunities for extending learning spaces beyond traditional bounded structures. Here we explore the rich learning gained from each other�s experiences of research, learning, and teaching in different higher education settings and ways in which these intersected with the webinars during the global COVID-19 pandemic. We contend that the generosity of senior academics in leadership positions who embraced global networks of communication, connected students with experts, and learned with and from their students through communal egalitarian spaces has enormous potential to support students as they traverse often demanding and challenging doctoral journeys.
Obstetric violence within students� rite of passage: The reproduction of the obstetric subject and its racialised (m)other
(UNISA Press, 2021) van der Waal, Rodante; Mitchell, Veronica; Bozalek, Vivienne
Building on the work of Mbembe (2019) and Silva (2007), we theorise how the obstetric institution can still be considered fundamentally modern, that is, entangled with colonialism, slavery, bio- and necropolitics and patriarchal subjectivity. We argue that the modern obstetric subject (doctor or midwife) representing the obstetric institution engulfs the (m)other in a typically modern way as othered, racialised, affectable and outerdetermined, in order to constitute itself in terms of self-determination and universal reason. While Davis-Floyd (1987) described obstetric training as a rite of passage into a technocratic model of childbirth, we argue that students� rite of passage is not merely an initiation into a technological model of childbirth. The many instances of obstetric violence and racism in their training make a more fundamental problem visible, namely that students come of age within obstetrics through the violent appropriation of the (m)other. We amplify students� curricular encounters in two colonially related geopolitical spaces, South Africa and the Netherlands, and in two professions, obstetric medicine and midwifery, to highlight global systemic tendencies that push students to cross ethical, social and political boundaries towards the (m)other they are trained to care for. The embedment of obstetric violence in their rite of passage ensures the reproduction of the modern obstetric subject, the racialised (m)other, and institutionalised violence worldwide.
Touching matters: Affective entanglements in Corona time
(SAGE Publications, 2021) Bozalek, Vivienne; Newfield, Denise; Romano, Nike
This article troubles touch as requiring embodied proximity, through an affective account of virtual touch during coronatime. Interested in doing academia differently, we started an online Barad readingwriting group from different locations. The coronatime void was not a vacuum, but a plenitude of possibilities for intimacy, pedagogy, learning, creativity, and adventure. Although physically apart, we met daily through Zoom, and we touched and were touched by each other and the texts we read. A montage of writing fragments and a collective artwork, based on the Massive_Micro project, highlight virtual touching. Undone, redone, and reconfigured, we became a diffractive human/nonhuman multiplicity.
�I could have done everything and why not?�: Young women�s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in Life Orientation in South African schools
(University of the Free State, 2015) Kruger, Lou-Marie; Shefer, Tamara; Oakes, Antoinette
Progressive policies protecting women�s rights to make reproductive decisions and the recent increase in literature exploring female sexual agency do not appear to have impacted on more equitable sexual relations in all contexts. In South Africa, gender power inequalities, intersecting with other forms of inequality in society, pose a challenge for young women�s control over their sexual and reproductive health. The article focuses on a group of young Coloured South African women�s understandings of their sexual agency, in an attempt to explore how it is explicitly and implicitly shaped by school Life Orientation (LO) sexuality programmes. We found young women constructed their agency as simultaneously enabled and constrained in complex ways: on the one hand, the explicit communication was that they should have agency and take responsibility for themselves sexually, whereas the implicit communication seemed to convey that what they really thought and felt about sex and sexuality was not important.
Governmentality and South Africa�s edifice of gender and sexual rights
(SAGE, 2021) Lewis, D
Leading feminist scholars and activists have critiqued the current impact of South Africa�s provisions for gender equality and sexual rights. The country boasts one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, and its formal mechanisms for gender transformation and sexual citizenship are � at a global level � pathbreaking. At the same time, however, violence against women, gender non-conforming people and gays and lesbians or ongoing gender-based injustices in workplaces, educational institutions and many homes testify to the fact that such measures have not transformed ideological beliefs, institutional cultures and power relations in many public and domestic contexts. This article confronts the disjuncture between the formal provision of rights and actual practice, by analysing the effects of provisions devoid of transformative impact. It is argued that the country�s seemingly democratic arrangements for gender justice and sexual citizenship reproduce new forms of governmentality, biopolitics and biopower. By drawing on the work of Jasbir Puar, the article argues that South Africa�s imagining as a democratic state is based largely on its provision of rights around sexuality and gender, and in relation to peripheries that are �measured� by the absence of these. In the global imagining, gender equality and sexual citizenship currently serve as tropes for definitive freedoms and democracy. The recognition of gender equality and sexual citizenship ratifies a particular international understanding of �democracy�, one that is congruent with global neoliberal standards, and that actively reproduces the gendered, heteronormative, classist and racist status quo.
Men, masculinities, peace, and violence: A multi-level overview on justice and conflict
(Routledge, 2021) Shefer, Tamara; Hearn, J; Ratele, K
The relations between men, masculinities and violence, peace, justice, and conflict are of clear importance, yet often remain unaddressed explicitly in analysis, policy, and practice. This chapter overviews the large body of feminist and critical literature on these multi-level connections. Violence, non-violence, peace, justice, conflict, and post-conflict are approached through the lens of Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities (CSMM), and in terms of theory, politics, policy, and practice. The chapter begins with an overview of CSMM as a body of scholarship informing theory, policy and practice interventions around violence, peace, justice, and conflict at interpersonal, communal, institutional, national, and transnational levels. The authors continue with an analysis of key contributions of CSMM in understanding the challenges and possibilities of peaceful, non-violent masculinities within different levels, while acknowledging intersections and overlaps between levels. It is contended that CSMM provide necessary hope and evidence that positive peace is achievable through the transformation toward more healthy, non-violent masculinities and gender relations.
Students� narratives on gender and sexuality in the project of social justice and belonging in higher education
(South African Journal of Higher Education, 2018) Ngabaza, Sisa; Shefer, Tamara; Clowes, Lindsay
Student protests in South Africa flag the well-documented lack of progress in transforming universities which mirror deeply entrenched inequalities. The imperative to challenge a system of higher education that continues to rationalise and reproduce injustice is even more keenly felt. Efforts to understand the lived experiences of young people within diverse higher educational contexts are arguably especially important in this context. This paper draws on research with students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) who engaged in a participatory photovoice research project in a feminist research methodology module. Students were asked to take photos on and around campus that represented un/safe spaces for them and to write short narratives on these. The paper unpacks key emerging themes that speak to how gender, intersecting with sexuality, informs experiences of belonging, while arguing the value of student voice in the project of social justice in higher education.
Embodied pedagogies: performative activism and transgressive pedagogies in the sexual and gender justice project in higher education in contemporary South Africa
(Bloomsbury Academic, 2018) Shefer, Tamara
In this chapter, responding to the call to rethink "the fundamental concepts that support such binary thinking" and to recognise "the agential possibilities and responsibilities for reconfiguring the material-social relations of the world" (Barad, 2007: p.35), I explore a number of performative and activist events that have been part of the contemporary student decolonialisation movement in South Africa to think about the disruption and disturbance of 'business as usual' in the patriarchal, colonial and neoliberal project of the academy. Three inspiring occasions of performative activism of feminist and queer activists are shared here as providing powerful pedagogical interventions through the deployment of particular bodies in particular spaces. I argue the importance of acknowledging and "intra-acting" (Barad, 2007) with such 'disturbances' within a critical post-humanist social justice pedagogical project.
�We don't really see a problem in music because that s**t makes you want to dance�: Reflections on possibilities and challenges of teaching gender through hip-hop
(Taylor and Francis, 2018) Hussen, Tigist Shewarega; Ngabaza, Sisa
Hip-hop culture has been criticised as sexist and misogynist. It is also condemned for being exploitative of black women�s identity and for perpetuating gendered and sexualised assumptions about female musicians. This perspective explores pedagogical possibilities and challenges of using popular culture, such as hip-hop music performances, in a gender studies course. We critically reflect on our experiences of working with second-year students exploring gender performances in music. We encouraged students to analyse music of their own choice within the hip-hop genre, interrogating gender performances beyond simplistic good/bad or right/wrong body and sexual conduct. Data collected in online chat rooms on the teaching and learning platforms show students� enthusiasm in engaging with hip-hop as subject matter. However, in their analysis quite often students struggled to move away from the dominant narrative of hip-hop as sexist and misogynist, their critique focusing on the exaggerated femininity and hypersexuality of female hip-hop artists. Students struggled to critically explore other counter-narratives and counter-representations of the performances. We reflect on the possibilities and challenges of using hip-hop as subject matter in feminist pedagogy.
Students� narratives on gender and sexuality in the project of social justice and belonging in higher education
(Stellenbosch University Library and Information Service, 2018) Ngabaza, Sisa; Shefer, Tamara; Clowes, Lindsay;
Student protests in South Africa over the last few years have re-energized the project of social justice in higher education. While emphasis has been on decolonizing the curriculum and the university spaces, there has also been a powerful mobilization around the lived experiences of students, including sexual and gendered practices of exclusion and othering. Students� activism and a growing body of research speak to continued practices of exclusion, marginalisation and injustice, not only in the classroom, but in everyday experiences of un/belonging on the basis of intersectional raced, classed, gendered, sexualised and other forms of social identity and difference. Efforts to understand the lived experiences of young people within diverse higher educational contexts are arguably especially important in this context and this article seeks to explore such experiences with a particular focus on the entanglement of gender and sexuality with student citizenship. The article draws on research with students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) who engaged in a participatory photovoice research project in a feminist research methodology module. Students were asked to take photos on and around campus that represented un/safe spaces for them and to write short narratives on these. In this article we apply a gendered lens to reveal the intersectional dynamics that shape students� experiences of un/belonging and un/safety on campus. The narratives and images generated by students in thinking about their sense of safety or unsafety on campus speak to a multiplicity of spaces, both symbolic and physical, that impact on experiences of belonging, either enhancing belonging or facilitating exclusion. Student narratives revealed the complex intersections between gender and sexuality in different locations, at different times, on and between campus (including, the campus bar, the sports field and commuter taxis), and how these operate in ways that validate heteronormative gender and sexual identities and practices, while marginalising alternative, non-conforming genders and sexualities. Taking these narratives seriously means acknowledging ways in which gender, sexual and intersectional injustices limit students� ability to participate as equal citizens in a higher education context and flags the value of student voice in the project of social justice in higher education.
Resisting the binarism of victim and agent: Critical reflections on 20 years of scholarship on young women and heterosexual practices in South African contexts
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Shefer, Tamara
The last 20 years have seen a proliferation of research, spurred by the imperatives of the HIV epidemic and reportedly high rates of gender-based violence, on heterosexual practices in the South African context. Research has focused on how poverty, age and gender within specific cultural contexts shape sexual agency and provide a context for unequal, coercive and violent practices for young women. This paper takes stock of what we currently �know� about heterosex and critically reflects on the political and ideological effects of such research, specifically in the light of young women�s agency. A primary concern is that efforts to address gender inequality and the normative gender practices that shape inequitable heterosexual practices may have functioned to reproduce the very discourses that underpin such inequalities. The paper �troubles� the victim�agency binarism as it has been played out in South African research on heterosex, raising concerns about how the research may reproduce gendered, classed and raced othering practices and discourses and bolstered regulatory and disciplinary responses to young women�s sexualities. The paper argues for critical, feminist self- reflexivity that should extend to re-thinking methodologies entrenched in frameworks of authority and surveillance.
�Girls need to behave like girls you know�: the complexities of applying a gender justice goal within sexuality education in South African schools
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Ngabaza, Sisa; Shefer, Tamara; Catriona, Ida Macleod
Sexuality education, as a component within the Life Orientation (LO) programme in South African schools, is intended to provide young people with knowledge and skills to make informed choices about their sexuality, their own health and that of others. Key to the programme are outcomes relating to power, power relations and gender. In this paper, we apply a critical gender lens to explore the ways in which the teaching of sexuality education engages with larger goals of gender justice. The paper draws from a number of ethnographic studies conducted at 12 South African schools. We focus here on the data collected from focus group discussions with learners, and semi-structured interviews with individual learners, principals and Life Orientation (LO) teachers. The paper highlights the complexities of having gender justice as a central goal of LO sexuality education. Teaching sexuality education is reported to contradict dominant community values and norms. Although some principals and school authorities support gender equity and problematize hegemonic masculinities, learners experience sexuality education as upholding normative gender roles and male power, rather than challenging it. Teachers rely heavily on cautionary messages that put more responsibility for reproductive health on female learners, and use didactic, authoritative pedagogical techniques, which do not acknowledge young people�s experience nor facilitate their sexual agency. These complexities need to be foregrounded and worked with systematically if the goal of gender justice within LO is to be realised.
Experiences of mentorship with academic staff doctoral candidates at a South African university
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Strebel, Anna; Shefer, Tamara
Given the growing emphasis on academic research output and the challenges encountered in expediting completion of doctoral studies especially, mentorship is increasingly being utilised as a capacity development strategy for supporting scholars to complete post-graduate studies. This article reports on a mentorship project aimed at academic staff enrolled for doctoral studies in a health sciences faculty at a South African university, based on reflections drawn from annual feedback from the mentees and the annual report of the mentor, as well as a focus group conducted with mentees by an independent researcher. Participants found the mentorship, with its combination of individual and group meetings, as well as regular residential writing retreats, to be extremely helpful. A number of key features that enable the mentorship process emerged, and issues relating to supervision and mentorship were highlighted, especially regarding power dynamics.
A qualitative meta-synthesis of interpersonal violence prevention programs focused on males
(SAGE Publications, 2017) Taliep, Naiema; Lazarus, Sandy; Naidoo, Anthony V.
Exceptionally high levels of interpersonal violence have triggered a call by many experts for the need to determine effective ways to address the onset and effects of exposure to interpersonal violence. The specific aim of this study was to identify and draw on existing promising practices to make a more informed decision on strategies to develop a contextually relevant intervention that focused on the promotion of positive forms of masculinity to create safety and peace. This study used a qualitative meta-synthesis (QMS) technique to integrate and interpret findings from various intervention studies that focused on males and/or gender. An in-depth literature search yielded a total of 827 papers that met the search criteria. After removal of duplicates, abstract review, and review of the full texts, the subsequent sample for this meta-synthesis included 12 intervention programs and 23 studies. This QMS revealed the value of a comprehensive approach, using multiple strategies, employing participatory and interactive methods, and promoting social mobilization to address interpersonal violence. The promotion of positive forms of masculinity as an interpersonal violence prevention strategy is a much-needed, relatively untapped approach to generating safety and peace for both males and females.
'I act this way because why?' Prior knowledges, teaching for change, imagining new masculinities
(Scandinavian University Press, 2015) Clowes, Lindsay
This article begins by outlining some of the prior knowledges brought by undergraduate students to an introduction to gender studies class in the Women's and Gender Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. I show that, at the beginning of the course, students clearly understand gender to refer to women and femininity, imagining femininity (but not masculinity) to be responsive to social change. I suggest that, in the face of these prior knowledges, it is important to focus on masculinity as performance, as a cultural artefact and one that is deeply harmful to South African men. Student experiences of this teaching and learning suggest that it offers possibilities for imagining men as allies and beneficiaries - rather than enemies - in the struggle for gender equity.

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