Voices, Hierarchies and Spaces: Reconfiguring the Women's Movement in Democratic South Africa

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which the contemporary women's movement in South Africa has been shaped by its own recent history as well as by the changes in the political landscape since 1994. The article argues that the striking feature of the past decade is the manner in which the strategy of inclusion of women in formal political institutions of state and party has tended to displace the transformatory goals of structural and social change. Both goals, of inclusion and transformation, were held to be mutually dependent by women's movement activists throughout the 1980s and 1990s. However, the article shows that maintaining the strategic balance between these goals has been difficult to achieve, in large part because the women's movement has been relatively weak, apart from a brief moment in the early 1990s. The argument outlines the theoretical and strategic debates relating to definitions of the term ‘women's movement’ in South Africa, and then identifies and classifies different forms of organizations and strategies. Finally, the article argues that the realization of gender equality rests on the extent to which a strong women's movement will develop, with a clear agenda for transformation and relative autonomy from both state and other social movements.

Acknowledgement

This research was partially conducted under the auspices of the ‘Social Movements and Globalisation’ Project at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Notes

1. This process was accompanied by intensive debate about whether organizations such as the United Women's Organisation (UWO) in the Western Cape and the Natal Organisation of Women (NOW) should retain some autonomy from political organizations. In the end, the majority of women's organizations linked to the United Democratic Front collapsed their structures into the ANCWL.

2. In one of her first appearances following her appointment, at a Women's Day rally in KwaZulu Natal on August 9, Mlambo-Ngcuka was booed by the crowd of Jacob Zuma supporters and had to leave the podium.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shireen Hassim

Associate Professor, Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand.