Gender Equity in South African Education 1994 - 2004 pptx

Gender Equity
in South African Education 1994–2004
Perspectives from Research, Government and Unions
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Edited by Linda Chisholm & Jean September

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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
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© 2005 Human Sciences Research Council
First published 2005
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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

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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

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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

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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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was to advise the Department on the merits of establishing a Gender Equity
Unit in the Department of Education (DoE)and what its form and composi-
tion should be. The GETT went well beyond this brief and when it submitted
its report in 1997, provided a comprehensive and searching analysis of the
field of education, the conditions and structural constraints, the role that
education in South Africa has played and can play in addressing inequalities
on the basis of gender, as well as education’s link to civil and familial society.
Even though it is not yet ten years since the publication of the GETT Report,

the occasion of South Africa’s Ten Years of Democracy celebrations invited
reflection on what has been achieved in the sphere of gender equity in educa-
tion. The Report provides a benchmark as a record of conditions in the field
at the time of transition to democracy, an approach to gender as well as a set
of recommendations, the realisation of which, in practice, can be evaluated
from different perspectives.
The GETT Report provided path-breaking analyses of gender across the field
of education. It analysed practice and charted the need for interventions in:
• Early Childhood Development;
• Schooling;
• Further Education and Training;
• Higher Education and Training;
• Adult Basic Education and Training;
• Gender and educational management;
• Gender and disability; and
• Sex-based violence in schools.
The Report, as Wolpe points out in her chapter, recognised that equity did not
mean affirmative action that favoured women, and it meant more than the
provision of equal access to educational facilities. The Task Team Report
(Wolpe, Quinlan & Martinez 1997) defined gender equality as:
Meeting women’s, men’s, girls’ and boys’ needs in order for them
to compete in the formal and informal labour market, to partici-
pate fully in civil society and to fulfil their familial roles adequately
without being discriminated against because of their gender.
The Report made recommendations, as AnnMarie Wolpe shows in her chap-
ter, on a range of issues: from the establishment of a Gender Equity Unit in
the DoE, to how the links between sexual violence, HIV/AIDS and gender
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identity could be addressed in and outside the curriculum, to the training of
teachers and administrators, to how women’s representation in the manage-
ment and administration of education could be improved, to where and how
research should be developed. These recommendations had to be backed by
legal means. It was also widely recognised then, as it is now, that they required
a strong movement committed to gender equity to ensure that they could be
introduced and sustained.
From the perspective of early 2004, it is possible to point to much that has
changed since 1996, and much that has remained the same. The immediate
post-apartheid period saw both the assertion of women as equal partners in
all spheres and, on the one hand, increasing social and familial violence
against women and girls as well as, on the other, continuing high levels of
unemployment and poverty amongst women. Ten years after South Africa’s
democratic elections, research and social action on gender equity in South
African education is a significant challenge. Then, as now, the evidence shows
that girls’ access to education is not the greatest challenge in South Africa. The
quality of girls’ participation in schooling and the outcomes are far more
significant. The impact of HIV/AIDS on the quality of education, as provided
and experienced, has become an issue of major concern (Epstein et al. 2004;
HSRC 2001; Moletsane et al. 2002; Morrell et al. 2001). And the continuing
role of culture in justifying and legitimising social practices that entrench
inequalities has been highlighted by the passage of legislation that effectively
cements women in rural areas into patriarchal relationships in which they can
neither inherit nor enjoy equal rights with men (Enslin 2000).
The reciprocal relationship of gender and quality in education are critically
linked to equity issues but the research that can provide a basis for action is
extremely thin. Evidence does exist that girls may stay longer in school and

perform better than boys overall, as well as outperform boys in highly com-
petitive subjects at the top end of the spectrum. But the reasons for this are
poorly understood and do not occur across all contexts (Perry 2003). There is
also continuing evidence of significant barriers in higher education and the
labour market (Subotzky 2003). Achievements in school do not appear to
translate into success in higher education or the labour market.
Related to these issues is the broader question of a network of researchers,
practitioners and campaigners to address the issues in a number of different
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ways. Without such a network to develop and sustain initiatives, interventions
are unlikely to succeed. Indeed, it could be argued that the absence of such a
network hinders progress in achieving goals of gender equity and quality in
education in South Africa (Truscott 1992; Chisholm 2003).
Purpose and background of the conference
With these issues in mind, and given the ten years of democracy focus
throughout South Africa, we discussed the 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 the lip-
service paid to it. Linda, as the director of the University of the Witwatersrand
Education Policy Unit in the 1990s, worked closely with the teachers’ union on
researching gender policies and practices, amongst other things.
By the late 1990s both of us saw disturbing shifts in the role of women

in the union, with many previously powerful women in it marginalised –
relegated either to the inconsequential Gender Desk or other positions with
little status, or to the lower rungs in the union. These shifts were not, we felt,
unique to the union, but reflected something broader. In a searching analysis
of the impact of the institutionalisation of gender equality in the South
African state since 1994, Shireen Hassim has argued that the effectiveness of
gender machinery was undermined both by the culture of the bureaucracy, as
well as by the broader fiscal constraints within which redistributive policies
for women were articulated (Hassim 2003). The significance of these devel-
opments in and for education was profound. This was underlined for Linda
during her work on the revision of Curriculum 2005 for the government. And
strengthening the voice of civil society became a central part of Jean’s work
in the British Council. It was only in 2003 that we were both in positions
(Linda at the HSRC and Jean at the British Council) that enabled us to try to
bring the broader issue into focus in the context of a reassessment of gender
equity since 1994. Neither of us are any longer directly involved with the
union, but both of us remain convinced of its critical role in shaping the
character of education through its members and influence – and the trans-
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formation of gender relations in schools is a crucial dimension of this.
Likewise the role of research and government is not insignificant.
Others were also involved in the project from the beginning. Discussions were
held with the ‘Gender Education and Development: Beyond Access’ project.
Elaine Unterhalter at the Institute of Education in London and Sheila Aikman
of Oxfam co-ordinate this project. The ‘Beyond Access’ project aims to achieve

the Millennium Development Goal of promoting gender equality and em-
powering 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 qual-
ity basic education for children in low and middle-income countries. An
important dimension is linking researchers and policy-makers in order to
stimulate new research agendas and hone initiatives in the area. These discus-
sions informed the nature of the conference and led to the idea of seeing the
South African conference as part of the process of mobilising awareness in
South Africa around the Millenium Development Goal of promoting gender
equality.
Vernet Napo, based at the Centre for Education Policy Development and
Management (CEPD) and a former Gender Focal Person in the Gauteng
Department of Education, was keenly interested and involved from the begin-
ning, and provided a direct link with the government’s Gender Focal Person
network. A conversation with Naledi Pandor, before she became Minister of
Education, ensured the support of the Forum for Women’s Educators of
South Africa – as she was the president of the South African chapter of this
organisation with the intention of taking up the GETT focus.
A broad group of women, mainly from outside government, was drawn
together at initial meetings at the HSRC to thrash out the aims and purposes
and discuss a programme for the conference. They included Daisy Makofane
from the University of the North, Lomthie Mavimbela from the Education
Foundation, Claudia Mitchell from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Vernet
Napo from the CEPD, Hersheela Narsee, a PhD student from the University
of Pretoria and associate of the CEPD, Jenni Schindler from EduSource,
Vuyisa Tanga from Pentech, Elaine Unterhalter from the University of
London, AnnMarie Wolpe, former chair of the GETT and Carolyn McKinney
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from HSRC. From these meetings the aims of the conference emerged as
being to:
• Revive gender activism in education;
• Take stock of ten years of gender equity in education and pay special
attention to issues in rural areas;
• Explore new thinking and fresh perspectives on gender equity and
education;
• Consider comparative and regional research; and
• Design a sustainable strategy and implementation plan.
Given that the conference operated on a budget provided by the Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the British Council
and the HSRC, participation at the conference was limited to about 50
people. The main purpose was to invite people working on gender equity
in education in the fields of government, research and civil society. The
conference programme and papers were organised around these issues. The
programme was planned with fewer papers to maximise participation and
discussion. There were papers from government, researchers and members of
civil society. Unfortunately it was not possible to include all the contributions
made and papers presented. Presenters, chairs of sessions and rapporteurs,
such as Vivienne Carelse, Vuyisa Tanga, Keith Ruiters, Nazir Carrim, Mandy
Sanger, Gertrude Fester and others, all made vivid verbal presentations on
civil society, the gender machinery in government, and the role and relation-
ship of masculinity to gender politics and practice, respectively, but these were
not captured on tape. Day-to-day pressures subsequent to the conference
prevented participants from submitting the more formal papers required for

this volume.
Naledi Pandor’s keynote address was the first public presentation she made
after her appointment as Minister of Education. Women in her position often
backtrack from their feminist commitments once in public office. Her pres-
entation was unequivocal about her commitment, during her term of office,
to questions of gender. Her chapter addresses the overt and hidden face 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 violence. The hidden face she sees
in the glass ceilings women face, the hidden curriculum, the silencing of
women’s voices, and the general absence of attention to gender in mainstream
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research. The chapter explores the rights women and girls have won and need
to continue to struggle for, and the gendered assumptions that influence
beliefs about men and women which in turn also impact on behaviour. It
concludes by arguing that ‘women and girls have begun to break down those
education and training barriers, but there is no room for complacency.’
Key issues
This speech set the tone for the discussions that followed. As in all confer-
ences, common themes and issues emerged both as part of and outside the
formal presentations. These included the weakness of structures and organi-
sations inside and outside government tasked with taking up gender issues,
the need for a deeper theoretical understanding of the ways in which cultural
assumptions inform gendered practices, the interrelated challenges faced
by researchers and activists, the ongoing critical issue of sexual violence,

HIV/AIDS and gendered identities, and the meaning and importance of
‘gender struggle’ in relation to both men and women, and girls and boys.
The weakness of structures and individuals working on gender was a critical
issue (for broader analysis see Hassim 2003; Mtintso 2003; Seidman 2003). At
the conference it emerged that there is a lack of coordination amongst the
various organs of the national gender machinery: the Office of the Status of
Women, the Commission on 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 experi-
ence of people working on gender – whether in government or in unions – is
one of marginalisation; ongoing forms of undermining and humiliation are
part of their daily experience. There is a major gap between gender policies
and what happens at the classroom level – policies and publications are
impressive but how they are mediated and communicated at school level is a
problem. There is also a lack of gender sensitivity amongst departmental
officials, coupled with gender rhetoric unmatched by gender-sensitive organ-
isational cultures. There is a dire need for understanding the link between
intervention at school level but also at a family and community level in order
to influence the current patterns of socialisation.
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In discussions on the state of research on gender and education, the conference
saw a need for different types of research asking a range of different
questions. A critical question that emerged was, what has happened across all
the areas examined by the GETT Report – what constitutes the changing

contexts, research base, the successes and failures, experiences and ongoing
challenges across early childhood education, school education (including the
formal and hidden curriculum as it operates in the classroom), further and
higher education, teacher education, adult education and technical education?
What types of strategies are necessary, especially in rural areas? What are the
special issues that are faced by learners, teachers and managers as women and
men in educational institutions? How are boys and girls socialised at home, in
communities, and in schools in different contexts? What are the patterns of
access, equity, quality and relevance in education as they pertain to gender?
What is the role of sexual abuse, violence and HIV/AIDS? What is the relation-
ship between gender equity, masculinity and backlash in the form of ongoing
violence against and humiliation of girls and women as well as some boys? How
do we understand the resistances to gender change initiatives in schools?
A related question was what it means to mainstream gender, and how this
should be monitored and evaluated at both national and classroom level.
The use of different methodologies was advocated: quantitative research
should take on board development of indicators that capture not only resour-
cist but also capabilities approaches; qualitative research should explore the
multiple ways of telling gender stories. Scorecards can be developed, in
conjunction with provincial departments of education, to provide publicly
accountable means of assessing and presenting different levels of gender
equality. The lives of girls and women can also be mapped using a variety of
visual and narrative techniques.
In so far as the meaning of the gender struggle was concerned, and the rela-
tionship of women’s issues to the new masculinity movement, the Australian
experience was instructive. It pointed, amongst other things, to the successes
and consequent backlash of a boys’ movement that saw boys as victims of
girls’ empowerment. This movement took the language of gender reform and
applied it to boys. This movement must be distinguished from those for men
and approaches to gender and masculinity that are sympathetic to equity for

girls and women. The conference saw a need for becoming conscious of how
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backlash functions in South Africa, how masculinity is constructed, and what
the relations are between backlash, violent masculinities and social and
economic processes of marginalisation. Even as there is a need to constantly
understand the conditions of women’s subordination, it is important to stress
that gender relations concern both men and women.
The papers presented at the conference, and included here as chapters, are all
substantial contributions. They cast light, from many angles, on the different
dimensions and needs in research and social action related to gender in
education.
New perspectives and theoretical approaches
The chapters by Subrahmanian, Kenway and Odora-Hoppers place the South
African developments and debates within an international context. Reflecting
on the state of the debate in the literature on education and development,
Subrahmanian points to the ‘parallel march’ of gender rights and equality
discourses and contemporary market-led reforms that are sweeping across the
developing world. She shows how equality gains – the acceptance in develop-
ment and political discourse of the importance of gender equality – have not
translated into actions that achieve equity gains – the meaningful redistribu-
tion of resources and opportunities and the transformation of conditions
under which women make choices. Women’s choices remain constrained in
the reproductive and labour market arenas. And this is despite the fact that
women are mobilised in and through community and bottom-up develop-
ment approaches – these are commonly based on normalised assumptions of

women’s predispositions towards community and family service and so inten-
sifying their burdens.
Subrahmanian shows how women are central also to neo-liberal education
discourses in so far as ‘their reproductive labour is seen as fundamental to the
achievement of development’, and in so far as they remain largely excluded
from skills and vocational training. Her chapter ends with a consideration of
the importance of the material and social bases of gender inequality: these
underpin and shape how rights can be drawn on and exercised. The lack of
attention to these underlying issues, structures and choices is significant, she
maintains, and results in making little impact on the conditions under which
women are being offered ‘rights’ in a market-driven world.
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If Subrahmanian problematises the rights and gains that have been achieved
by women in a broader developmental context that draws on her knowledge
and experience of India, Jane Kenway’s chapter reflects on the Australian
experience of gender equity in education over several decades. Here women
were successful in gaining access to government, shaped policy, and forcefully
inserted gender equity measures into emerging education policy. And yet
these gains are now being rolled back. Her chapter engages with the emer-
gence of the boys’ movement on the one hand, and masculinity studies, on the
other. It is a salutary reminder that gains are reversible and that gender
requires ongoing work on many different levels simultaneously.
Odora-Hoppers’s chapter traverses a range of issues associated with the
lessons and challenges learnt about institutional change: what it is we have
learnt about ‘gender’ and its varied meanings, about the ‘state’, ‘roles’ and

‘needs’ (practical and strategic) and how to measure gender inequality.
Interested in the policy process, she probes the neglected area of the tactical
dimension of gender policy implementation and the experience of women
once they have ‘joined the club.’ She looks into what happens once they have
gained access, whether through ‘merit’ or ‘affirmative action’. ‘What was once
a physical/ numerical marginality,’ she argues, ‘becomes a discursive margin-
ality in the sense that institutions are not compelled to transform in any
fundamental manner the tenets of their policy and practice beyond surface
responses to legislative injunctions for affirmative action.’ ‘Integration’ and
‘mainstreaming’ she maintains, need to be revisited. Like Subrahmanian, she
feels that in seeking to influence activities in the mainstream, there is a need
for awareness of the ‘dialectic between individual consciousness and structur-
al 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 education: Elaine Unterhalter from
the perspective of policy and quantitative assessment of gender inequality and
Claudia Mitchell from the perspective of ethnographic, qualitative approach-
es that enable telling the stories of girls in South Africa in the age of AIDS.
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Both are exemplary methodological essays that show how feminist approaches
can challenge both content and method. Both approach the subject of assess-
ing how far South Africans interested in gender equity in education have

come, tentatively and from a multi-perspective. Each shows how it is possible
to do the same thing in different ways. Neither paper sets up the one true path
or method; both are open to different possibilities.
A common theme in the papers is the need to go ‘beyond access’. Unterhalter’s
chapter examines four different approaches to understanding gender, equali-
ty and education and how they each yield different ways of measuring and
scoring educational success of boys and girls. She terms these approaches
resourcist, structuralist, post-structuralist and capabilities. The resourcist
account, which is principally concerned with access, seems to show that there
is no real problem in South Africa. While there may be some gender disparity
with regard to the gross enrolment ratio for girls at the primary level, the gen-
eral trend is one of either gender parity or of gender inequality with regard to
boys. In other words, ‘girls have equal if not slightly better opportunities
than boys with regard to being enrolled in education.’ Using test scores and
illiteracy rates, it is also clear that girls achieve equally. Structuralist approaches
have developed a Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) that is applied
outside of education; there is as yet no such measure for education. But this
measure, which looks amongst other things at women’s role in politics and the
labour market, suggests that ‘the levels of equality are considerably lower than
the resourcist measures would suggest’.
Her own contribution to the debate, which she makes with Harry Brighouse
with whom she has worked on this issue, is through the work and capability
approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. This suggests an alternative
approach to evaluation, which is based on the freedoms individuals have to
engage in what they, and how they, value ‘being’ and ‘doing’ in the world. This
is a difficult path to tread, facing opposition and criticism not only from those
who oppose measurement and scorecards but also in the complexity of the
task that is being set and envisaged. But this is innovative work and would
undoubtedly benefit from further discussion with the DoE and provincial
Gender Focal Persons who are most likely to use it.

Tests, measurements and scorecards are one way of assessing how far we have
come since 1994. And there are different ways of doing this. Telling the stories
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of girls and boys is another. Telling it within the age of AIDS, Mitchell’s
chapter provides a striking overview of literatures and methodologies by look-
ing at what the starting points for telling the story might be – when it is told
visually, through statistics or oral narratives of girls, a review of the literature
or one’s own experience. She provides an account of her own attempts as part
of a group of women, to map and ‘fully understand the biological, social,
economic and educational vulnerabilities of girls in the age of AIDS’ and to
develop a ‘feminist mapping project, which would place at the centre the idea
of interdisciplinarity in studying girlhood’. Such a project would form part of
a burgeoning literature on girlhood, and would require disaggregating girl-
hood itself, a girl-audit, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary alliances – all
this within a careful examination of the space that exists within the activist
and academic communities for synthesising the kind of work discussed in
the chapter.
Government activism and civil society mobilisation
Together, the chapters by Unterhalter and Mitchell give us a perspective
on different possibilities within and across quantitative and qualitative
methodologies for assessing gender equity in 2004. Reflecting on develop-
ments within government and Sadtu, the chapters by Wolpe, Ramagoshi and
Mannah highlight the gains that have been made and the challenges that
remain within government and the largest teachers’ union, Sadtu. There is
remarkable unanimity in their assessment that, despite achievements at a

discursive and programmatic level, the conditions under which gender issues
can be taken up effectively are remarkably constrained. All three papers high-
light the cultural and ideological belief systems that underpin, on the one
hand, difficulties of women in leadership in government and unions and, on
the other, sex-based violence linked to HIV/AIDS.
Four things are of central concern in AnnMarie Wolpe’s chapter. The first is
the limited take-up by the DoE of the recommendations of the GETT Report.
The second is the actual content of GETT and what it tried to achieve. The
third is the importance of an adequate theoretical knowledge and under-
standing amongst departmental officials, teachers and others working in
schools, of the ‘processes whereby ideas of appropriate gender behaviour that
are entrenched in our cultural patterns have become an everyday part of our
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lives’. And the fourth is the linkage between sexual violence, HIV/AIDS and
gender identities.
Mmabatho Ramagoshi addresses the conditions under which gender is being
tackled in the DoE. She points out that despite the fact that ‘there are clear
marching orders from government’, recognition and resources remain a con-
stant source of struggle. She highlights the department’s programmes in the
area of gender, which include programmes dealing principally with sexual
abuse and violence at different levels of the system. These also promote a Girls
Education Movement and Boys Empowerment Programme. In 2003, she
notes, the Department targeted 100 boys per province for workshops on
gender, masculinity, responsible sexuality and HIV/AIDS. Her observation
about what came out of these workshops reinforces Wolpe’s concerns.

Ramagoshi draws attention to ‘how the socio-cultural belief systems are
engraved in the minds of these young people and unless the department
develops school-based programmes that target these young men and women,
there will be a problem’.
Shermain Mannah’s chapter is concerned with how teachers’ unions have
mobilised around the interests of women given the high levels of rape, physical
violence, poverty and HIV/AIDS. She shows that the union has made
significant gains, including the establishment of gender desks, achieving
parity in salaries between men and women, intervening in curriculum develop-
ment to ensure that a human rights framework is central, and taking up a zero
tolerance policy on sexual harassment. Sadtu, she says, ‘was the first teachers’
union to break the silence by acknowledging that our teachers are dying of
AIDS. Since then the union has mobilised both in prevention (through ongoing
education) as well as treatment (through the Treatment Action Campaign)’.
However, the main challenges remain around equity at leadership level and in
the patriarchal cultural of the union: ‘The paradox facing trade unions is that
while they seek influence over labour, economic and political matters for their
constituency, they continue to function within a male-dominated ethos and
continue to remain powerful patriarchal organisations.’ This is maintained
through institutional sexism that takes both a formal and informal form –
on the one hand women continue to be subject to rape and harassment
within the union, and on the other, the informal organisational rules of the
organisation place pressures on women that are not placed on men and
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constrain their activism. Like the departmental Gender Focal Persons, and

its counterparts in other Cosatu affiliates, the Gender Desk in the union ‘is
largely marginalised from the core work of the union and therefore suffers a
paralysis in terms of implementation’. The way forward, she argues, concur-
ring with Wolpe and Ramagoshi, must include ‘tackling the ideology that
keeps women in oppression’ and linking with and learning from other women
and women’s organisations.
The contribution by Janine Moolman also emphasises the role of patriarchy:
it ‘is insidious, catches us off guard, disguised as “progressive policy” or
“programmes for women”. It works towards maintaining the status quo,
paralysing efforts to bring about true equality’. Focusing on the responses
from civil society, she is concerned with how co-operation is ensured while
maintaining the integrity of research, the work of civil society and govern-
ment. She notes a shift in how organisation in civil society has occurred over
the last decade – towards much more sectoral and specific interventions.
Although there is a great deal of research and intellectual activity in these
sectors, there is little interaction between various groups at a critical level.
She highlights three main areas of activism around gender and education:
violence against women and girls, increasing girls’ access to education,
supporting women in leadership, and developing materials and support for
teachers to deal with gendered, cultural and other biases. Her chapter ends
with a call for ‘dialogue and partnerships between the academy, civil society
structures and governments.’
Aftermath: postscript
The conference outcome was energising. The clear lack of debate and discus-
sion about gender equity in education and the lack of keeping apace with
current international or national perspectives gave us an opportunity to
review and reflect on what we are doing. This was the first workshop or
seminar in a number of years to take stock of where we are, but more impor-
tantly, to also begin to re-envision the gender debates in the education sector
in South Africa in the current context. In order to move forward with the

agenda of the conference, the participants proposed that a steering committee
be established to take these issues forward to the Minister of Education. The
main items to draw to her attention included:
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• The need to revisit, revitalise and re-envision the GETT Report at both a
practical and an empirical level; and
• The need to provide support to the Gender Equity Unit and Gender
Focal Persons.
The steering committee, brought into being by the Conference, met with the
minister in mid-2004 to communicate these concerns. In October 2004 she
appointed a Ministerial Committee under the leadership of Sheila Tyeku to
review and assess the extent to which gender equity has been implemented
throughout the education system and to make recommendations on how it
could be fast-tracked. The Committee will report in 2005.
The conference, of which this collection is an outcome, thus also resulted in
the establishment of the Ministerial Committee, an unprecedented step in the
history of South African education, with potentially significant consequences
for the system as a whole. However, it is important also to note the critical
recognition by 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 net-
work of gender activists in education working across theory and practice still
remains.
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