The racial, cultural and linguistic diversity of the nine women participants in the study suggests that they experienced life differently and although they might all function in a middle management position in the same way, the freedom to function in these positions might be different for each participant. Some may have a strong capability set and others may have a weak capability set. The weak capability set could be due to barriers that constrained their freedom and development as women, while a strong capability set might represent the opportunities and freedoms that enabled their development.
Nussbaum‟s (2000a, p. 41) view is that that a universal framework should not be used when assessing women‟s quality of life. She argues that culture, diversity and
paternalism should be considered because different groups of women value different rights and liberties. The capability approach is important because it considers the equality of the freedoms and opportunities that people have or do not have and not only their ability to function. Its focus is on the capability to function and it is this that should promote women‟s well-being. Sen‟s definition of a capability is “a person‟s ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being: [it] represents the alternative combinations of things a person is able to do or be” (Sen, 1992, p. xi).
In the capability approach Sen refers to education as “basic, elementary education, and mainly expressed in term of levels of literacy” (Terzi, 2007, p. 26). Although I agree with Sen that basic education is important for an individual to reach a meaningful state of being, I suggest that social interaction in education and within the family is also important in developing an individual to reach this state. I therefore trace the experiences of the women participants from childhood, via school and tertiary
education and early teaching experiences. The experiences of the women HoDs are set within the context of race, class and gender and these play a part in the choices they make and also provide a basis for their future leadership roles as HoDs. Within this context there are freedoms and unfreedoms (barriers) to the achievement of capability that form either strong or weak capability sets. The person is able to choose one way of living from her capability set (LeBmann, 2009). The capability approach shows how the capability set is able to reflect a person‟s freedom to live one way or another (Sen, 1992, 1999).
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For all people there are experiences and circumstances that are obstructive. I refer to these as barriers. Barriers to capability achievement may be both in the social and educational milieu. Having choices to live a particular way of life is essential for well- being, as a lack of freedom to choose will affect a person‟s well-being. The lack of freedom, seen as an unfreedom, to choose one way of life or another forms barriers to a person‟s development. The types of barriers that a person might face can be due to factors such as poverty, violence, emotional insecurity and discrimination based on race and gender. According to Larson and Murtadha (2002, p. 155), the capability approach suggests that, by receiving educational and material support, people can become fully capable of human action and expression. However, people also have barriers to their capability achievements.
These barriers or unfreedoms (Sen, 1999) contribute to poor performance at school or in later life and weak capability, such as not having the freedom and opportunity to advance in one‟s career. The effect is that individuals are prevented from functioning in a way that is “truly human” (Nussbaum, 2000a). Exposure to unfreedoms can contribute to the inability to function and experience well-being. However, through choices and responses to barriers people either succumb to a weak capability set or they are able to offset this with a strong capability set. My analysis of the women‟s narratives identifies several barriers. The first barrier is emotional insecurity but the capability of resilience is able to offset the barrier of emotional insecurity. The
capability of affiliation, developed through relationships within their family units, was also important for counteracting emotional insecurity. The capabilities of emotion, affiliation and resilience are discussed in the following section.
5.1.1 Emotional Well-being
Family relations contribute either positively or negatively to the emotional well-being of the family members. In this section I discuss how women middle managers
experienced either barriers or freedoms affecting their emotional well-being. I argue that the freedoms developed their capabilities and the women acquired the capability of resilience in adverse situations or when they encountered barriers.
The relationships that the women middle managers developed with their family members is the capability of affiliation which, according to Nussbaum (2000a, p. 79), is the ability to “live with and towards others” and to “show concern for other human
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beings”. The capability of affiliation also deals with empathy, caring, respect in relation to diversity and being people-centred (Walker et al., 2010). The capability of emotion deals with the ability to have attachment to people and things and to care for and love others (Nussbaum, 2000a). The narratives I was told during the interviews highlighted the capabilities of emotion and affiliation, revealing how emotions and affiliations can form a barrier to, or promote human development and the well-being of the women. The participants‟ emotional well-being and capability to form
relationships and work with other people as managers depends on the development of the emotional and affiliation capabilities over the years. I found that emotional
insecurity led to weak capability and obstructed the capability of emotion and affiliation; emotional security led to strong capability and enabled the capability of emotion and affiliation. The capability for emotion and affiliation, can however, be developed if there are opportunities that favour their development, such as the capability of resilience, which can strengthen a person‟s ability to resolve a weak capability.
The following extracts from narratives highlight the emotional insecurity the participants experienced in their formative years.
I saw my father in 1993, ten years later. And ten years later, he still didn‟t show much of an interest in me. The problem is I needed money for university fees. And he owned taxis... he had money. I thought he would be willing to assist me in terms of fees, but he was not. You know what he said to me? „I‟m not interested, because at the end of the day all the praise will go to your mother, so I‟m not even interested. So I just decided that I will have to forget him.
Since then, since 1993, I don‟t know if he still alive. (Mandisa, photo-elicitation interview, 13 September)
If my parents got married and lived together, maybe I would have had a different personality.
Maybe if I had a stable home and a stable family I could have been a different person.
(Mandisa, photo-elicitation interview, 13 September).
My father was a calm, quiet and gentle man at home and was never verbally abusive. My sister and I had to always conduct ourselves with respect when in front of him. And he was much older than my mother. He was not a boisterous man and very set in his ways. And my mother was the exact opposite of my father. She was not an unloving person, but, was far harder to love. She was a very, very hard task lady. She ruled us with a rod. You know if she said be home at six, one minute past six was not good enough and she would be standing at the door with a strap. (Gene, photo-elicitation interview, 17 September)
My mother was a teacher and my dad had a shop in Lamontville. He was separated from my mother and on Friday he would come to fetch me and return me on Monday morning... I had a troubled childhood (Thembi, photo-elicitation interview, 22 August)
115 I always say that it is because of the fact that she was so strict with us that our lives didn‟t grow on a personal level. So I didn‟t have it easy... (Valerie, photo-elicitation interview, 31 August)
My elder sister and brother were very high achievers. They were given the Dux awards when they were in high school, they got their A passes and they excelled academically at school. I sometimes felt left out because I was not the high achiever. Both ended up being medical doctors and at times I felt that because I was not the high achiever like them I was not given the preferential treatment they received (Rita, photo-elicitation interview, 19 April)
These extracts from the participants‟ narratives show how family relations and interactions contribute to emotional insecurity. Nussbaum (2000a, p. 79) states that a person‟s emotional development should not be blighted by overwhelming fear and anxiety, or traumatic events of abuse or neglect as the capability of emotion is crucial to development. Mandisa‟s father‟s lack of interest in her well-being alienated her from him whereas having a stable family would have contributed to her sense of well- being. Thembi‟s “troubled childhood” also posed a threat to her emotional well-being as she too would have thrived in a stable family situation. Valerie, on the other hand, was unable to develop emotionally because of an over-bearing and strict mother. Gene also had a mother who was a disciplinarian and she was unable to reconcile her
mother‟s display of “tough love” with her father‟s gentle nature. Rita‟s insecurity stemmed from the lack of confidence she suffered because she was treated differently from her other siblings. Not having the freedom to choose can negatively affect the capability set and the well-being of a person since a capability set reflects a person‟s freedom to live one or other type of life other (LeBmann, 2009). The well-being depends on achieving certain levels of functioning (LeBmann, 2009, p. 451) and in these narratives the participants‟ emotional insecurity and instability reflect weak levels of functioning and a narrow capability set.
However, the narratives also show how the participants in their youth made choices to resolve the emotional conflicts they felt. This highlights the capability for resilience that is developed in the participants as they sought to overcome adversities in their lives. Resilience is the capability to persevere in difficult circumstances (Walker et al., 2010). Women middle managers were able to persevere in family relationships even though their ability to function within those relationships was often constrained.
Mandisa chose to “forget” her father, whereas, Gene chose to concentrate on the loving nature of her father. Thembi chose to acknowledge and accept both her parents
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in her life, although she found the separation difficult to cope with, and Rita chose not to compete for the attention she clearly lacked from her parents.
The capability for emotion and affiliation, can however, be developed if there are opportunities that favour their development, such as the capability of resilience that can strengthen a person‟s ability to resolve a weak capability. Other participants had strong emotional capability and therefore they were able to achieve higher levels of emotional functioning. The emotional stability, offered by family relations, influenced the participants‟ capability to be happy and secure. This emotional state of well-being promotes the capability of affiliation, and the ability to form relationships. The following anecdotes describe the emotional well-being of the participants:
I had a very good childhood. A glorious childhood. My regret is that my mum worked all her life. Worked when women did not work. This was in the 1960s. She worked in order to supplement my father‟s income. She was very determined and was able to stand with men and bid for the land that we built our home on. (Neelam, photo-elicitation interview, 3 July)
I had a very happy childhood. You can see we were spoilt. We were short of nothing and my brother and I became the mascots for the family. We were very happy children. We grew up being not only with children but with teenagers and the whole political hype and their ideology filtered down to us because we were part of young adult company throughout our childhood.
(Hema, photo-elicitation interview, 6 June)
He was an entertainer and a clown. He was very strict but very entertaining, even at home.
Everybody just loved my father. (Irene, photo-elicitation interview, 4 September)
My family‟s previous generation has been highly educated.... So there is this backdrop that we have, you know. You know when you have those strong kinds of backdrops, you will tend towards that generation. For instance, now we have set in place certain educational standards, and all of us sort of enjoyed success in our generation and we expect our children to do as well and so it progresses. (Arthi, photo-elicitation interview, 12 July)
These accounts show that family relations help support the capability of emotional security when family members interact positively with them, thus reaffirming their strong self-image. The words that indicate the strong capability of emotion, because of positive family relations, are “glorious childhood”, “happy childhood”, being
“spoilt”, having “strong backdrops” and having “success”. Each participant shows a different reason for feeling emotionally secure within her own individual family.
Neelam‟s security stemmed from her mother‟s economic and social agency. Hema‟s emotional security stemmed from the economic security she was provided with and the social and political freedom she was allowed in her formative years. Irene felt secure in her father‟s love and his ability to make her laugh, and Arthi felt emotionally secure because of the “illustrious” nature of her family.
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The capability of emotion was experienced differently by the participants because they all came from different family backgrounds. Some family relations can promote wide emotional capabilities and other relations can form barriers to capability. As young girls the participants gained the capability to feel emotionally secure and experience emotions such as joy, happiness and love, which contributed to a strong capability set.
Nussbaum (2000a, pp. 84–85) differentiates between internal and combined
capabilities. She describes the internal capabilities as the developed states of a person for the exercise of requisite functions, and the combined capabilities as internal capabilities that are combined with suitable external conditions for the exercise of function (Nussbaum, 2000a, p. 84–85). Every person has these internal capabilities, but not everyone can function at a particular emotional level, because of the combined capabilities. A difference in the achievement of the capability of emotion and
affiliation can be explained by the balance of the combined capabilities. Their
accounts revealed that each woman participant had different external conditions. Thus, Valerie could not develop on a “personal” level because of the strict environment in which she grew up, although she had the internal capability to experience emotions that would contribute to her state of well-being, whereas participants like Irene and Neelam had a balance between their internal capabilities and the external conditions.
They were able to develop emotionally because they had strong family relationships.
Thus these conditions either affected the capability of emotion and affiliation positively or constrained it through instability within the family relations.
In their stories it is evident that women middle managers exercised their agency when faced with external conditions that would restrict their capability development. One such external condition that can limit a person‟s capability development is poverty.
Poverty, like family relations, can also be an indicator to assess a person‟s state of well-being. Poverty is an external condition that can thwart human development. In the next section I discuss how women middle managers were able to develop their agency even when facing poverty. Their perseverance to get an education showed their agency as women middle managers. Through their agency women middle managers were able to develop their capabilities of sense, imagination and thought and knowledge, imagination and practical skills which I refer to as their educational capability.
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5.1.2 Overcoming Adversities
Women middle managers were able to endure economic constraints and achieve their agency. Agency in this study refers to the achievement of goals and values women have reason to pursue, even though those goals and values are not connected with their own well-being (Sen, 1992, p. 56). Although the women middle managers were faced with unfreedoms and barriers to the development of their educational
capabilities, they were still able to practise their agency and achieve the goals they wished to pursue.
In this section I discuss the barriers that poverty forms in the educational lives of the women. The women participants experienced education and their economic situation differently from men and from each other because of their diverse and subjective natures. According to Sen, (1992, 1999), a person‟s well-being should not be judged by the possessions or incomes she holds, rather, a person‟s well-being should be judged by “what she is able to do or to be”. In terms of utilitarianism, development is evaluated according to income and growth of income (Hicks, 2002, p. 139). Sen‟s capability approach therefore rejects a focus on money and commodities (Sen, 1985, 1992) and focuses rather on what a person is able to be and to do within her society.
One of the unfreedoms or barriers that the women middle managers encountered in their early lives was that of poverty. Poverty can be measured according to low income (Sen, 1992) and being poorer than others within a society. Kabeer (2003, p. 1) sees poverty as being gendered because women and men experience poverty
differently and unequally. Kabeer (2003) goes on to say that women and girls are more disadvantaged than men and boys, both across societies and among the poor.
Most of the participants came from working class backgrounds in their formative years and suffered the ills of apartheid. For some, the poverty linked to their racial subjugation led to their lack of resources in all spheres of life. This meant that they had less access to education. Education, as one of Sen‟s basic capability attributes, is essential for growth and development. Access to education also helps to empower women (Kabeer, 2003, p. 175) and this promotes the agency of women. My finding is that the women participants‟ capability to persevere in their formal education, in spite of the economic unfreedoms, developed them into capable women, who were able to effect change in their lives through their capability of agency. The ability to persevere
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against adversities highlights their resilience. Such resilience can be defined in terms of “the presence of protective factors (personal, social, familial, and institutional safety nets)” that enables individuals to resist life stress (Kaplan, Turner, Norman &
Stillson, 1996, p. 158).
The unequal freedoms and opportunities a person has contribute negatively to that person‟s human choices and agency and lead to life stress. In order to explore the educational opportunities of the participants, it is important to assess how education contributed to the development of their human choices and agency. By using the capability approach, it is possible to examine the state of education, rather than by judging the success or failure of an education system through literacy levels or the enrolment of learners within a country. It is important to look further than those two components and see whether education has developed human choices and well-being (Saito, 2003). Education is an integral part of human development as: “it emphasises the development of human choices and returns to the centrality of people and is reflected in measuring development not as the expansion of commodities and wealth but as the widening of human choices (UNDP, 1990, p.1)”.
Although education is meant to promote the well-being of people, because it helps in the expansion of capabilities (Saito, p. 27), the process involved in acquiring a formal education, can present weak capability sets that do not allow for freedom and
opportunity. Many of the participants did not experience wide capability sets in their schooling years, as they lacked resources and opportunities to allow them to make choices concerning the education they would receive. The question to be asked when the women middle manager narrates her early educational experiences should be
“What is the women middle manager actually able to do and be and what are her opportunities and liberties?” These questions should point to what the women middle manager is capable of doing and not only about what she does and how satisfied she is with what she does (Nussbaum, 2000a, p. 71). Therefore it is important to consider how the resources in her midst are put to work to enable the woman middle manager to function in a fully human way. The woman middle manager faced many challenges in her educational journey, and therefore lacked opportunities and liberties. I refer to three strong capsules from narratives to show the common plight of black people trying to get an education during the apartheid regime. It shows how poverty can contribute to educational deprivation and vice versa.