African Women 
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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | The Limits of Popular Democracy: Women's Organizations, Feminism and the UDF |
| Author: | Hassim, Shireen |
| Year: | 2003 |
| Periodical: | Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa |
| Issue: | 51 |
| Pages: | 48-73 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | democracy United Democratic Front women's organizations Women's Issues Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence Equality and Liberation organizations nationalism |
| External link: | https://muse.jhu.edu/article/48784 |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the contours and consequences of tensions between women's feminist politics and national liberation in the United Democratic Front (UDF) in South Africa during the 1980s. Through the lens of two UDF affiliates, the United Women's Organization (UWO) in the Western Cape and the Natal Organization of Women (NOW), it explores two questions: first, to what extent did the civics movement and the UDF in practice give voice and power to 'the grassroots'; second, did the notions of democracy offered by the civics movement encompass the interests articulated by its women's movement affiliates? The paper argues that women's organizations were weakened in many ways by affiliation to the UDF. The aims of feminists within women's organizations went beyond the vision of democracy offered by the civic movement and the UDF. Feminists sought not merely a regime change, nor even more broadly the expansion of democratic decisionmaking to reflect 'people's power' but also a reconsideration of the ways in which private inequalities shaped the differential capabilities of women and men. The paper draws on archival material and interviews with participants in the UWO and NOW. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
