Engendering democracy: Domestic labour and coalition-building in South Africa

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 107-127

  Fish, Jennifer N ^a  

^a WARREN WILSON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRACY; GENDER ROLE; LABOR; SOCIAL CHANGE; TRADE UNION; WOMENS STATUS;

AFRICA; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA;

EID: 33644850609     PISSN: 03057070     EISSN: 14653893     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03057070500493811     Document Type: Article

References (74)

1. For the purposes of this article, the term 'engendering' suggests an intentional examination of gender within the context of democratisation. In the South African case, the emphasis on gender rights necessitates transitions in both the public and private spheres through the process of nation-building. For further discussion, see H. Britton, Women in South African Parliament: From Resistance to Governance (Champaign, IL, University of Illinois Press, 2005).
2. This particular participant identified herself as 'feminist'. Of the 85 participants in this study, those who espoused the importance of gender rights often did not use the term 'feminist' because of a distinct perception of its construction as a western concept that could not capture the complexities of gender in South Africa.
3. For a detailed account of women's integration into public leadership, see S. Hassim, 'The Gender Pact and Democratic Consolidation: Institutionalising Gender Equality in the South African State', Feminist Studies, 29, 3 (Fall 2003), pp. 505-28
4. and Britton, Women in South African Parliament.
5. South Africa's Gender Machinery consists of three governmental offices - the Commission on Gender Equality, the Office on the Status of Women and the Parliamentary Committee on the Quality of Life and Status of Women - with monitoring, lobbying and advocacy functions.
6. J. Cock, Maids and Madams: A Study in the Politics of Exploitation (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1980).
7. Throughout this article, I refer to 'employers' as women. While I recognise that men also employ domestic workers, my work focuses specifically on the power relations between women in the private household labour context.
8. Statistics South Africa's 2000 October Household Survey reported two other slightly larger occupational categories for women, however Department of Labour officials repeatedly suggested that domestic labour is widely under-reported. Disaggregation of the data by racial categories illustrates that domestic work remains the largest sector of labour for African women in South Africa.
9. I use the term 'African' to distinguish this group as separate from Indian and 'coloured' women. My intention in so doing is to reflect the relevant race and identity constructs and historical experiences of these distinct groups in South Africa, rather than to support the ongoing use of apartheid racial categorisation.
10. A preliminary one-month pilot study was completed to establish the feasibility of this study in January 1999.
11. I adopted a semi-structured approach to each interview with both workers and employers, utilising a standard set of questions while allowing ample space for discussion of specific areas relevant to each participant. For domestic workers, I utilised a 54-question guide of which 20 key questions were asked of every participant. The remaining 34 questions were asked depending on the individual interviews. For the employers, a total of 25 questions guided the interview, of which 20 were asked consistently of each participant. The interviews varied from 45 minutes to four hours, with workers' interviews tending to be substantially longer. Each interview was taped and transcribed, with the exception of four employers who requested that their interviews not be transcribed in order to protect their identity. English was the primary language of communication used in the individual interviews, although a translator was employed to interpret local meanings throughout the interview transcripts.
12. I use the term 'participant' as opposed to interviewee or informant, reflecting the value of collaborative, feminist approaches to social research and an emphasis on relationships in the field as a central component of feminist methodology.
13. Critical to the ethics and confidentiality of this project, however, I did not interview any employers of workers, or workers of employers in my sample.
14. According to a review of records gathered from SADSAWU and the South African Department of Labour in 2001, only 3 per cent of domestic workers were enrolled in the union. Because of my interest in the motivations, personal attributes and experiences of union members, 50 per cent of the domestic workers in this study were members of the national union and 25 per cent of the domestic workers in this study held leadership roles within either local or national structures.
15. At the time of this study, all of the domestic workers in this sample worked for one employer on a full-time basis. However, other aspects of the research did take into account the shifting dynamics in this sector, paying particular attention to the role of part-time chars who work for a number of different employers.
16. An additional set of interviews was conducted with five women recruited to work in coloured communities through domestic worker 'agencies'.
17. Because the term 'feminism' carries wide associations and meanings, in this study I define feminism as a social movement that seeks to emancipate women from the oppressive circumstances of structural inequality that continue to privilege men. In this regard, feminism carries a strong activist component that similarly aspires to redress other forms of inequality such as racism and xenophobia. Critical to this research, however, I also acknowledge the vast difference in women's experiences that leads to diverse perspectives regarding feminism. In the particular South African context, for example, women's priorities include access to safe drinking water, limiting HIV transmission and the alleviation of community-based violence. Therefore, when I label participants as 'feminists', I am referring to those that self-identify in this way as well as those who espouse gender rights orientations, yet who may not have used the term 'feminist' to describe themselves.
18. These focus groups included one with women employed as domestic workers in farms in the Western Cape and women brought in from rural areas to Cape Town through domestic worker recruitment agencies.
19. Each expert interview was designed with a specific focus upon the varying experiences of the broad range of participants in this sector. Although every expert was asked about her perceptions of the institution of domestic work and its relationship to social change in South Africa, the remaining questions were highly specific to each individual.
20. I relied heavily upon the archival resources at the Centre for African Studies library at the University of Cape Town and the records of the Black Sash.
21. For a comprehensive account of feminist research methodologies, see D. Wolf, Feminist Dilemmas in Fieldwork (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1996)
22. and M. DeVault, Liberating Method: Feminism and Social Research (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1999).
23. The discussion of 'pursuing members' meanings' in R. Emerson, R. Fretz and L. Shaw, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) was particularly valuable to the analysis of these data.
24. I have maintained relationships and continuing communication with key participants in this study for the past five years. Several have reviewed, and commented on, the findings of this research.
25. Domestic worker interview, February 2001.
26. Cock, Maids and Madams.
27. The private nature of the household space has been associated with qualities that are highly feminine, such as the unpaid labour of family reproduction. In contrast, public spaces are constructed as the site of paid labour, which remains heavily masculinised.
28. See C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa (Cape Town, David Philip Publishers, 1991)
29. and H. Bernstein, For Their Triumph & For Their Tears: Women in Apartheid South Africa (London, International Defence Aid Fund for Southern Africa, 1975).
30. D. Gaitskell, J. Kimble, M. Maconachie and E. Unterhalter, 'Class, Race and Gender: Domestic Workers in South Africa', Review of African Political Economy, 27 (1984), p. 107.
31. C. Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology (London, Routledge, 1995)
32. G. Young and B. Dickerson, Color, Class and Country (London, Zed, 1994)
33. P.H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought (Boston, Unwin Hymin, 1990)
34. Cock, Maids and Madams.
35. M.J. Alexander and C.T. Mohanty, Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (New York, Routledge, 1997)
36. and C.T. Mohanty, A. Russo and L. Torres (eds), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1991)
37. A. Mama, Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity (London, Routledge, 1995).
38. M. Romero, Maid in the U.S.A. (New York, Routledge, 1992)
39. R.S. Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001)
40. G. Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women in the Global Economy (Cambridge, South End Press, 2001)
41. P. Hondagneau-Sotelo, Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2001)
42. K. Chang and L.H.M. Ling, 'Globalization and its Intimate Other: Filipina Domestic Workers in Hong Kong', in M. Marchand and A.S. Runyan, Gender and Global Restructuring: Sightings, Sites and Resistances (London, Routledge, 2000)
43. B. Anderson, Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour (London, Zed, 2000)
44. C. Chin, In Service and Servitude. Foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian 'Modernity' Project (New York, Columbia University Press, 1998)
45. N. Heyzer, G. Lycklama á Nijehold and N. Weerakoon, The Trade in Domestic Workers. Causes, Mechanisms and Consequences of International Migration (London, Zed, 1994)
46. E. Chaney and M. Garcia Castro, Muchachas No More. Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1989)
47. and J. Rollins, Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1985).
48. Cock, Maids and Madams, pp. 8-9.
49. C. Pateman, 'Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy', in C. Pateman (ed.), The Disorder of Women. Democracy Feminism and Political Theory (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1989)
50. C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases. Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1990)
51. A. Oakley. The Sociology of Housework (London, Pantheon, 1974)
52. J.J. Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (London, Routledge, 1996)
53. V.S. Peterson and A. Runyan, Global Gender Issues (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1993).
54. L.H.M. Ling, Postcolonial International Relations. Conquest and Desire between Asia and the West (New York, Palgrave, 2002), p. 174.
55. The intersection of gender, race and class and the limited potential for a 'universal sisterhood' in South Africa during the twilight years of apartheid is explored by J. Beall, S. Hassim and A. Todes, '"A Bit on the Side?": Gender Struggles in the Politics of Transformation in South Africa', Feminist Review, 33 (1989), pp. 30-56.
56. See also S. Hassim, 'Gender, Social Location and Feminist Politics in South Africa', Transformation (1991), p. 65-82
57. A. Kemp, N. Madlala, A. Moodley, and E. Salo, 'The Dawn of a New Day: Redefining South African Feminism', in A. Basu (ed.), The Challenge of Local Feminism: Women's Movement in a Global Perspective (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1995).
58. This statement was repeated by several union leaders and domestic workers in the formal interviews and informal participatory research.
59. Sectoral determinations for a standardised minimum wage for domestic workers were also widely discussed, however, were not considered as pressing in terms of policy implementation at the time of this research.
60. Domestic worker interview, January 2001.
61. All participants have been protected by pseudonyms, unless individuals authorised disclosure of their identity.
62. Interview with human rights activist, June 2001
63. Motto of SADSAWU, 2001.
64. By 'first time', I am referring to the first time since the establishment of the apartheid government. Domestic workers were not included in unemployment insurance throughout the apartheid era from 1948 to 1994. This 2001 victory marked a critical movement towards the formal recognition of this sector.
65. I am grateful to Eunice Tholakele Dhladhla, Myrtle Witbooi, Hester Stephens and Maggie Shongwe for their detailed depictions of this complex history of union organisation over the past 35 years.
66. For an extensive historical review of domestic work unionisation, see S. Gordon, A Talent for Tomorrow. Life Stories of South African Servants (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1985).
67. For a more extensive description of this organisational collapse, see R. Nyman, 'The Death of SADWU: The Birth of New Organisation?', South African Labour Bulletin, 21, 2 (1997).
68. Interview with SADSAWU National Officer Bearer, 2001.
69. These data were acquired through review of SADSAWU's organisational membership database. This estimate is based on union records as of 2001. Without national data on the exact number of women employed in this sector, it is not possible to give a precise ratio of union membership; however, local estimates suggest that SADSAWU's membership consists of approximately 1 to 4 per cent of the total number of domestic workers in South Africa - suggesting that the work of collective mobilisation has some considerable way to go yet. See also Stats SA, October Household Survey (Pretoria, Statistics South Africa, 2000) for detailed occupational demographics.
70. Interviews with three Department of Labour officials who consulted national records in 2001.
71. For detailed accounts of this extensive investigation process, see the following South African government reports: The 1991 Manpower Commission Report on Domestic Workers, the 1993 Limbrick Report and the 1996 Task Team Report on Domestic Workers and the UIF.
72. In the South African parliamentary legislative process, policy drafts are initially written by the relevant government department. The Portfolio Committee (composed of MPs) then reviews and critiques the bill, holds public hearings to gather input from civil society and eventually approves the final legislative document along with the national President and the relevant Minister.
73. M. Witbooi, SADSAWU General Secretary; Parliamentary Public Submission in Cape Town Legislative Chambers, March 2001.
74. This statement is drawn from the CGE, internal organisational document, 2001.