Gender Equity in South African Education 1994–2004 Perspectives from Research, Government and Unions CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS Edited by Linda Chisholm & Jean September Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za This publication has been produced with the assistance of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Ottawa, Canada. The content of the publication is the sole responsibility of the HSRC and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the IDRC. Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za © 2005 Human Sciences Research Council First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN 0-7969-2094-X Cover by Jenny Young Copy edited by Helena Reid Designed and typeset by Christabel Hardacre Print management by comPress Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Marketing and Distribution PO Box 30370, Tokai, Cape Town, 7966, South Africa Tel: +27 +21 701-4477 Fax: +27 +21 701-7302 email: orders@blueweaver.co.za Distributed worldwide, except Africa, by Independent Publishers Group 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610, USA www.ipgbook.com To order, call toll-free: 1-800-888-4741 All other enquiries, Tel: +1 +312-337-0747 Fax: +1 +312-337-5985 email: Frontdesk@ipgbook.com Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Contents List of tables and figures v Acknowledgements vi List of abbreviations vii Overview Linda Chisholm and Jean September 1 Keynote address The hidden face of gender inequality in South African education 19 Naledi Pandor Part 1 New perspectives and theoretical approaches 25 Chapter 1 Gender equity in education: A perspective from development 27 Ramya Subrahmanian Chapter 2 Gender equity in education: The Australian experience 39 Jane Kenway Chapter 3 Between ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘transformation’: Lessons and challenges for institutional change 55 Catherine Odora-Hoppers Part 2 Mapping gender inequality 75 Chapter 4 Gender equality and education in South Africa: Measurements, scores and strategies 77 Elaine Unterhalter Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Chapter 5 Mapping a southern African girlhood in the age of AIDS 92 Claudia Mitchell Discussant: Chapters 4 and 5 113 Daisy Makofane Part 3 Government activism and civil society mobilisation 117 Chapter 6 Reflections on the Gender Equity Task Team 119 AnnMarie Wolpe Chapter 7 National Department of Education initiatives 133 Mmabatho Ramagoshi Discussant: Chapters 6 and 7 143 Janine Moolman Chapter 8 The state of mobilisation of women teachers in the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union 146 Shermain Mannah List of contributors and participants 157 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za List of tables and figures List of tables Table 4.1 The four different approaches to understanding the analyses of gender, equality and education 80 Table 4.2 Equality of opportunity: intake ratios by gender 82 Table 4.3 Equality of opportunity: primary school enrolment rates by gender 82 Table 4.4 Equality of opportunity: secondary school enrolment rates by gender 82 Table 4.5 Equality of opportunity: school life expectancy and percentage of repeaters by gender 83 Table 4.6 Equality of outcomes: children out of school, surviving in primary school and transferring to secondary school 83 Table 4.7 Equality of outcomes: Senior Certificate examination results 84 Table 4.8 Equality of outcomes: Senior Certificate results by gender in selected subjects 84 List of figures Figure 4.1 The capability approach to the evaluation of education 88 Figure 5.1 Enacted rape scene 94 Figure 5.2 Safe and unsafe spaces at school 94 Figure 5.3 More than 30% of girls are raped at school 95 Figure 8.1 The quota system meets the glass ceiling 150 v Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Acknowledgements We would like to express our appreciation to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the British Council and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) for funding the conference, and to the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada (IDRC) for funding this publication. We would also like to thank the people who did the background work: Conxtions for making the conference run smoothly, Thora Jacobs and Annette Gerber, from the British Council and HSRC respectively, for their support and all the participants who made this conference a success. Thank you to Nadine Hutton for permission to reproduce the photograph on p 95. vi Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za List of abbreviations ANC African National Congress CADRE Centre for Aids Development, Research and Evaluation CEM Council of Education Ministers CEPD Centre for Education Policy Development and Management Cosatu Congress of South African Trade Unions DoE Department of Education ECCED Early Childhood Care and Education EFA Education for All GDI Gender Development Index GEAR Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy GEM Gender Empowerment Measure GER Gross enrolment rate GETT Gender Equity Task Team GFP Gender Focal Person GIR Gross intake rate GPI Gender parity index HDI Human Development Index Hedcom Heads of Education Departments Committee HEI Higher Education Institution HOD Head of Department HSRC Human Sciences Research Council vii Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za IGO Inter-government organisations IMF International Monetary Fund MDG Millennium Development Goals NGO Non-government organisations NIR Net intake rate OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development SACE South African Council of Educators SADC Southern African Development Community Sadtu South African Democratic Teachers’ Union SGB School Governing Body Sida Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency SMT School Management Team SRGBV School-related gender-based violence UDF United Democratic Front UKZN University of KwaZulu-Natal UNAIDS Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS UNDP United Nations Development Programme Unesco United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Unicef United Nations Children’s Fund WTO World Trade Organisation GENDER EQUITY IN SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION viii Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Overview Linda Chisholm and Jean September Introduction Ten years after democracy in South Africa, and it is possible to point to sig- nificant strides that have been made socially, economically and politically in terms of gender equity. The Constitution, Bill of Rights, legislation in all departments and use of quotas as a mechanism to improve gender inclusivity reflect the commitment to gender equality and non-sexism in government and civil society organisations. Women constitute almost half the members of Cabinet and 35 per cent of members of parliament; an entire so-called ‘gender machinery’ exists in government to promote gender equity; trade unions and civil society organisations place gender high on the agenda; social policies promote gender equity; and a discourse of rights which joins gender to racial and other forms of discrimination and injustice suffuses the new ideologies and practices of both government and civil society organisations. The education sector, too, has seen a similar movement towards gender equity. Contrast this with the situation as late as 1993 when Cabinet consisted entirely of white men. The silence on gender equity in government and busi- ness was as deafening as that on racial and class equity. Social policies were designed to keep intact a system that fixed women and men into relation- ships of inferiority and superiority based on their race and class. An over- arching gender ideology was predicated on a profound separation between the roles that men and women were seen as playing in the public and private spheres. Education underpinned this system in multiple ways – from the official curriculum that was taught, to the hidden curriculum that infused everyday schooling practices such as who was more likely to do maths and science, or technical education and domestic science, and who swept and kept classrooms clean. 1 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za Although structured by race, class and the ‘patchwork of patriarchies’ (Bozzoli 1983) that characterises South Africa, the lives and experiences of women in the apartheid period were not those of passive victims (Walker 1982). This history is the subject of numerous writings. In the 1970s and 1980s, a climate of engaged, grassroots anti-apartheid activism shaped an emergent feminist politics and research. Writing about women and gender occurred both with- in and outside the academy (see for example Cock 1989; Bozzoli 1983; Driver 1985; Mashinini 1989; Qunta 1987). And by the mid-1980s, anti-apartheid organisations such as the United Democratic Front (UDF), and trade unions such as the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), were acknowl- edging the distinct dynamic and importance of gender politics and justice (Lewis 2004a). In the early 1990s, in the context of the transition to democra- cy, there was also an explosion of significant autobiographies: ‘each writer is concerned with how, as a woman, she enters the spheres of work, domesticity and anti-apartheid politics, spheres which are consequently shown to be defined by rigid racial dynamics and gender hierarchies and stereotypes’ (Lewis 2004b; see also Kuzwayo 1985; Magona 1990, 1992; Ramphele 1995; Unterhalter 2002). By 1994, there was a history, legacy and literature of women’s history and role in the anti-apartheid struggle. Although only a minority of women would define themselves as feminist, and a feminist movement is not a feature of South African politics, there were substantial women who played a significant role in emerging trade unions and civil society organisations that challenged dominant gender relations. The same was true of the education sphere, where women were in the forefront of organising in the new teachers’ union move- ment that became the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu). And there was a small literature on gender and education (Chisholm & Unterhalter 1999; Enslin 1993/4; Gaitskell 1983; Morrell 1992; Truscott 1992). But many challenges still existed, given the racial, class and cultural practices that still reinforced gender inequality. These included the need to identify and mobilise men and women both within and outside government to promote and support an agenda of change and transformation in gender relations. Gender Equity Task Team It was in this context that the Department of Education appointed a Gender Equity Task Team (GETT) in 1996 with AnnMarie Wolpe as its chair. Its brief GENDER EQUITY IN SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION 2 Free download from www.hsrc p ress.ac.za [...]... in putting these principles into practice and in overcoming the legacy of gender inequality in our education system Firstly, as far as gender mainstreaming is concerned, the DoE set up a National Gender Co-ordinating Committee composed of Gender Focal Persons from provincial education departments This committee monitors gender mainstreaming in the provinces 20 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za... Unterhalter E & Epstein D (2002) Instituting gender equality in schools: Working in a HIV environment, Perspectives in Education 20(2): 37–53 Morrell R (1992) Gender in the transformation of South African education, Perspectives in Education 13(2): 1–27 Morrell R, Unterhalter E, Moletsane L & Epstein D (2001) HIV/AIDS, policies, schools and gender identities, Indicator South Africa 18(2): 51–57 17 G E N... different lives: South African women teachers’ autobiographies and the analysis of educational change In Kallaway, P (ed.) The history of education under apartheid 1948 1994 Cape Town: Pearson Education South Africa Walker C (1982) Women and resistance in South Africa Cape Town: David Philip; London: Currey Wolpe A, Quinlan O & Martinez L (1997) Gender equity in education: A report by the Gender Equity Task... as sign in the South African Colonial Enterprise, Journal of Literary Studies 4(1): 3–20 Enslin P (1993/4) Education for nation-building: A feminist critique, Perspectives in Education 15(1): 13–25 16 OVERVIEW Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Enslin P (2000) Defining a civic agenda: Citizenship and gender equality in postapartheid education In Arnot, M & Dillabough, J (eds.) A challenging democracy:... Ramya Subrahmanian Introduction This paper focuses on some current gender equity issues in education, drawing on a broad and generalised picture of issues that are confronting gender justice approaches, in particular, and development, in general The main concern is to locate issues in education within the broader context of recent shifts in development paradigms and thinking, and in particular, to identify... between individual consciousness and structural determinants, and how as individuals we may be unwitting carriers of processes of whose consequences we may not even be aware’ as well as ‘holders of a key to the door of strategic change’ Mapping gender inequality in education in South Africa The chapters by Unterhalter and Mitchell provide two windows into different ways of approaching gender inequality in. .. conference participants of linking a sense of agency and change not only to intervention by government, but also to locating such agency firmly in independent action In this regard, the need for a broad network of gender activists in education working across theory and practice still remains References Bozzoli B (1983) Marxism feminism and South African studies, Journal of Southern African Studies 9(2):... possibility of bringing together a combination of feminists in government and civil society to reassess the state of research on gender equity in South Africa This initiative was the outcome of an ongoing conversation between ourselves since the 1990s Jean had been a leading figure in the teachers’ union in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was acutely aware of how gender issues were undermined despite... Goal of promoting gender equality and empowering women by critically examining knowledge about how to achieve gender equitable basic education It uses a series of seminars to bring together international development education policy-makers, practitioners, academics and campaigners to examine issues concerned with gender equality and quality basic education for children in low and middle-income countries... Gender Equality, the Gender Unit in the Department of Education, and Gender Focal Persons in each province The national machinery is unable to monitor, evaluate and implement gender programmes effectively – this relates in part to its status The overall experience of people working on gender – whether in government or in unions – is one of marginalisation; ongoing forms of undermining and humiliation . change’. Mapping gender inequality in education in South Africa The chapters by Unterhalter and Mitchell provide two windows into different ways of approaching gender inequality in education: Elaine Unterhalter. of gender inequality. The overt face includes an assessment of the mixed progress made since GETT in three main areas: gender mainstreaming, capacity- building and acting to reduce gender- based. need for interventions in: • Early Childhood Development; • Schooling; • Further Education and Training; • Higher Education and Training; • Adult Basic Education and Training; • Gender and educational