As per the above, UKZN has made remarkable strides in as far as gender transformation is concerned. However, within this success, there are a number of challenges that either hinder or undermine such progress. Some of these challenges relates to the findings of the study done by Mthiyane (2009) and were in the context of women’s political participation. In the context of this study though, the focus is on women’s representation in student governance.
5.7.1 Female Political Apathy and Male Political Dominance
In the context of student governance, the agenda of gender transformation is championed by organizations or students societies and the most influential of these are political movements.
However, Mthiyane’s (2009) study reveals that there are structural barriers that are created by the organizational factor. Organizations have a number of issues that are competing for the top spot in the agenda. And for Mthiyane (2009) issues pertaining to gender transformation might not be that particular organization’s main priority and as the results, it gets neglected. The participants of this study therefore were challenged to explain how they influence the agendas of their organization to ensure that gender transformation is among the issues that are prioritized on the political agenda at organizational level and ultimately at SRC level.
In the main, the majority of male participants share the sentiment that women should be in the forefront of their own struggle and men have to play a supporting role. This came from the view that women are generally apathetic. What this means therefore is that, men have to decide for women which in itself has sexist implications. It follows from this therefore that women’s disinterest to participate meaningfully in political activities becomes a de-motivating factor for
106 organization to pursue gender transformation agenda. Such views were common among those male participants who identified themselves as either SASCO’s or ANCYL/YCL’s affiliates.
Male participants who are affiliated to other organizations did not give much substance when responding to how they engage mandates of their organizations to prioritize gender transformation in its agenda. Some of these participants were unable to outline in brief what their organizations’ position with regards to the representation of women is. For most, the issue of women’s representation is an issue that falls out of the scope of their political activism. There was unanimity on the view that women are generally apathetic when it comes to political activities.
On the subject of apathy, the female participants expressed interesting views. One participant believes the reason why women are apathetic is because men have an attitude that feels undermining to women. This deprives women of an opportunity to grow in politics. One woman attributes the lack of political participation by women to the fact that men are political dominant and that they misuse such dominance at the detriment of women. One daring example of how men misuse their political dominance to oppress women as pointed by one of the experienced women:
‘The problem is that male comrades take too much advantage of the female students. For instance, when they help them say to get financial aid or res, the benefitting female has to thank the helper by giving sexual favours. The rest as they say is history because this ruins somebody’s life. You see, when female are new at the university, they are most vulnerable and the last thing that should happen, is for male comrades to take advantage of them.’
Another experienced female participant pointed out that some ambitious female politicians look to males as the vehicle through which they can advance their ambitions. So they:
‘sleep their way through and when they do that, they open themselves to being controlled by men. Things like this make it hard for women to unite against men because every woman thinks that other women sleep with men for political favours. This is a very sad state of affairs Nsele, really is and female comrades are suffering from it while male
107 comrades die of suspicion that if the female get a political support from male, it must be because they are shagging each other.’
It is clear from this that the lack of political participation by women is partly caused by the manner in which some men view women. It is true that some men view and treat women as sex objects and this entrenches the oppression of women. Furthermore, it means that in the political context, men who hold such a view do not take women seriously as equal political participants.
This renders male dominance to be problematic. The patriarchal political socialization leads into female political apathy and conversely to male political dominance.
5.7.2 Patriarchal Political Socialization
Patriarchal grounded thinking which inculcates the notion that men are the superior gender compared to their female counterparts is still deeply entrenched on social norms and values. This is despite the fact that the feminist movement has tried to dispel such a conception. Different socialization institutions are in some way guilty of perpetuating patriarchal ways of thinking by among other things, making policies that reflect this male superiority.
One of the findings that are revealed in this study is that women are less politically active than men. There are many contributing factors to this problem. In other words, this study discovered that being a woman is not the core reason why women are less politically active especially given that there was that exceptional twenty per cent (20%) of women whose political engagement is comparable to that of male participants. Secondly, there were male participants who rendered a very low political engagement. What this means is that to understand why there are disparities in terms of political participation between men and women, it is important to look beyond the gender issue.
Why are women less politically active than men? While there are potentially many answers to this question, the answer that this study generated is that political socialization is to a certain extent, grounded on principles of socialization. The UKZN case is an interesting one. That is because the prominent political movements that are active in its political sphere do promote gender transformation through political programs at an organizational level as well as at the SRC level. However, irrespective of this, patriarchal thinking still persists. One female participant pointed out that there is a mentality among male activists that entrusting women with political
108 responsibilities is a political compromise. This is in resonance with Soule and Nairne (2006), assertion that the answer to the question of why women have lower interest in politics compared to men, lies in how they were brought up.