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The Economic Vulnerability of Women and Links to Gender-Based Violence

10 December 2020 | Story Gcina Mtengwane and Andiswa Khumalo | Photo Scott sa ha Molefe (Scott Photography)

Gender-based violence can be understood as violence that is perpetuated as a result of normative role expectations associated with gender, power, and culture. It takes different forms. The most common forms are physical, emotional, psychological, verbal, domestic and socio-economic violence, to mention a few.

It is a profound, widespread, and pressing matter in South Africa and beyond its borders. In its entirety, gender-based violence is a threat to the economy, society, and humanity, as it creates emotional, social, and economic unrest that prohibits the growth and success of individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole. More than 30% of women in South Africa suffer from gender-based violence in the form of harassment, rape, femicide or domestic violence. Although women and young girls are the worst affected by gender-based violence, the term and act apply to both genders, including men and young boys.

Economic vulnerability of women

Notwithstanding the fact that gender-based violence happens to both genders, it is worth noting that women are the worst affected. There is a myriad of reasons for this. This article puts its focus on the economic vulnerability of women as both a cause and a propellant of gender-based violence. What we argue here is that there are structural socio-economic differentials that create and perpetuate the vulnerability of women to gender-based violence. We further posit that unless these vulnerabilities are addressed, gender-based violence will be a persistent problem for generations to come.

Our starting point is that women in South Africa generally have a higher unemployment rate than men. Additional to this, women struggle to ascertain livelihoods outside employment. This means that even in cases where women are employed, they will earn less than men. Furthermore, women also struggle to succeed in entrepreneurship. This can be associated with the ‘unpaid normative duties’ of child-rearing and household maintenance. This makes them vulnerable to abuse, as they cannot exercise their independent social and economic existence outside the confines and control of the male partner. It is worth noting that black African women are the most vulnerable, with an unemployment rate of more than 30%.

More worrying is that more than four out of every ten young females (15-34) are not in employment, education, or training (NEET). This further exacerbates the vulnerability context across all ages. Females consistently record a higher headcount; however, they remain behind in social, political, economic, and cultural matters. To amplify this, Statistics SA (2020) reports that 39,2% of female-headed households in South Africa do not have an employed member of the household.

Another point of concern is that there is a ‘social class and income link’ associated with gender-based violence. Gender-based violence is more prevalent among less-educated women than those with secondary education or higher. Additional to this, wealth/income is a key factor in the prevalence of gender-based violence. To that end, Statistics SA (2020) reported that the prevalence of physical and sexual violence decreased with the wealth quintile. In other words, the higher the wealth/income, the lower the prevalence of gender-based violence.

Overcoming economic vulnerability

Over and above all of this, the bigger question is, ‘how do we overcome the economic vulnerability that subjects poor women to gender-based violence?’ Here are a few contemplations:
1) Empowerment of women and economic justice. It may be good to take more deliberate and decisive action to capacitate women to a point where they are able to support their own livelihoods outside of economic dependence on a male.
2) Unlearning the outdated gender roles. Research suggests that more and more women are exiting the ‘nurturing and child-rearing’ role. This is because of the rising cost of living. Technology has made paid work less labour intensive. This then eliminates physical traits as a requirement for high-paying employment opportunities.
3) Socio-cultural re-engineering. This speaks to unlearning outdated cultural norms and dictates. While noting that every society, ethnic group, and culture has gender role expectations, these can also change over time. Perhaps now is the time for those expectations to change. If its existence is tantamount to abuse and even death, then certainly we need to unlearn the toxic and outdated and learn the forward-looking and solidarity-inducing doctrine.
4) Women as spearheads in women’s issues to inform legislation, policy, and practice. As the adage goes, ‘one is the master of your own condition’. This means that a person’s awareness of her/his condition allows them to be better suited to make the best inputs to liberate herself and those in like conditions.

A lot more than what we suggest can be done to uplift women from the economic vulnerability that subjects them to gender-based violence in the household and elsewhere. We do not hold a monopoly on gender-based violence and the solutions therein. Our only hope is to spark a conversation that will contribute to feasible real-life solutions to one of our biggest and far-reaching challenges as a nation – gender-based violence and its socio-economic roots.

News Archive

Open letter from Prof Jonathan Jansen to all UFS students

2014-02-22

Dear Students of the University of the Free State

In the past four years there has emerged a new consensus on the three campuses of the University of the Free State (UFS) about the things that divide us – such as racism, sexism and homophobia. Students and campus leaders have worked hard to develop this new consensus in residences and in the open spaces on campus. There can be no doubt that new bonds of friendship have developed across the markers of race, ethnicity, class, religion and sexual orientation. I bear witness to these new solidarities every day on the campus.

You chose a white student to head up the transformation portfolio on the SRC. You chose a black captain to head up the university’s first team in rugby. You chose a white “prime” as head of residence to lead a predominantly black men’s residence. You chose a South African woman of Indian descent as Rag Queen and last week, a black student from Cape Town as the men’s Rag winner—choices not possible and never made before in our campus history. Many of you have intimate friends who come from different social or cultural or religious backgrounds. You learn together, share rooms together, pray together and party together. In other words, in the day to day workings of this university campus, you have demonstrated to campus, city and country that we can overcome the lingering effects of racism and other maladies in this new generation. You have helped create a university community inclusive of people of diverse religions, abilities, class and sexual orientation.

I have said this repeatedly that from time to time this new consensus will be tested – when a minority of students, and they are a small and dwindling minority, still act as if these are the days of apartheid. And when that consensus is tested as it was this week, and as it will be tested in the future, only then we will be able to assess the strength and durability of our progress in creating a new South African campus culture of human togetherness based on respect, dignity and embrace.

The real test of our leadership, including student leadership, is how we respond when our transformation drive is threatened.

Let me say this: I have absolute faith in you, as students of this great university, to stand together in your condemnation of these vile acts of violence and to move together in your determination to maintain the momentum for the Human Project of the University of the Free State. We have come too far to allow a few criminals to derail what you have built together in recent years.

There will, no doubt, be unscrupulous people on all sides of the political spectrum wanting to milk this tragedy for their own narrow purposes. There will be false information, rumours and exaggerations by those who wish to inflame a bad situation to gain mileage for their agendas. That is inevitable in a country that is still so divided.

I ask you, through all of this, to keep perspective. Two or ten or even twenty students behaving badly do not represent 30,000 students; a minority of violent and hateful persons do not represent the ideals, ambitions and commitments of the majority. At the same time, let us be realistic – anyone who thinks you can drive transformation without resistance clearly does not understand the difficult process of change.

The events of the week remind us, however, that we still have a long road to walk in deepening social and academic transformation at our university. Yes, we have invested hundreds of hours in training and mentorship; we have created new structures – such as the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice – to capture the energy and imagination of students driving transformation; we have created many opportunities for students to study and travel on this and other continents to enable cross-cultural learning; we have established formal and informal opportunities to dialogue about difficult issues on and off campus between students and their leaders; and we crafted new curricula to enable teaching and learning on the big questions of our times.

But this is clearly not enough, and so I have decided on the following immediate next steps:

We will meet for several hours next week to think about how we can deepen the transformation of our university after this terrible incident.
We will arrange a University Assembly on the events of the past week so that we speak with one voice on human wrongs and to re-commit to human rights and we will continue with open forum discussions during the months to come.
We will review the entire spectrum of programmes, from orientation to residence life to the undergraduate curriculum, to determine how effective our interventions really are in reaching all students with respect to basic issues of human rights.
We will review our media and communications strategy to determine how far and deep our messages on human rights travel across all sectors of the university community. In this regard it is important that the campus be blanketed on a regular basis with our condemnation of human wrongs and our commitment to human rights.
We will commission the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice to review the events of the past week and make recommendations on how we can improve the campus environment so that all students are protected from harm inside residences, classrooms and in open spaces of the campus.
We will take the questions raised during this week into the academic community and to the general staff of the university so that all personnel also engage with our own roles and responsibilities with respect to campus transformations.
We undertake to make annual report-backs on transformation to all stakeholders in public forums so that students and staff and external communities can track the progress of the university on matters of human rights on campus.

I wish to thank my staff for acting firmly as soon as this tragic event came to our attention. We worked through the night to find and identify the perpetrators. We traced the two students and immediately handed them to the police. They were expelled. And throughout this process we offered counselling and support to the victim of this violent act.

The two former students were expelled and will now face justice in the criminal courts. It is hoped that in the course of time they will come to their senses and seek restoration and reconciliation with the student they so callously harmed. They are not part of the university community anymore.

That is the kind of university we are.

Jonathan D Jansen
Vice-Chancellor and Rector
University of the Free State
20 February 2014

Note: The use of the word ‘campus’ refers to all three campuses of the UFS, namely the Bloemfontein Campus, South Campus and Qwaqwa Campus.

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