The political economy of femicide in post-apartheid South Africa: investigating its structural determinants
Date
2022-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University
Abstract
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Femicide is among South Africa’s leading social challenges, affecting many women at every life stage despite their social, economic, and racial category. Femicide is used as a patriarchal tool to facilitate and regulate gender hierarchies within a socially and economically unequal society like South Africa. In this study, the political economy of femicide is investigated by examining violent hypermasculinities and structural violence as some of the key determining factors of femicide in post-apartheid South Africa. The researcher, recognising the intricacies of the political economy of femicide, investigates the topic using two key lenses. Firstly, she examines the full scope of structural violence in South Africa, namely the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment and moreover positions it within a gendered political economy framework to illustrate that the triple challenge is gendered, and it moreover contributes to women’s vulnerability to femicide. Secondly, the researcher, using masculinity and structural violence theories and case studies, explains how femicide is used by men as both a means to attain hegemonic masculinities, which the researcher argues is normalised in South Africa, as well as used as way to respond to social and economic challenges that come because of the triple challenge.
This study uses secondary source material to investigate the case studies and it moreover applies a multiple case study approach to provide complex analysis and examples that illustrate how hypermasculinities and structural violence are contributing factors to femicide. The multiple case studies used in this study explore various dimensions of the political economy of femicide. These include the relationship between the micro and macroeconomics of femicide in a structural violent society wherein neoliberalism and gendered structural violence play a contributing role in creating a crisis of femicide in South Africa. This is done through sustaining unequal living conditions which contribute to a significant number of women in South Africa living in poverty or being at risk of becoming chronically poor. Gendered structural violence such as chronic poverty alongside other factors such as toxic masculinities, impacts on women’s vulnerability to intimate femicide because it limits women’s choices to leave domestically violent households which could result in femicide. The study also focused on other dimensions of the political economy of femicide such as poverty as a barrier of access to the full attainment of male power; femicide as a way to recuperate masculinities that men feel they have lost; the relationship between economic deprivation and violence; and lastly, femicide as a form of gendered structural violence.
Other studies in this field have previously only focused on a singular contributing factor of femicide (i.e., exclusively focusing on masculinities or socioeconomics). While this approach is important, it provides only a limited understanding of a complex topic: femicide. Thus, the key contribution that this study makes is to use a feminist political economy lens to illustrate that multiple determinants of femicide can co-exist, thus making the study multidisciplinary. In her findings, the researcher concludes that femicide is rooted in South Africa’s gendered political economy wherein femicide is a gendered effect of structural violence and the triple challenge. This is because structural violence results in the feminisation of poverty which contributes to women’s vulnerability to gendered violence such as femicide. This is because the triple challenge contributes to limiting women’s economic and personal choices, thus contributing towards their vulnerability to femicide from an intimate partner. Moreover, the triple challenge contributes to femicide by disrupting the social constructions of hegemonic masculinity such as the construction that masculinity is self-sufficiency. Thus, in a context where men have no jobs and income due to the triple challenge, gender scripts of patriarchy encourage violence such as femicide as an alternative way of performing masculinity. Finally, the researcher’s findings indicate that the social constructions of masculinities have naturalised violence as one of the key markers of masculinity and this plays a huge role in South Africa’s femicide crisis.
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Description
Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2022.
Keywords
Women's studies, Women -- Crimes against -- Political aspects -- South Africa, Women -- Violence against -- Political aspects -- South Africa, Violence -- South Africa, Masculinity, Post-apartheid era -- South Africa, UCTD