CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 4
4.2 Development is a gender issue
4.2.2 Poverty and gender in South Africa
Gender is a key construct of this study. In my understanding gender refers to the socially constructed and culturally defined differences between men and women. As a social construct it importantly identifies the relationship between the sexes in terms of power
relations. Gender influences the differences in poverty levels between the sexes because social institutions such as the family, religion, culture, and education discriminate against women. States in many parts of the world similarly discriminate against women by
implementing laws and traditions which are biased in favour of patriarchal power structures.
Poverty is thus not a gender neutral issue but rather is circumscribed by patriarchy. This fact is illustrated in the following two stories:
Barrett et al (1985) interviewed domestic worker Sarah Khumalo who has four children and lives with her mother and sister and sister's children in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal. Her meagre salary supports them all. When asked how she survives, Sarah Khumalo replied,
For me it is a big struggle every day. My sister doesn't have a husband so she has no money and she is too lazy to work. My husband - he works on the mines - sends some money every four months or so and things are a bit easier.
Sometimes I speak to my madam - I say my children have got no clothes, or I must buy new schoolbooks or something. She will give some money, but usually I just don't know what to do (Barrett et al 1985:31).
When Julia Kunoane, who lives in a one roomed dwelling together with eight other people, was asked a similar question she had this to say,
My husband he just look! He is reading the paper while I cook. He says he is tired. I am also tired but I must cook. I am used to it because it is our custom.
On weekends I am not going anywhere, except to church sometimes, because I must wash and clean (Barrett et al 1985:135).
These two stories were recorded during the1980s. Similar stories have been told in the decades before and stories of African women in South Africa today would be no different, as the material life of women of Vulindlela outlined in the previous chapter indicates. Statistics reveal that African women consistently earn the lowest incomes, have the least wealth, and have far worse jobs than men, and women of other races (Hurt and Budlender 1998;
Makgetla 1995).
In post-apartheid South Africa, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), a socio-economic policy framework, was introduced by the new African National Congress (ANC) government. “It seeks to mobilise all our people and our country’s resources toward the final eradication of apartheid and the building of a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist future” (ANC 1994:1). The RDP was to be implemented through a parliamentary office. One of the first tasks that this office embarked upon in 1995, was to commission a survey on the extent of poverty in the country.1 The report resulting from the survey estimated that 53% of the total population live on less than R300 a month (Tuschling 1998). Significantly for this study, it also indicated that it was female headed households that were most vulnerable to poverty, and the startling reality is that 41% of all African households are headed by women in South Africa today (Neft and Levine 1997). While almost half of African households are headed by women, customary law severely limits land and inheritance rights of women, resulting in land often being handed over to male relatives on the death of a husband in rural areas (Baden et al 1999:22).
1 Julian May (2000) has recently published updated poverty statistics which do not alter the earlier picture outlined in this section.
The apartheid legacy has further entrenched poverty into the lives of women by denying them formal education with the literacy rate estimated to be a mere 50% in rural areas (Neft and Levine 1997). Health services for women which are crucial to their survival have been totally inadequate in poor communities, Vulindlela being a good example. In assessing the leading causes of death amongst women, Neft and Levine conclude that “the single largest official category of causes of death is simply called ‘ill-defined causes’, probably because so many women have no access to formal health care and their diseases are never diagnosed, let alone treated” (1997:411). Lack of access to economic, educational, and health resources has resulted in a vulnerability exacerbated by the legacy of apartheid legislation such as the migrant labour policy which forced African women to stay in rural areas and care for their children through non-cash or informal agricultural and crafts production (Makgetla
1995:13).2 Makgetla (1995:13) argues that the apartheid legislation aggravated the burden of unpaid household labour by relegating rural women’s work to unpaid labour and at the same time ensuring that these communities had an inadequate household infrastructure. Women who did live in the cities worked with little pay, long hours, and within particularly
oppressive working conditions as domestic workers3 providing white families with cheap labour and reliable childcare (Makgetla 1995:13). “Even with the end of apartheid, black women [have] remained disproportionately in the rural areas and in domestic labour”
(Makgetla 1995:13).
Reconstruction and development must dramatically increase employment opportunities for women, especially by transferring assets to raise incomes of the self-employed. The burden of household labour must be lessened, in part
2 Studies have shown that while the informal sector cushions the effect of poverty and is used as a survival strategy by rural women without structural support from the state, this sector of the economy does not provide long-term material security for rural women (Preston-Whyte and Nene 1991).
3 Motsei (1990) and Simpson (1992) discuss the nature and extent of violence that domestic workers experience at the hands of their male employers, a topic otherwise notably absent in analysis of their working conditions.
by improving government services to poor communities (Makgetla 1995:7).