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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | South African female incarceration: structural inequalities, the economy and job training |
Author: | Gibbons, Jacqueline A. |
Year: | 1996 |
Periodical: | Annual conference - African Society of International and Comparative Law |
Volume: | 8 |
Pages: | 138-144 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | prisoners women's education women |
Abstract: | The women in South Africa's prisons are exemplary of some of the occupational and gendered structural problems of the nation. The overwhelming proportions of these women are of black African origin and heritage. They are the very women who in subsistence occupations are also subject to traditional cultural and legal norms and values. The job training programmes inside South Africa's female prison institutions maintain a certain degree of traditional job entrenchment. Religious education and activity is also seen, by administration, as a 'controlling' factor and one for the 'moral education' of wayward women. However, it will only be through change behind the walls, as well as on the outside, that there can be some hope for economic and social opportunities for the majority of inmates. The perpetuation of low self-esteem and limited job opportunities onto the outside will only be relieved when prison administrators work more closely with the sectors on the outside where reforms are being discussed and shaped. Adequate job training could pave the way to making women more marketable in the work force while they are imprisoned. In this way they would not be so likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the law for reasons of economic poverty and/or hardship. Notes, ref. |