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Intersectionality of womanhood unpacked in UFS Women’s Month webinar

01 September 2020 | Story Nonsindiso Qwabe | Photo Supplied

The intersectionality between politics, feminism, and social justice was unpacked extensively in the Student Affairs Women’s Month Webinar that took place on 25 August 2020. This was the second in a series initiated by the Qwaqwa Campus Student Affairs. Director of Student Affairs, Nicole Morris, said the webinars were initiated to encourage difficult conversations around womanhood in South Africa.

UFS Vice-Rector Institutional Change, Student Affairs, and Engaged Scholarship, Prof Puleng LenkaBula, and renowned businesswoman and media mogul, Carol Bouwer, were featured in the second instalment. Together they unpacked the dynamics of being a woman in modern-day South Africa in the face of the scourge of violence against women and children, as well as the transformation and greater representation of women in both positions and institutions of power.

Challenge the systems

Setting the tone, Prof LenkaBula said society as a collective needed to come together to challenge systems that oppress, mute, silence, and make it impossible for women to become dignified and contribute fully to the society we live in.

“If we are to promote social justice, feminism, ethics, and gendered analysis, we have to ensure that we constantly challenge, rethink, and think again around issues that we feel are withholding women from being fully themselves.”

Bouwer and Prof LenkaBula said the nation is constantly diverted to other issues that are shifting the focus from amplifying voices for the protection of women and children, hence no real change has taken place.

“As someone who began working during the birth of our freedom in 1994, I think back to the elation that we felt at the creation of the constitution. There was so much jubilation about it, but we exported that excitement to the world and talked about what we had attained without practising it here.”

“We continue to create systems and amazing documents as a nation, yet we do not implement the very things that will lead to a point where discussions such as these do not need to take place,” Bouwer said.

Bouwer said the COVID-19 pandemic showed that South Africa had the necessary resources to prioritise gender-based violence, but those in power chose not to.

“As we speak today, gender-based violence has become a national crisis. We talk about the intersectionality between politics, feminism, and social justice against the confluence of the opposite happening. With what happened when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national disaster, we’ve realised that we do have the wherewithal to mobilise for action in this nation, and it is the one thing we have not seen our leaders do,” she said.

Part-time feminism will not help

Prof LenkaBula said rethinking feminism was needed to move away from definitions of anti-manhood in order to promote feminist ideals that would benefit the nation as a whole.

“As a feminist, I want to promote the idea that feminists are not promoting the defamation or marginalisation of men or stripping them of their dignity. We are saying that as men and women, no matter our gender or sexuality, we can work together to ensure that we all live with dignity, we all are equal, and we all express our talents, and are able to utilise opportunities that are available to us in fair ways.”

Alluding to this, Bouwer said she hoped to see part-time feminism done away with in the rebuilding of society after the pandemic. “Coming out of this pandemic, may our feminism be transformed by everything that is currently happening. There is a huge injection of pathos happening right now and I hope that it is not a fad like everything else that has happened in South Africa, but that it becomes something that we really embody as we go back to whatever normal is going to look like,” she said.

Qwaqwa Campus SRC Secretary General, Nelisiwe Masango, said the Division of Student Affairs planned the Women’s Month Webinars to discuss topics on issues that affect women directly.

“These programmes are quite insightful and uplifting. They especially encourage young women to see that the revolution is there, it is real, and it is practical. It gives meaning to continue advocating for better and safe spaces for women. Many times, spaces of contestation are male dominated and therefore women have to be empowered to contest these spaces. These engagements must be ongoing or continuous so that we all understand the issues we are affected by and advocate for a better society.”

News Archive

Bullying in schools: Everyone’s problem

2005-06-03

From left: Prof Gerhardt de Klerk, Dean: Faculty of the Humanities; Prof Corene de Wet; Prof Rita Niemann, Head of the Department of Comparative Education and Educational Management in the School of Education and Prof Frederick Fourie, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the UFS

It is not only learners who are the victums of bullying in schools, but also the teachers. Prof. Corene de Wet from the Department Comparative Education and Educational Management at the University of the Free State reported, against the background of two studies on bullying in Free State secondary schools, that bullying is a general phenomena in these schools.

Prof. de Wet, who delivered her inaugural lecture on Wednesday night, is from the Department Comparative Education and Educational Management which resorts under the School of Education at the University of the Free State. She is the first women who became a full professor the School of Education.

Prof. de Wet says, “A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative action on the part of one or more students. Bullying always includes the intentional use of aggression, an unbalanced relationship of power between the bully and the victim, and the causing of physical pain and/or emotional misery.

In some Free State schools there are victims and perpetrators of direct and indirect verbal, as well as emotional, physical and sexual bullying.

“Adults who say that bullying are part of the growing-up process and parents who set not only academic expectations but also social expectations to their children cause that victims are unwilling to acknowledge that they are being bulled. Many parents are also unaware of the levels of bullying their children are exposed to.

“Some of the learners were at least once a month the victim of direct verbal harassment, 32,45% were assaulted by co-learners and 11,21% of them were at east once per week beat, kicked, pushed and hurt in any other physical way. Free State learners are very vulnerable to bullies at taxis and on the school yard they are mostly exposed to bullies in bathrooms.

“Learners are usually bullied by members of the same gender. However, racial composition also plays a role in some Free State schools. A grade 12 girl writes, ‘There are boys in my school who act means against black people. When the teacher is out they take a red pen and write on the projector and spray it with spirits. It looks like blood and they would say it is AIDS and my friends and I have it.’

“Educators must take note of bullying in schools and must not shrug it off as unimportant. Principals or educators could be find guilty of negligence. A large number of educator respondents, 88,29%, indicated that they would intervene in cases of verbal bullying and 89,71% would intervene if they saw learners being physically bullied. However, only 19,97% of the learners who were victims of bullying were helped by educators/ other adults from their respective schools.

“The learners’ lack of trust in their educators’ abilities and willingness to assist them in the fight against bullying has important implications for education institutions. The importance of training must be emphasised.

Learners bully their educators to undermine their confidence. In Prof. de Wet’s study on educator-targeted bullying in Free State schools 24,85% of the respondents were physically abused by their learners, 33,44% were the victims of indirect verbal bullying, and 18,1% were at one time or another sexually harassed by their learners. These learner offences may lead to suspension.

“Educators are not only victims of bullying; some of them are the bullies. The South African Council for Educators prohibits bullying by educators. It is worrying that 55,83% of the educators who participated in the research project verbally victimised learners, 50,31% physically assaulted learners and a small percentage was guilty of sexual harassment.

“Every educator and learner in South Africa has the right to life, equal protection and benefit of the law, of dignity, as well as of freedom and security of the person. These rights will only be realised in a bully-free school milieu.

“To oppose bullying a comprehensive anti-bullying programme, collective responsibility and the establishment of a caring culture at schools and in the community is necessary,” said Prof. de Wet.

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