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Clowes, Lindsay; Lazarus, Sandy; Ratele, Kopano (Medical Research Council, Tygerberg, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: This article reports on a study that sought to elicit the views of male university students on risk and protective factors to male interpersonal violence. The participants were 116 third-year students who participated in a final year research project in the Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) Programme at the University of Western Cape (UWC). Each of the students conducted six semistructured face to face interviews with male students. Following initial analyses of the interviews, a video-recorded class discussion was held to discuss the research findings. The data from the class discussion was captured under the four levels of individual, relationship, community and society, utilised by the World Health organization (WHO) in its World Health Report on Violence and Health. The analysis of the class discussion and the students’ own research reports revealed that at the individual level, risk and protective factors primarily revolve around the challenges of constructing a viable masculinity in specific social and economic contexts; at the relationship level, the key factors appear to be the experiences and expectations around gender roles and family dynamics; at the community level, it seems that weak or non-existent community networks and activities feed into increasing the risk of male community members becoming involved in violence. Each of these three levels needs to be understood against the historically specific backdrop of the societal ecological level: the gendered cultural values expressed in and reflectedby the wider social, economic and political contexts. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/170 Files in this item: 1
ClowesRisk&Protective2010.pdf (869.8Kb) -
Clowes, Lindsay; D’Amant, Toni; Nkani, Vuyo (HSRC Press, 2012)[more][less]
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Bhana, Deevia; Clowes, Lindsay; Morrell, Robert; Shefer, Tamara (Unisa Press and Taylor & Francis, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: Since the promulgation of the South African Schools Act in 1996 it has become illegal to exclude pregnant girls from school. Influenced by feminist research, policy has sought to assist pregnant girls and young parents to continue and complete their schooling on the understanding that having children often terminates school-going limiting future employment and work opportunities. This paper seeks to examine how the new policy has been understood and implemented. We focus on the views and experiences of principals and teachers as they are the authorities at school with the responsibility for ensuring that the policy is implemented. The paper draws on qualitative data collected by a larger study on being and becoming a parent at diverse group of schools in Kwazulu-Natal and the Western Cape. In the paper we investigate the extent to which schools’ responses to pregnancy and parenting reflect and/or reproduce normative gender roles and practices with respect to schooling and parenting in contemporary South Africa. We show also that despite familiar stereotypes about young parents and pregnancy, both teachers and principals take their pastoral responsibilities seriously. They do care and do try to help. But many teachers were judgemental and moralistic particularly in response to young girls. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/151 Files in this item: 1
BhanaPregnentGirls2008.pdf (2.038Mb) -
Ratele, Kopano; Shefer, Tamara; Clowes, Lindsay (Sage Publications, 2012)[more][less]
Abstract: The absence of biological fathers in South Africa has been constructed as a problem for children of both sexes but more so for boy-children. Arguably the dominant discourse in this respect has demonized non-nuclear, female-headed households. Fathers are constructed as either absent or ‘bad’. Thus it has become important to explore more closely how male care-givers have been experienced by groups of men in South Africa. This article examines discourses of fatherhood and fatherlessness by drawing on qualitative interviews with a group of 29 men who speak about their reported experiences and understandings of being fathered or growing up without biological fathers. Two major and intertwined subjugated discourses about adult men’s experiences of being fathered that counter- balance the prevailing discourses about meaning of fatherhood and fatherlessness became evident, namely, ‘being always there’ and ‘talking fatherhood’. The importance of the experience of fatherhood as ‘being there’, which relates to a quality of time and relationship between child and father rather than physical time together, is illustrated. It is not only biological fathers who can ‘be there’ for their sons but also social fathers, other significant male role models and father figures who step in at different times in participants’ lives when biological fathers are unavailable for whatever reason. Second, many positive experiences of fathers or father figures that resist a traditional role of authority and control and subscribe to more nurturant and non-violent forms of care, represented as ‘talking’ fathers, are underlined. If we are to better understand the impact of colonial and apartheid history and its legacy on family life in contemporary society, there is a need for more historically and contextually informed studies on the meaning of fatherhood and fatherlessness. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/716 Files in this item: 1
Ratele SouthAfricanFathers2012.pdf (582.9Kb)
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