Photograph by: Simon Mathebula
She will be remembered as a graceful pillar of justice, who maintained a strong commitment to her family and country throughout some of the most chaotic times in South African history.
Her legacy lives on through the Albertina Sisulu Foundation and Albertina Sisulu Multi-Purpose Resource Centre
Women often still perform gendered roles in the workplace. Photo by Chris Kirschhoff.
Women’s resistance to traditional gendered roles performed within the family structure, has led to new roles of performance in relation to work, marriage and childcare.
Throughout history certain norms were created determining gender roles. Women were perceived as the primary caregiver and men dominated in the workplace. Within the home these norms were learnt and thus maintained. In past decades this has apparently started to change with more women entering the working world.
This shift in women performing work outside the home is associated with the female claim to autonomy. But how free are women really, even in their new roles? This autonomy claimed in many instances is contradictory.
Women perform work within a gendered environment which reproduces the inequalities apparent within the family’ and other social institutions. For example, look at the glass ceiling effect the fact that women rarely reach prominent positions in a company due to discrimination. Also, very few women have yet been employed in male dominated areas such as the construction industry.
Photo by Chris Kirschhoff.
There is apparently a lot of attention paid to the unequal position of women in the workplace, but the policies and structures implemented by government to address inequality in reality furthers the persistence of gender inequality. According to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, women are entitled to at least 4 months of Consecutive Maternity Leave, while men get 3 days Family Responsibility Leave. Does this not imply that the woman should stay at home and start raising the children while the man can go back to work almost immediately?
Top-down policy measures will not work as the historical construction of appropriate gendered behaviour is deeply rooted within the social fabric of society. It is only from below that this issue can truly be addressed.
Pregs Govender’s memoir, Love and Courage : a story of Insubordination, is a remarkable and inspirational read. It has kept me captivated and enthralled from opening it 2 days ago. I find myself snatching a moment, wherever possible, to read more. And now I am blogging about it! It is evocative and beautifully written and Pregs shares her life’s experiences with readers in an engaging and honest way.
Loudastress writes a very good review of Love and Courage which is worth referring to.
I had heard often of and been inspired by Pregs Govender and her feminist strivings and activism over the years. What I remembered though most recently was hearing of her quitting Parliament. At the time I pondered on the reasons for her quitting and was saddened at the loss of such a fervent advocator for women’s issues and one of the shining beacons in our newly elected Parliament. During this time she advocated for improving the rights of women and chaired Parliament’s joint Standing Committee on the Quality of Life and Status of Women. She was one of the first ANC MP’s to call for antiretrovirals to be provided to HIV positive pregnant women. She was a stauch advocator for the rights of women and children, especially around issues of HIV/Aids. Prior to joining Parliament she served on the Women’s National Coalition and was very active in the labour movement and in education.
I was reminded of her departure from Parliament in reading in Love and Courage the detail of how over the years she has stood up to authority and the voice of patriachy within all spheres of life, from the party to the factory floors, in the classrooms she taught in to the trade unions she contributed to developing, and within her own Indian culture and community.
I needed to find out more about this courageous women. An internet search yielded some results but not as many as I had anticipated. Perhaps the role now of activist, writer and researcher places her less in the public eye. However I am sure that Love and Courage will do much to remind South Africans of the remarkable courage and conviction of this outstpoken feminist. Perhaps this memoir might also create more opportunities for her to play a more active role in shaping the future for South African women.
In her words….
“We live and speak no longer conscious of our wholeness,
Our connectedness
We have begun to believe we are fragments
That our stories are disconnected from each other’s
So often we have sat silently
With our grief, our pain, our horror, our anger,
Our hopelessness, our despair
At how successfully
We have been disembodied
We no longer hear our own voices
We no longer see our own faces
I know that in our hearts
We cannot have forgotten who we are
In our hearts
We cannot rubbish our collective dream and vision
And the love that inspired courage across our land Against the hate and fear of apartheid’s patriarch
Who aimed to destroy not just our communities
But our very sense of self
Today is another battle we face
Both men and women
With the patriarch within our minds
Who holds captive our hearts, our souls
His power of fear and hate
His hierarchies of exclusion and silence
His memory of forgetting
It is time to reclaim ourselves
So collectively we can reclaim our power of love and courage
It is time for all of us
Women and girls and the men and boys who love us
And whom we love
To subvert the patriarch in our minds
In our homes
In our churches, temples and mosques
In our workplaces
In all our institutions
In our country”
(Pregs Govender, Opening speech in Parliament, Women’s Day, 8 March 2002)
