African Women 
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 Periodical article |
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| Title: | Terms of engagement: South African challenges |
| Author: | Hassim, Shireen |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Periodical: | Feminist Africa |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Pages: | 10-28 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | feminism political participation women's organizations State-society relationship Law, Legal Issues, and Human Rights Equality and Liberation Sex Roles Politics and Government |
| External link: | https://feministafrica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/fa_4_feature_article.pdf |
| Abstract: | In the past two decades, feminist activists and scholars in both older democracies and postcolonial States have begun to pay closer attention to the ways in which the formal institutions of liberal democracies have failed women. After a period of intense debate, alongside a cynical view of institutions such as national machineries in Africa, we have recently witnessed renewed engagement by women with political parties and the State. Increased representation in decisionmaking bodies has led to massive campaigns for electoral quotas. These strategies are based on the view that if properly constituted, African democracies can overcome the historical legacies of women's subordination and that new relationships can be built between State and civil society, based on democratic participation, the development of policies that are responsive to the needs of poor women, and accountability of elected leaders to citizens. Yet these developments raise a number of critical questions for feminists about the nature of contemporary political institutions, the possibilities for radical change through the State, and the kinds of processes within the women's movement that need to accompany State-focused political strategies. The author reflects on these questions as they have arisen in one context, that of South Africa since 1994. She begins by presenting a framework for analysing the challenges facing any women's movement as it seeks to engage the State, contrasting the emphasis on inclusion with the goals of transformation. Her discussion then moves towards a consideration of the current shape of the South African women's movement, laying out its contours and borders, as well as the relationship between the women's movement and other social movements. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
