Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Women missionaries – Africa – History'
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Thomas, Brandy S. "“Give the Women Their Due”: Black Female Missionaries and the South African-American Nexus, 1920s-1930s." The Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1294339297.
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Sarja, Karin. ""Ännu en syster till Afrika" : Trettiosex kvinnliga missionärer i Natal och Zululand 1876–1902." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen, 2002. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-2876.
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In Natal and Zululand Swedish missions had precedence through the Church of Sweden Mission from 1876 on, the Swedish Holiness Mission from 1889 on, and the Scandinavian Independent Baptist Union from 1892 on. Between 1876 and 1902, thirty-six women were active in these South African missions. The history of all these women are explored on an individual basis in this, for the most part, empirical study. The primary goal of this dissertation is to find out who these women missionaries were, what they worked at, what positions they held toward the colonial/political situation in which they worked, and what positions they held in their respective missions. What meaning the women’s mission work had for the Zulu community in general, and for Zulu women in particular are dealt with, though the source material on it is limited. Nevertheless, through the source material from the Swedish female missionaries, Zulu women are given attention. The theoretical starting points come, above all, from historical research on women and gender and from historical mission research about missions as a part of the colonial period. Both married and unmarried women are defined as missionaries since both groups worked for the missions. In the Swedish Holiness Mission and in the Scandinavian Independent Baptist Union the first missionaries in Natal and Zululand were women. The Church of Sweden Mission was a Lutheran mission were women mostly worked in mission schools, homes for children and in a mission hospital. Women were subordinated in relationship to male missionaries. In the Swedish Holiness Mission and in the Scandinavian Independent Baptist Union women had more equal positions in their work. In these missions women could be responsible for mission stations, work as evangelists and preach the Gospel. The picture of the work of female missionaries has also been complicated and modified.
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Pass, Andrea Rose. "British women missionaries in India, c.1917-1950." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4777425f-65ef-4515-8bfe-979bf7400c08.
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Although by 1900, over 60% of the British missionary workforce in South Asia was female, women’s role in mission has often been overlooked. This thesis focuses upon women of the two leading Anglican societies – the high-Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the evangelical Church Missionary Society (CMS) – during a particularly underexplored and eventful period in mission history. It uses primary material from the archives of SPG at Rhodes House, Oxford, CMS at the University of Birmingham, St Stephen’s Community, Delhi, and the United Theological College, Bangalore, to extend previous research on the beginnings of women’s service in the late-nineteenth century, exploring the ways in which women missionaries responded to unprecedented upheaval in Britain, India, and the worldwide Anglican Communion in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In so doing, it contributes to multiple overlapping historiographies: not simply to the history of Church and mission, but also to that of gender, the British Empire, Indian nationalism, and decolonisation. Women missionaries were products of the expansion of female education, professional opportunities, and philanthropic activity in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain. Their vocation was tested by living conditions in India, as well as by contradictory calls to marriage, career advancement, familial duties, or the Religious Life. Their educational, medical, and evangelistic work altered considerably between 1917 and 1950 owing to ‘Indianisation’ and ‘Diocesanisation,’ which sought to establish a self-governing ‘native’ Church. Women’s absorption in local affairs meant they were usually uninterested in imperial, nationalist, and Anglican politics, and sometimes became estranged from the home Church. Their service was far more than an attempt to ‘colonise’ Indian hearts and minds and propagate Western ideology. In reality, women missionaries’ engagement with India and Indians had a far more profound impact upon them than upon the Indians they came to serve.
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Labode, Modupe Gloria. "African Christian women and Anglican missionaries in South Africa : 1850-1910." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.333301.
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Rennick, Agnes. "Church and medicine : the role of medical missionaries in Malawi 1875-1914." Thesis, University of Stirling, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/3188.
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This is the first systematic account of early mission medical activities in the Malawi Region (comprising present day Malawi, north eastern Zambia and the eastern shore of Lake Malawi). It compares the policies and practices of three missions - Livingstonia, Blantyre and the UMCA - between 1875 and 1914, from pioneering medical provision through to the establishment of hospitals and participation in largescale public health campaigns. The study acknowledges Megan Vaughan's important analysis of the discourse of missionary medicine, but suggests the need to reflect the different religious and professional influences informing the practice of individual mission doctors. The study further suggests that the organisation and professionalising of medicine within the three missions, from 1900, was dependent upon the activities of those doctors who prioritised their professional rather than their evangelising roles. The study also considers the important contribution of missionary nursing personnel and African medical assistants in delivering both hospital and out-patient services, and identifies the professional, gender and racial factors which influenced their status and roles. The study also considers, as far as sources allow, the African patient's experience of missionary medical services. In particular, it identifies the key role of referring agents, such as African medical assistants and European employers, in directing African patients to mission medical services. It suggests that, in contrast to the conflict in belief systems presented by the mission medical discourse, Western medicine was incorporated alongside indigenous treatments within a plurality of healing systems. Finally, the study assesses the impact of missionary medical provision within the Malawi region up to 1914. It demonstrates that, during the period of this study, the Blantyre, UMCA and Livingstonia missions remained the principal sources of both curative and palliative Western medicine for the African sick, contributing towards the wider development of the missions and the European settler economy.
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Francis-Dehqani, Gulnar Eleanor. "Religious feminism in an age of empire : CMS women missionaries in Iran, 1869-1934." Thesis, University of Bristol, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1983/5d1e6911-e7e7-4393-bb43-f287f2f61ac9.
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Dow, Philip Edward. "The influence of American evangelical missionaries on US relations with East and Central Africa during the Cold War." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.607676.
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Scarborough, Mirjam Rahel. "Called to mission : Mennonite women missionaries in Central Africa in the second half of the twentieth century." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/9013.
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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-198).This thesis is an investigation of the "sense of call" as a potential support factor for Mennonite women missionaries from North America based in Central Africa during the latter half of the twentieth century. The investigation is conducted in two main parts. In the first we investigate the theological-historical distinctives of the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition; in the second part, through a case study, we examine how a select number of women missionaries interpreted their call in relation to their heritage, how their sense of call functioned as a support factor or otherwise, and whether this was determined in any significant way by the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition. Central to the study is a pastoral concern for women missionaries as women whose missionary role has placed special burdens on them in situations of cultural dislocation.
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Vongsathorn, Kathleen. "'Things that matter' : missionaries, government, and patients in the shaping of Uganda's leprosy settlements, 1927-1951." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4f6ed7b2-cc09-45ce-894c-084b7c29d5a5.
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This thesis examines the role of missionaries, the colonial government, and leprosy patients in the formation of leprosy settlements in Uganda, from the first inception of the settlements in 1927, until 1951 when the nature of leprosy control in Uganda changed, with the government appointment of a Protectorate leprologist and the creation of more treatment centres. It focuses on four leprosy settlements opened between 1930 and 1934 by the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) and the British and Irish Catholic Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa (FMSA) and Mill Hill Mission (MHM). Firstly, this thesis explores the ways in which the differing goals, ideologies, and resources of the Protestant CMS and the Catholic FMSA and MHM shaped the formation of and social environment within leprosy settlements in a highly Christianised and denominationally divided Uganda. Secondly, it examines the relationship between the CMS and Franciscan leprosy missions and the government, exploring the cooperation and conflict that their spiritual and medical priorities had upon the social lives of patients within Uganda’s leprosy settlements. Thirdly, this thesis assesses the extent to which missionaries consciously endeavoured to engineer a social environment for leprosy patients within settlements that conformed to their ideal of Christianised, modern African communities, as well the roles that healthy and leprous Ugandans chose to play in response to these attempts at social engineering. Missionaries and Ugandan leprosy patients had different priorities, but far from being passive receptacles of the ‘civilising’ mission, most leprosy patients were active agents in pursuing their own medical, social, and economic priorities through life in the settlements.
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Lelegren, Kelly. ""Real, Live Mormon Women": Understanding the Role of Early Twentieth-Century LDS Lady Missionaries." DigitalCommons@USU, 2009. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/415.
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Missionary work has long been an important aspect of Christianity. At least as early as the 1870's, Protestant women began journeys to foreign lands to work as missionaries and teach people about Christianity, both the spiritual dimension and the lifestyle. These were primarily independent women who sought to enlarge the women's sphere from the confined, domestic life to which they were accustomed and because of its decline by the 1930's, historians have often labeled these missions as a "feminist movement."
Meanwhile, in 1898, their counterparts from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also began filling missions, but with a different purpose. These women, known as "Lady Missionaries," did not seek out the new role, but were assigned by Church leaders to share the Mormon message and to show that Mormon women were something other than the stereotypical downtrodden, polygamous wives often portrayed by the media.
The greatest evolution of the Lady Missionary program occurred during its first three decades as the LDS Church defined the role of the Lady Missionary and established guidelines for all to follow. Three women of this period are Inez Knight, Stella Sudweeks, and LaRetta Gibbons. Knight, the first Lady Missionary, labored in England from 1898-1900, where she stood on corners as an example of a "real, live Mormon woman" and faced religious persecution from non-Mormons. Sudweeks filled her mission in the mid-West from 1910-1912, where she had been motivated by anti-Mormon sentiments, but faced less difficulties than Inez while sharing her message and also had more training and established expectations than those previously. Finally, Gibbons worked form 1933-1935, mostly in Colorado, where she spent comparatively more time among new converts teaching them their role within the Church and encouraging them to share their religion with neighbors. Their accounts and experiences show that women have long had a steady and significant role in the LDS Church's missionary program, which has long gone unnoticed and offers a new perspective on Mormon women.
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Morawiecki, Jennifer A. "The peculiar mission of christian womanhood : the selection and preparation of women missionaries of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1880-1920." Thesis, University of Sussex, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.262716.
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Darch, John. "The influence of British Protestant missionaries on the development of the British Empire in Africa and the Pacific circa 1865 to circa 1885." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683148.
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Gibbs, Patricia Anne. "A social history of white working class women in industrializing Port Elizabeth, 1917-1936." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002395.
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The study period saw a significant increase in the urbanisation of whites and blacks in Port Elizabeth induced by droughts and coercive legislation, but also by burgeoning industrialisation. Industry had been given great stimulus by World War 1 and maintained by protectionist legislation in the 1920s which the local state and industrialists came to endorse. The ethos of the town was overwhelmingly British in terms of the population, the composition of the local council, business interests and the prevailing culture. Whites formed the largest component of the population in Port Elizabeth during the inter-war years. The majority of white women lived in the North End, the industrial hub and a major working class area of the city. Although the provision of housing was initially neglected, economic and subeconomic housing in the 1930s helped to create both racial separation and a sense of community between sectors of the working class. Yet, white working class women did not form a homogenous group, but rather consisted of different ethnic groups, occupations and classes. The Afrikaans speaking sector, formed a significant component of the industrial labour force especially in the leather, food and beverage and clothing industries. In a centre where white labour was favoured and marketed as an advantage to outside investors, they rapidly displaced coloured women. The female workforce was basically young, underpaid (especially in comparison to wages on the Rand) and temporary. While white women were still in evidence in other occupations such as domestic work and in the informal sector, their numbers here steadily diminished as both racial segregation and municipal regulation, were implemented. Against a background of chaotic social conditions, large slum areas and the spread of infectious diseases, the local council did much to improve health services particularly for women and children. Poor relief instituted in 1919 was, however, less forthcoming and female - headed households were often left to rely on the services of local welfare organisations. The extended family, however, was the norm affording support against atomization. Although pressurised by social ills throughout the period, the family was increasingly buttressed by state assistance. Prevailing morality was likewise actively constructed in terms of legislative repression and racial division. This often lead to social aberrations such as infanticide which was only reduced by the increase of state assistance and, in the longer term, social mobility of the whites.
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Pringle, Yolana. "Psychiatry's 'golden age' : making sense of mental health care in Uganda, 1894-1972." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2efdc4c7-5465-4ef8-abec-4f3328ca9c50.
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This thesis investigates the emergence of an internationally renowned psychiatric community in Uganda. Starting at the beginning of colonial rule in 1894, it traces the changing nature of mental health care both within and beyond the state, examining the conditions that allowed psychiatry to develop as a significant intellectual tradition in the years following Independence in 1962. This ‘golden age’ of psychiatry saw Uganda establish itself as a leader of mental health care in Africa, an aspect of history that is all the more marked for its contrast with the almost complete collapse of mental health care after the expulsion of the Asian population by Idi Amin in 1972. Using a wide range of new source material, including interviews with psychiatrists, traditional healers, and community elders, this thesis pushes the history of psychiatry in Africa beyond the examination of government policy and colonial hegemony. It brings together the history of psychiatry with the histories of missionary medicine, medical education, and international health by asking what types of people, institutions, and organisations were involved in the provision of mental health care; how important the growth of Makerere Medical School was for intellectual and institutional psychiatry; and how ‘African’ mental health care had become by the end of the period. It presents a history of mental health care in a country that has tended to be overshadowed by Kenya in the historiography, yet whose engagement with medical missionaries and efforts to advance medical training meant that the trajectory of psychiatry came to be quite different. Focusing in particular on the significance of western-trained Ugandan medical practitioners for mental health care, the thesis not only analyses African psychiatrists as historical actors in their own right, but represents the first attempt to examine the development of psychiatric education in Africa.
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James, Cathy L. "An opportunity for service : women of the Anglican mission to the Japanese in Canada, 1903-1957." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/30748.
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The present thesis is a study of the women involved in the Anglican mission to the Japanese Canadians between 1903 and 1957. Drawing on a variety of primary source documents housed in the Anglican church archives in Toronto and Vancouver, as well as information gathered in interviews with three former missionaries, the study aims to determine who these women were, what their work consisted of, their reasons for choosing to work among Japanese Canadians, and what effects their efforts had, not specifically on the intended recipients, but on the women themselves.
The thesis argues that much of the success of the mission, as measured by the number of Japanese Canadians who utilized its facilities and programmes, is due to the high level of involvement of local women. Until the World War II evacuation of Japanese Canadians from the coast of British Columbia, the mission's main facilities were located in Vancouver. In 1917 a male-dominated governing board took over the work, and attempted to 'professionalize' the mission during the interwar period. Still, of the over fifty middle-class Anglo-Canadian women, the majority were drawn from the local community, and a further seventeen Japanese Canadian women, originally from the mission's clientele, became involved in the work. A number of these women were employed as lay workers, and those who had the requisite training were engaged as professional missionaries, but more than half of the workers worked as volunteers.
Work in the mission offered an attractive outlet through which these women channelled their energy, skills, and humanitarian propensities. It allowed Anglo-Canadian women to take on a public role while upholding contemporary notions concerning appropriate behaviour for their sex, "race" and class, while the Japanese Canadian workers gained the acceptance and esteem of their Occidental colleagues, and access to a respectable occupation at a time when they had few options to choose from. Thus by creating and largely maintaining the mission, a number of Anglican women,
working within the confines of the maternal feminist ideology, built a sphere for themselves which encouraged their personal growth.Education, Faculty of
Graduate
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Weis, Julianne Rose. "Women and childbirth in Haile Selassie's Ethiopia." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:55eec5f9-5fcc-41f6-90a5-2eb7588b771a.
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As the first analytic history of Ethiopian medicine, this thesis explores the interchange between the institutional development of a national medical network and the lived experiences of women as patients and practitioners of medicine from the years 1940-1975. Using birth and gender as mechanisms to explore the nation's public health history allows me to pursue alternative threads of enquiry: I ask questions not only about state activities and policy pursuits, but also about the relevance and acceptance of those actions in the lives of the citizenry. This thesis is also the first medical history of a non-colonial African country, opening up new questions about the role of non-Western actors in the expansion of Western medicine in the twentieth century. I explore the ways in which the exceptional history of Ethiopia can be couched in existing narratives of African modernity, medicine, and birth history. Issues of local agency and the creation of new social elites in the pursuit of modernity are all pertinent to the case of Ethiopia. Through both extensive archival research and oral interviews of nearly 200 participants in Haile Selassie's medical campaigns, I argue that the extent to which the imperial medical project in Ethiopia 'succeeded' was highly predicated on pre-existing conditions of gender, class, and geography.
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Sparks, Lacey. "‘SOMETHING A LITTLE BIT TASTY’: WOMEN AND THE RISE OF NUTRITION SCIENCE IN INTERWAR BRITISH AFRICA." UKnowledge, 2017. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/history_etds/52.
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Widespread malnutrition after the Great Depression called into question the role of the British state in preserving the welfare of both its citizens and its subjects. International organizations such as the League of Nations, empire-wide projects such as nutrition surveys conducted by the Committee for Nutrition in the Colonial Empire (CNCE), sub-imperial networks of medical and teaching professionals, and individuals on-the-spot in different colonies wove a dense web of ideas on nutrition. African women quickly became the focus of efforts to end malnutrition due to Malthusian concerns of underpopulation in Africa and African women’s role as both farmers and mothers. Currently, the field focuses either on the history of nutrition science in Britain specifically, such as David Smith’s Nutrition in Britain: Science, Scientists, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, or broadly on the history of European scientists of all disciplines in Africa, such as Helen Tilley’s Africa as a Living Lab. Gendered medical histories in Africa tend to have a narrow geographical focus and a broad chronology, such as Henrietta Moore and Megan Vaughan’s Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990. This work enlarges the field both by linking British nutrition science to nutrition science in Africa, and by analyzing gendered colonial policy across space rather than across time. The dissertation examines the process by which colonial officials came to pin their hopes of ending malnutrition on the education of African women. Specifically, this project analyzes nutrition surveys from the League of Nations and the CNCE, as well as articles and pamphlets circulated by medical and education experts. Using circular dispatches from the Colonial Office and CNCE, meeting minutes from the Advisory Committee on Education in the Colonies, annual education reports, and medical journal articles, this work zooms out to show the global context of the interest in malnutrition and the scientific advancements of nutrition. Then, the dissertation zooms in to illustrate how those global concerns impacted women in Southern Nigeria, who used colonial education for their own goals of professional advancement or marrying up rather than ending malnutrition. I argue that African women’s education transitioned from under the control of missions to the control of the state as a result of the proposed solutions of colonial nutrition surveys. Furthermore, I argue that, as a priority of the colonial state, the pedagogy of African women’s nutrition education became its own kind of colonial experiment as educators and students disagreed on the best means of relating the new knowledge of nutrition. In conclusion, the colonial state increasingly controlled African women’s education by the end of the 1930s, and this focus on altering individual African women’s food habits via education allowed the colonial state to take action to solve malnutrition without altering the colonial economy from which they profited. State-controlled education attempted to create a new kind of colonial subject concerned with science, which revealed the limits of state intervention and provided a new arena for African women to shape their own futures.
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Mkhize, Gabisile. "African Women| An Examination of Collective Organizing Among Grassroots Women in Post Apartheid South Africa." Thesis, The Ohio State University, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3710319.
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This dissertation examines how poor black South African women in rural areas organize themselves to address their poverty situations and meet their practical needs – those that pertain to their responsibilities as grandmothers, mothers, and community members – and assesses their organizations' effectiveness for meeting women's goals. My research is based on two groups that are members of the South African Rural Women's Movement. They are the Sisonke Women's Club Group (SSWCG) and the Siyabonga Women's Club Group (SBWCG). A majority of these women are illiterate and were de jure or de facto heads of households. Based on interviews and participant observation, I describe and analyze the strategies that these women employ in an attempt to alleviate poverty, better their lives, and assist in the survival of their families, each other, and the most vulnerable members of their community. Their strategies involve organizing in groups to support each other's income-generating activities and to help each other in times of emergency. Their activities include making floor mats, beading, sewing, baking, and providing caregiving for members who are sick and for orphans. I conclude that, although their organizing helps meet practical needs based on their traditional roles as women, it has not contributed to meeting strategic needs – to their empowerment as citizens or as heads of households.
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Adler, Michelle. "Skirting the edges of civilisation : British women travellers and travel writers in South Africa, 1797-1899." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.320150.
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Erlank, Natasha. "Letters home : the experiences and perceptions of middle class British women at the Cape 1820-1850." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22399.
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Bibliography: pages 209-219.My thesis is concerned with the experiences and perceptions of British women living in the Cape Colony, South Africa, during the first half of the nineteenth century. My chief source materials are the letters and diaries written by different women in the period 1820-1850. The women in my thesis were members of the British middle class and proponents of its dominant ideology. This revolved around a "separation of spheres" which prescribed particular types of behaviour for men and women. This view was more of an ideal than a reality, and women in this period found ways in which to both resist and enforce its prescriptions. I am interested in the negotiation of identity that occurred when British women arrived at the Cape. In order to tap into their experiences, I examine in detail the writing of several women who lived in Cape Town, and then compare this to women's writing in different parts of the colony. What emerges is a version of South African history in which the experiences of individual women challenge assumptions about the existence of middle class and colonial homogenising discourses. Women in Cape Town, on the eastern frontier and on mission stations lived in different circumstances. The contexts in which they wrote affected the versions of themselves that they revealed in their writing. The different ways in which they wrote, and they ways in which they constructed a d represented their identities, challenge attempts to fit them into the contemporary feminine mould. While they were creating their own identifies through the medium of letters, they were also creating cultural artefacts. Their letters formed the basis of a private literate culture which both represented these women and their particular view of the Cape to the rest of the world. Women controlled what was written in their letters - their self-representations were presented to their readers in a version not mediated through their male relatives. In their own letters, they were not men's wives, they were their own women. Most of the women I discuss had a commitment to Christianity, and the promotion of Christianity. Missionary wives and evangelical women had a code of behaviour that did not always accord with middle class ideology. They measured their behaviour according to religious and moral standards. This allowed them to contravene middle class ethics if they felt these contravened their own codes of morality. Depending on circumstances, women could be called upon to behave either as middle class women or Christian women, and in these instances would conform to the identity under either ideology. I would therefore suggest that not only did English middle-class women at the Cape create their subjectivity in terms of their status as women, as middle class women and as white women, but they also constructed their subjectivity in terms of their religious beliefs - as religious women.
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Du, Toit Marijke. "Women, welfare and the nurturing of Afrikaner nationalism : a social history of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, c.1870-1939." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/26212.
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This thesis focuses on the Afrikaans Christian Women's Organisation (ACVV), placed within the context of Afrikaner nationalist activity, and traces the variety of ways in which white, Afrikaans, middle-class women sought to construct a racially exclusive 'Afrikaner' people. Stereotypical portrayals of Afrikaner women as passive followers of an ideology constructed by men are challenged. The gendered construction of nationalism is initially examined by tracing the transition from a religious, evangelical, late nineteenth century gender discourse to an increasingly explicit Afrikaner nationalist discourse in the early twentieth century. The ACVV participated in the construction of a popular Afrikaner nationalist culture that portrayed Afrikaans women as mothers of the people or volksmoeders. The first ACVV leaders were acutely aware of the 'New Women' who abandoned conventional notions of femininity - they tried to construct a public, political identity for Afrikaans women that met the challenges of the 'modern' world, yet remained true to Afrikaner 'tradition'. The ACVV sought to fashion Afrikaans whites into 'Afrikaners' through philanthropic activity. At first, this was especially true of rural branches, but from the early 1920s, Cape Town's ACVV also responded to the growing influx of 'poor whites' by focusing specifically on social welfare work. One particular concern was the danger that women working together with blacks posed for the volk. Research on the ACVV's philanthropy is complemented by a study of the lives of landless and impoverished whites in the Cape countryside and Cape Town. Archival material and 'life history' interviews are used to explore the working lives of white, Afrikaans-speaking women who moved from rural areas to Cape Town during the 1920s and 1930s. Complex and contradictory strands made up the private and political lives of female Afrikaner nationalists. During the 1920s, they sought to create a political role for themselves by constructing a 'maternalist', nationalist discourse that articulated the notion of separate spheres for men and women -but extended vrouesake (women's issues). In many ways these were conservative women - yet they adjusted, even challenged, conventional gender roles in Afrikaans communities. In the 1930s, the four provincial Afrikaans women's welfare organisations sought to shape state-subsidised social welfare programmes. The ACVV and its sister organisations had increasingly fraught dealings with Afrikaner nationalist men in the state and church. who did not share the women's vision of female leadership in social welfare policy.
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Mkhize, Gabisile Promise. "African Women: An Examination of Collective Organizing Among Grassroots Women in Post Apartheid South Africa." The Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1357308299.
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Dampier, Helen. "Settler women's experiences of fear, illness and isolation, with particular reference to the Eastern Cape Frontier, 1820-1890." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002389.
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This thesis is an exploration of diaries and letters written by middle-class English-speaking settler women living on the Eastern Cape frontier between 1820 and 1890. By according primacy to these women’s experiences and perceptions, it aims for a greater understanding of women’s encounters with the frontier, and how these were articulated in their personal writing. An emphasis on the recurrent themes of ill-health, fearfulness and solitude undermines the popular myth of the brave, conquering, invincible pioneers which dominates settler historiography to date. The tensions felt by white women living on the frontier disrupted their identities as middle-class Victorian ‘ladies’, and as a result these women either constantly re-established a sense of self, or absorbed some aspects of the Eastern Cape, and thus redefined themselves. Settler women’s experiences of the frontier changed little during the seventy year period spanned by this study, indicating that frontier life led to a rigidification and reinforcement of old, familiar values and behaviours. Rather than adapting to and embracing their new surroundings, settler women sought to duplicate accepted, conventional Victorian ideals and customs. White Victorian women identified themselves as refined, civilized, moral and respectable, and perceived Africa and Africans as untamed, immoral, uncivilized and threatening. To keep these menacing, destabilizing forces at bay, settler women attempted to recreate ‘home’ in the Eastern Cape; to domesticate the frontier by rendering it as familiar and predictable as possible. The fear, illness and solitariness that characterise settler women’s personal writings manifest their attempts to eliminate alienating difference, and record their refusal to truly engage with the frontier landscape and its inhabitants.
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Berge, Lars. "The Bambatha Watershed : Swedish Missionaries, African Christians and an Evolving Zulu Church in Rural Natal and Zululand 1902-1910." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Teologiska institutionen, 2000. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-743.
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This study examines the Church of Sweden Mission and the encounter between Swedish missionaries, African Christians and evangelists in Natal and Zululand in the early twentieth century. The ambition with the present study is to demonstrate that the mission enterprise was dependent on and an integral part of developments in society at large. It attends to the issue of how the idea of folk Christianisation and the establishing of a territorial folk church on the mission field originated in the Swedish society and was put into practice in South Africa. It describes how the goals implied attempted to both change and preserve African society. This was a task mainly assigned the African evangelists. By closely focusing on the particular regions where the Church of Sweden Mission was present, conflicts between pre-capitalistand capitalist, black and white societies are revealed. The 1906 Bambatha uprising became a watershed. The present study demonstrates how the uprising differently affected different regions and also the evolving -Zulu church. in the one region where Christianity was made compatible with African Nationalist claims, it was demonstrated that it was possible to be both a nationalist and a Christian, which paved the way for both religious independency and nationalist resistance and, eventually, large scale conversions.
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Kruger, Lou-Marie. "Gender, community and identity : women and Afrikaner nationalism in the Volksmoeder discourse of Die Boerevrou (1919-1931)." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1991. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/17313.
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Includes bibliographies.As a feminist exploration of the problematic relationship between Afrikaans women and Afrikaner nationalism, this thesis is primarily concerned with the construction of the social identities of Afrikaans women between 1919 and 1931, the crucial formative years of Afrikaner nationalism. The relationship between women and Afrikaner nationalism is thus addressed by an investigation at the level of intellectual history. The emergence of Afrikaner nationalism at the beginning of the 20th century was accompanied by the articulation of a distinctive gender discourse, the study of which is central to this thesis. Within this discourse, which may be termed the "volksmoeder" discourse, a new identity and new roles were contrived for Afrikaner women. We first investigate the social and historical context in which the discourse was generated and then analyse the "volksmoeder" discourse itself by focusing on texts from Die Boerevrou, a women's magazine launched by Mabel Malherbe in 1919. Rather than taking the Die Boerevrou-texts for granted or seeing them as simple reflections of reality, they are investigated as constructions. The questions of why these particular constructions had appeared in that specific context and what ends they achieved are posed. Rather than simply taking the discursive constructions at face value they are construed as "answers" to certain underlying social and historical issues. On a theoretical level the problem of the construction of gender and ethnic identities is informed by recent work in the field of discourse analysis, while the imagining or invention of nation-communities is discussed with reference to the work of Benedict Anderson, Ernst Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm and Tom Nairn. The investigation of Die Boerevrou-texts as particular articulations of the volksmoeder discourse shows how the social identities of Afrikaans women were socially constructed in the volksmoeder discourse. It suggests that the social subjectivities of Afrikaans women were by no means simple or transparent. In the texts of Die Boerevrou it becomes clear that even while being shaped by Afrikaner nationalism, women themselves were active in the shaping of Afrikaner nationalism. While they were constituted as subjects in the anti-feminist discourse of Afrikaner nationalism, they remained mobile within this discourse: always negotiating, planning, creating and articulating new identities and roles for themselves. The image of women as passive victims of a male Afrikaner discourses is thus denied. However, it is asserted that the volksmoeder discourse as a gender discourse can and should be severely criticised from a feminist perspective.
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Abrams, M. "Ikitchini : the hidden side of women's labour." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15856.
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Bibliography: pages 233-248.This dissertation seeks to examine an area of South African historiography which has largely been ignored, that is, domestic labour. It posits a relationship between working class women, domestic labour paid and unpaid. The material has been arranged around the primary objective of examining the silence around domestic labour and highlighting the gender content of domestic work. It is divided into two parts. The first part examines the conceptualization of class and gender struggles, while the second part examines aspects of working class women's experience of this. Chapter One deals with why women have been ignored in recorded history; Chapter Two examines Marxist approaches to the Woman Question. Chapter Three examines the silence arourid women's experience in South African historiography, while Chapter Four is a critical examination of the recorded history of domestic workers. Chapter Five examines aspects of black working class women's experience of domestic labour in their own families, while Chapter Six documents the experience of a group of organized workers in Cape Town. The study concludes that the way forward is to develop a gender sensitive class analysis as outlined in the work of Lise Vogel. This will open up new areas for research, for example, the rise of the public and private dichotomy, the separation of productive and reproductive labour, the ideology of motherhood and sexuality as well as the changing nature of the social construction of gender identity.
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West, Mary Eileen. "White women writing white : a study of identity and representation in (post-)apartheid literatures of South Africa." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/442.
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This thesis examines aspects of identity and representation using contemporary theories and definitions emerging out of a growing body of work known as whiteness studies. The condition of whiteness as it continues to inform identity politics in post-apartheid South Africa is explored in an analysis of selected texts written by white women, to demonstrate the ways in which whiteness continues to suggest normativity. In reading a representative selection of literatures produced in contemporary South Africa by white women writers, this study aims to illustrate the ambivalence apparent in the interstitial manifestations of emergent reconciliatory gestures that are at odds with residual traces of superiority. A sampling of disparate texts is examined to explore the representations of race and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa in the light of contemporary theories of whiteness which posit it as a powerful and invisible identification. The analysis attempts to plot a continuum from writers who are least, through to those who are most, aware of whiteness as a cultural construct and of their own positionality in relation to the discursive dynamics that inform South African racial politics. A contextualising overview of the terrain of whiteness studies is provided in Chapter One, marking the ideological and theoretical affiliations of this project, and foregrounding the construction of whiteness as an imagined identity in contemporary cultural criticism. It also provides a justification for the selection of the textual material under scrutiny. Chapter Two explores a genre that has been identified as a growing trend in South African fiction: the production of pulp fiction written by white middle-class women. Two such texts are the focus of this chapter, namely, Pamela Jooste’s People like Ourselves (2004) and Susan Mann’s One Tongue Singing (2005), and the complicities and clichés that are characteristic of popular literature are examined. Antjie Krog’s A Change of Tongue (2003) is the focus of Chapter Three. It is examined as a book offering the writer’s personal response to the difficulties of transformation within the first decade of South African democracy. Krog confronts her own defensiveness, her sense of normalcy, and her sense of alienation in relation to multiple encounters with different people. Chapter Four focuses on the journalism of Marianne Thamm. Her role as columnist for the popular women’s magazine, Fairlady is explored, particularly in relation to the inclusion of a contending voice writing against the general tenets of Fairlady. Thamm’s critique of the mores governing bourgeois white womanhood is read in relation to her role as officially sanctioned Court Jester. Her Fairlady columns have been collected in Mental Floss (2002) but the analysis includes selected columns from 2003 to 2005. Echo Location: A Guide to Sea Point for Residents and Visitors (1998) by Karen Press is the focus of Chapter Five. Her work is read as examining a white South African crisis of belonging in relation to the implications of mapping the co-ordinates of whiteness in South Africa. Chapter Six offers a reading of four short stories, written by Nadine Gordimer and Marlene van Niekerk. These stories are juxtaposed to trace an anxious impasse in white responses to suburbia, the place of enactment of white bourgeois mores, which both writers interrogate.
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Present, Hebresia Felicity. "A narrative of omission : oral history, exile and the media’s untold stories – a gender perspective." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/6477.
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Thesis (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2011.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: South Africa consists of a vast, culturally diverse population, entrenched in customary tribal influences which are essentially based on stringent patriarchal directives. These spilt over into other societal spheres, one of which is the media, which is part of an existing male hegemonic society. The rationale for this study is essentially to determine the role played by the media in their representation of women, before and shortly after the liberation of South Africa. This study will establish whether the voices of women were represented, or not, in the media, in the period shortly after the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and affiliated organisations in 1990. By interviewing and recording the oral histories of a few female ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) soldiers, the need is evident to, through this oral tradition process, give a voice to these voiceless women. The theoretical foundations for this study is firstly based on “womanism”. Womanism was born from the shortcomings of feminism (a largely Western concept) that was unable to address the issues unique to the situation of black women. A second theoretical point of departure is the Social Responsibility Theory, a media theory that could, based on research done for this study, play a profound role to the benefit of women. The methodological investigation is based on a mixed method research approach where Content Analysis (CA) and Grounded Theory (GT) are triangulated with the literature review. The GT processes gave a voice to some unknown female MK soldiers by conducting interviews based on in-depth interview questions. The CA process led to the conclusion that the voices of women who contributed to the struggle were largely ignored by the media. The researcher found that given the contributions and sacrifices women have made in democratising South Africa, acknowledgement of these efforts are sorely lacking, especially in the media. This study therefore seeks to contribute to the lost and repressed voices of women, and to redress a history of omission to a history of commission.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Suid-Afrika beskik oor 'n kultureel diverse bevolking met tradisionele stam-invloede wat essensieel gebaseer is op streng patriargale riglyne. Dit het oorgespoel na ander sosiale kontekste, waarvan een die media is, en wat deel uitmaak van 'n bestaande manlike hegemoniese gemeenskap. Die rasionaal vir hierdie studie was om vas te stel watter rol die media gespeel het in die representasie van vroue kort ná die eerste stappe tot 'n bevryde Suid-Afrika. Hierdie studie wou vasstel of die stemme van vroue verteenwoordig was, of nie, in die media, in die tydperk kort ná die ontbanning van die African National Congress (ANC) en ander geaffilieerde organisasies in 1990. Die veronderstelling is dat vrouestemme nie in die media waarneembaar was nie, en dat die situasie teengewerk kan word deur die toepassing van mondelinge geskiedenis. In hierdie geval is die verhale van 'n paar vroulike Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK)-soldate geboekstaaf om sodoende deur die mondelinge geskiedenistradisie 'n stem te gee aan stemlose vroue. Die teoretiese grondslag vir hierdie studie is eerstens gebaseer op “Womanism”. Dié teorie het ontstaan weens die tekortkominge van Feminisme (grootliks ‟n Westerse konsep), wat nie in staat was om die kwessies wat uniek is aan die situasie van swart vroue aan te spreek nie. 'n Tweede teoretiese vertrekpunt is die Sosiale Verantwoordelikheidsteorie. Gebaseer op die navorsing vir hierdie studie, kan dit 'n groter rol in die media in die belang van vroue speel. Die metodologie is gebaseer op 'n gemengde metode-navorsingsbenadering waar Inhoudsanalise en Grounded Theory (GT) trianguleer met die literatuurstudie. Die GT-proses gee 'n stem aan 'n paar onbekende vroulike MK-soldate deur onderhoudvoering wat op in-diepte onderhoudvrae gebaseer is. Die inhoudsanalise proses het bevind dat vroue wat bygedra het tot die Vryheidstryd grootliks deur die media geïgnoreer is. Gegewe die bydraes en opofferings wat vroue gemaak het in die demokratisering van Suid-Afrika, ontbreek erkenning van hul pogings in ons geskiedskrywing, en beslis so in die media. Hierdie studie was 'n poging om by te dra tot die omkeer van hierdie situasie, naamlik om 'n “geskiedenis van uitsluiting” te herstel na 'n “geskiedenis van insluiting”.
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Fast, Hildegarde Helene. "Pondoks, houses, and hostels : a history of Nyanga 1946-1970, with a special focus on housing." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16123.
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Bibliography: pages 344-361.In this thesis I outline the history of Nyanga up to 1970. Diverse aspects are covered, including location politics, women's protests, rent arrears and boycotts, and gangsterism. There is a special focus on housing issues, for they were related to most facets of location life and demonstrated the contradictions within apartheid policy. Four themes are followed throughout the thesis. First, the extent to which the state achieved control of the African urban population is assessed, particularly in terms of its housing and influx control policies. I argue that the formulation and implementation of policies were influenced minimally by pressures "from below", and that central and local authorities achieved extensive control over the lives of urban Africans. Nevertheless, government officials did not succeed in curbing African urbanisation or controlling the residential movement of urban Africans, as witnessed by the high number of "illegal" Africans and consistently high tenancy turnover. A second topic that threads its way through the thesis is the role of African constables and clerks in Nyanga. I show that residents working with the location administration were attracted particularly to the material benefits of collaboration. Utilising their linguistic skills and knowledge of location inhabitants, they extracted money and sexual favours from Nyanga residents and were given first priority in the allocation of Old Location houses. They did not, however, form an identifiable social group as they came from diverse occupational and educational backgrounds and did not associate closely with one another. A third theme is the differential impact of apartheid laws on African women. I outline the laws that applied to urban African women and describe the actual process by which they were expelled from the Cape Peninsula. Arising from this, the changing nature and scope of women's demonstrations in Nyanga is described. My research shows that the protests of the early 1950s, which were small, infrequent, and centred on local issues, broadened in the late 1950s to include the application of pass laws to African women. The reasons for the change are shown to be both political and material in nature, with their origin in the forced removals from Peninsula shack settlements. Fourthly, I have concentrated on spatial dynamics at various points. There were significant differences in physical space between Mau-Mau and the Old Location, which contributed to the social distance between the two neighbourhoods. During the massive "black spot" clearance campaign of the 1950s, the authorities succeeded in gaining spatial control over Africans by forcing them into segregated, fenced locations where entry and exit was monitored. To counteract this, residents asserted their control over the transit camp by constructing shacks in such a way as to impede raiding pass officials and make administrative surveillance of their lives difficult. The contradictory effects of placing contract workers in accommodation next to families are also examined: on the one hand, there was considerable socialising and cooperation between the two groups; on the other, much friction developed over the relationships between women in the married quarters and men in the hostels.
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Boehmer, Elleke Deirdre. "Mothers of Africa : representations of nation and gender in post-colonial African literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:83a022a0-e965-4dc3-b88f-267ff6903b6a.
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A protean doctrine, claiming cultural pride and demanding self-expression for those who espouse it, nationalism yet casts its defining symbols and reserves its privileges and powers according to gendered criteria. Nationalism, if seen as symbolically constructed, may be interpreted as a gendered discourse in which subjects in history and also in literature are assumed to be male. Especially in the Manichean worlds of colonial and newly post-colonial societies, nationalist narratives - such as those produced at the time of African independence - read as family dramas in which honour and duty are patrilineally bequeathed, and national sons honour iconic mothers. The invisibilities in nationalist discourse, often left obscure in the interests of an ironic 'liberation', may be redressed both through the displacement of dominant subject positions in literature - where 'non-nationals' tell their own fictions - and through the remoulding of inherited tropes and symbolic scenarios. In this way new plots are written into history; nationalist romances give way to literary fictions. An investigation of the status of nationalism as symbolic language of gender, this thesis concentrates first on the inscription of nationalist icons in post-colonial African literature and on the gendered tropic patterns which govern that inscription. Writers considered include Peter Abrahams, Leopold Senghor, Camara Laye, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The iconic role of artist as nationalist hero is explored in particular in a discussion of essays and plays by Wole Soyinka. In its latter half, the thesis looks at African women's writing - novels by Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Mariama Bâ and Bessie Head - and the work of a second generation of African writers, considering the ways in which this literature has begun to rescript the dramas of nationalism, to redream its visions of wholeness and healing.
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Shields, Francine. "Palm oil & power : women in an era of economic and social transition in 19th century Yorubaland (south-western Nigeria)." Thesis, University of Stirling, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1893/1926.
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This study looks at the economic, political and social history of women in the Yoruba area of south-western Nigeria in the 19th century using contemporary sources which have remained previously largely untapped for historical studies of women. The century encompassed many key historical developments which affected women; in particular, the decline of the Atlantic slave trade and the growth of an export trade in locally produced palm oil and kernels. Whereas the slave trade had been dominated by men, the processing, transport and trade of palm produce was dominated by women. The extent, nature and effects of women's role in this and other industries such as pottery manufacture, dyeing and food vending, which also expanded and developed during this period, are examined. As demand for palm produce and other goods increased, the labour of both free-born and slave women became more valuable since it was vital for industry at all stages. The study looks at changing labour demands and sources and alterations in the established pattern of the sexual and generational division of labour. Important changes in gender relations are evident and the study illuminates how tensions between men and women and between women themselves were manifest and how both men and women expressed and dealt with these problems. Economic changes were accompanied by largely internal political developments which favoured a few wealthy women. overall, many men perceived and/or experienced that increasing female autonomy posed a threat to the established patriarchal order. The evidence represented in the thesis clearly shows how men attempted to subordinate women in general, tap into their income and limit their political involvement, mainly through the development of exploitative and restrictive aspects of male-dominated politico-religious cults, which were directed specifically at women.
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Van, der Spuy Patricia. "A collection of discrete essays with the common theme of gender and slavery at the Cape of Good Hope with a focus on the 1820s." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23439.
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This is a collection of discrete essays, each embodying original research and bearing on the theme of gender and slavery at the Cape of Good Hope. Amelioration at the Cape profoundly altered gendered perceptions of slaves, both on the part of slaveholders, and of the slaves themselves. The amelioration regulations entailed a redefinition of the gender of female slaves, which was resisted by slaveholders and transformed by slave women, while slave men began to redefine their own gendered identities in this light. Slaveholders' traditional patriarchal self-concepts were severely threatened in this context, as they progressively lost power and authority, both to the new paternalist colonial state and to those who had formerly been subsumed within the patriarchal family. There are five papers, the first an introduction to the theoretical framework of the collection and an outline of the general argument as outlined above. The second paper provides a critique of existing Cape slave historiography from a gendered perspective. It examines the problems of this literature methodologically and theoretically, focusing on the implications of the slave sex ratio for the history of slave women. The final three papers are based on empirical research. The third paper examines the structural constraints on slave family formation in Cape Town from the perspective of slave women. The fourth and fifth papers explore issues related to infanticide and slave reproduction, and slave resistance in relation to the Bokkeveld rebellion of 1825, respectively.
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Liu, Yuan. "We Are Ginling: Chinese and Western Women Transform a Women’s Mission College into an International Community, 1915-1987." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1585222813888865.
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Heaton, Pamela Jane. "A narrative study of teachers' life stories and their work identity." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002498.
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Media coverage of the poor state of this country's education system has described public images of the teaching profession which provide a context for the research described in this paper. The research is concerned with how and to what extent work identity is reflected in the life stories of five female teachers from a rural village in the Eastern Cape. A social constructionist approach is taken to the meaning and construction of identity, and the paper describes the process of a narrative method of analyzing and interpreting the stories. An initial analysis reveals that the participants had few career options and little choice of career. Further analysis is concerned with interpreting how the teachers create coherence in their stories around this lack of choice as well as within the larger social and historical context. Simultaneously there is an interpretation of the participants' work identity. The teachers create coherence in their narratives around their families and their socioeconomic or cultural circumstances, but make no explicit reference to the political context of their work choices, which were made in the context of the restraints of the Apartheid era. From each teacher's story an understanding of their unique work identity emerges. These alternative understandings provide a contrast to the images constructed by the media.
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Fleming, Safa Rebecca Lorraine. "Locating Women's Rhetorical Education and Performance: Early to Mid Nineteenth Century Schools for Women and the Congregationalist Mission Movement." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1209093895.
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Elliott, Kim. "Women (re)writing history, constructing the case for a state-centered analysis of indigenous women's literature in South Africa and Israel/Palestine." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp01/MQ36863.pdf.
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Sikes, Michelle Marie. "Choosing to run : a history of gender and athletics in Kenya, c. 1940s - 1980s." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:27bf8bf4-6c93-4fa6-a729-ba6dc34ebd26.
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Choosing to Run: A History of Athletics and Gender in Kenya, c. 1940s – 1980s explores the history of gender and athletics in Kenya, with focus on the Rift Valley Province, from the onset of late colonial rule in the 1940s through the professionalisation of the sport during the last decades of the twentieth century. The first two empirical chapters provide a history of athletics during the colonial period. The first highlights the continuity of ideas about sport and masculinity that were developed in nineteenth century Britain and were subsequently perpetuated by the men in charge of colonial sport in Kenya. The next chapter considers how pre-colonial divisions of labour and power within Rift Valley communities informed local peoples' cultures of running. The absence of women’s running was not only the result of sexism translated from the British metropole to its Kenyan colony but also of pre-existing divisions of responsibilities of indigenous Kenyan men and women into separate, gendered domains. The second half of the thesis considers the impact of social change within women’s athletics internationally and of marriage, childbirth and education locally on female runners in the Rift Valley during the post-colonial period. Most women abandoned athletics once they reached maturity. Those who sought to do otherwise, as the final chapter argues, found that they could only do so by replicating the prototype of masculine runners that had already been established. Later, after the professionalisation of running allowed women to become wealthy, female patrons took this a step further by providing resources to those in their community in need, setting themselves up as 'Big (Wo)men'. This thesis uses athletics to reveal how gender relations and gender norms have evolved and the benefits and challenges that the sport has brought both to individual Kenyan women and their communities.
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Mtuze, P. T. "Hidden presences in the spirituality of the amaXhosa of the Eastern Cape and the impact of Christianity on them." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015612.
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This thesis is an attempt to reopen the debate on the whole question of inculturation in Southern Africa especially in light of the fact that we are now in a multi-lingual and multi-religious state. It is an attempt to rehighlight the plight of the spirituality of the amaXhosa people over the last century when missionary and imperial onslaught relegated it to the doldrums. This plunged the amaXhosa in a crisis that has left them directionless, to put it mildly. This is said because the total onslaught destroyed their self-respect and their identity and begs the question as to whether their acceptability to God was contingent on renouncing their culture especially the hidden presences - Qamata, the living-dead and the notion of evil spirits. It is precisely because of these misconceptions regarding African culture and spirituality that the thesis has a strong expository and apologetic bias primarily aimed to address, and put into proper perspective, the significance of the Supreme Being, the living-dead and the evil spirits in African culture. The issues are discussed within the broader socio-historical context. The thesis is basically comparative in that it uses Celtic spirituality and the approach of the early Celtic church to the question of inculturation as its point of departure and as a foil against which the preposterous actions of the church in Africa should be seen. This comparative element is also reflected in the unmistakable `dichotomy’ of Western religion and African spirituality, or better still, lack of spirituality, that was so fervently maintained by the missionaries and the colonialists alike. It is for this reason that I concur with Chidester (1996:xiv) that `the study of religion must find itself, once again, on the frontier’. The study is informed by this approach right through. It should be stressed, from the outset, that the idea is not comparison in order to satisfy our curiosity, nor is it comparison in order to try to authenticate and vindicate the beleaguered African culture. The central idea of the study is to expose the absurdity of the policies of the past century in this regard. The myth of the pure blooded Christianity is confronted, if not exploded. Several examples of both inculturation and continuities between Christianity and other faiths such as the Jewish founding faith are given. The subtheme of cultural domination subtly spans the whole study culminating in Chapter Four where the blacks begin to appropriate some of the Christian symbols and the whites also begin to assimilate African concepts such as ubuntu.
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Van, Zyl Leonie. "Sarah Goldblatt : letterkundige administratrise van C.J. Langenhoven." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/53580.
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Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2003.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In 1932 the well-known Afrikaans writer and politician, C.J. Langenhoven, died in Oudtshoorn in his home, Arbeidsgenot. In his testament he appointed Sarah Goldblatt as the person responsible for the administration of his literary works. Sarah, a Jewish woman, immigrated to the Cape together with her family in 1897. The aim of this research was to find the possible reasons why Langenhoven chose an English speaking Jewish woman as his administrator. Jews were not accepted with open arms into the South African community, especially not Jews from Eastern Europe, the area where Sarah and her family came from. Anti-semitic feelings amongst the Afriaans population were especially strong during the thirties and forties. It was during this time, in 1932, that Sarah received the job as administrator. The period of research stretches from 1889 to 1975, from Sarah's birth to her death. A look is taken at the changing South African attitude towards Jews during Sarah's life. The role and position of the Afrikanerwomen during this time is also investigated. Oudtshoorn, the town in which Langenhoven lived and where the friendship between him and Sarah started, will also be put under the spotlight. Many Jews settled in this town and played an active part in the Oudtshoorn community. Not only the South African attitude towards Jews and women will be discussed, but also Langenhoven's and Sarah's personal perspectives on these subjects. Both their friendship and work relationship will be discussed. Their philosophy of life and their relationship will cast light on the reasons why Langenhoven finally decided to appoint Sarah as the administrator of his literary works. Sarah's greatest achievements were directly involved with Langenhoven. Opinions differ about the influence Sarah had on the way the South African community saw Langenhoven. The work as administrator for the literary works was not all Sarah did. Therefore a review on Sarah's contribution to the Afrikaans language and culture is also provided.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In 1932 is die bekende Afrikaanse skrywer en politikus, C.J. Langenhoven, op Oudtshoorn in sy huis Arbeidsgenot oorlewe. In sy testament het hy vir Sarah Goldblatt as administratrise van sy letterkundige nalatenskap aangewys. Sarah, 'n Joodse vrou, het in 1897 saam met haar gesin na die Kaap geïmmigreer en die in die studie word ondersoek ingestel na die redes waarom Langenhoven hierdie vrou as sy administratrise aangewys het. Suid-Afrika het nie altyd die Jode met ope arms ontvang nie, veral nie Jode vanuit Oos-Europa, die gebied waarvan Sarah en haar gesin afkomstig was, nie. Spesifiek gedurende die dertiger- en veertigerjare was daar 'n sterk antisemitiese gevoelonder Afrikanergeledere teenwoordig. Dit was juis in 1932 wat Sarah die taak as administratrise opgelê is. Die tydperk waarna daar gekyk word is breedweg vanaf 1889 tot 1975, Sarah se lewensjare. Op hierdie manier word daar na die veranderende Suid- Afrikaanse houding teenoor Jode gekyk gedurende Sarah se lewe. Daar word ook na die rol en posisie van die Afrikanervrou gekyk om dieselfde rede gekyk. Oudtshoorn, die dorp waarop Langenhoven homself gevestig het en waar sy en Sarah se vriendskap begin het word onder die soeklik geplaas. 'n Groot getal Jode het hulleself in die dorp gevestig en hulle het 'n daadwerklike impak op die Oudtshoornse gemeenskap uitgeoefen. Hierdie ondersoek is nodig om te sien waarom dit so vreemd was vir In Joodse vrou en In Afrikaner man, om so In spesiale vriendskap te kon deel. Nie alleen die Suid-Afrikaanse houding teenoor die Jood en die vrou word ondersoek nie, maar daar word ook na Langenhoven en Sarah se onderskeie houdings teenoor die sake gekyk. Beide hulle werks- en vriendskapsverhouding word ondersoek. Altwee se lewensuitkyk en hulle verhouding werp lig op die redes waarom Langenhoven uiteindelik sou besluit om Sarah as sy administratrise aan te stel. Sarah se grootste werk hou verband met Langenhoven. Opinies verskiloor die uitwerking wat sy op sy nagedagtenis gehad het. Haar werk as administratrise was egter nie al wat Sarah verrig het nie. 'n Oorsig oor Sarah se bydraes tot die Afrikaner taal en kultuur word dus ook blootgelê.
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Nukeri, Nyeleti Reggan. "Nxopaxopo wa ku xanisiwa ka vamanana hi vavanuna va vona eka matsalwa lama hlawuriweke eka Xitsonga." Thesis, University of Limpopo, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10386/1414.
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Alameen, Antwanisha V. "Women's Access to Political Power in Ancient Egypt and Igboland: A Critical Study." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2013. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/214768.
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African American StudiesPh.D.
This is an Afrocentric examination of women's use of agency in Ancient Egypt and Igboland. Most histories written on Kemetic women not only disconnect them from Africa but also fail to fully address the significance of their position within the political spiritual structure of the state. Additionally, the presence of matriarchy in Ancient Egypt is dismissed on the basis that patriarchy is the most visible and seemingly the most dominant form of governance. Diop contended that matriarchy was one of the key factors that connected Ancient Egypt with other parts of Africa which is best understood as the Africa cultural continuity theory. My research analyzes the validity of his theory by comparing how Kemetic women exercised agency in their political structure to how Igbo women exercised political agency. I identified Igbo women as a cultural group to be compared to Kemet because of their historical political resistance in their state during the colonial period. However, it is their traditional roles prior to British invasion that is most relevant to my study. I define matriarchy as the central role of the mother in the social and political function of societal structures, the political positions occupied by women that inform the decisions of the state and the inclusion of female principles within the religious-political order of the nation. Matriarchy as a critical framework was used to identify how Kemetic women and Igbo women accessed political power by means of motherhood, political leadership, and spiritual authority. The findings of this study show that Igbo women and Ancient Egyptian women were integral to the political operation of their states. Furthermore, the results indicate that Ancient Egypt and Igboland shared cultural commonalities as it relates to the roles that women occupied as spiritual specialists, political leaders and mothers.
Temple University--Theses
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Maxengana, Nomalungisa Sylvia. "The impact of missionary activities and the establishment of Victoria East, 1824-1860." Thesis, University of Fort Hare, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10353/d1006292.
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This thesis covers a period of drastic change in that part of Xhosaland later known as Victoria East. Chapters one and two deal with the clash between the Glasgow missionaries at Lovedale and the amaXhosa who were expected to simply discard their way of life in favour of the new dispensation. Chapter three explains the arrival in the Eastern Cape of the amaMfengu, formerly called abaMbo, and their role in the divisive policies of the colonial government. Chapter four recounts the brief interlude (1836-1846) during which the colonial government tried but ultimately rejected a more equitable model of cross-border relations known as the Treaty System. The final chapter deals with the introduction of direct rule over the newly-created district of Victoria East, and with the policies of Henry Calderwood, its first magistrate, which were artfully constructed to perpetuate ‘Divide and Rule’ so as to maintain a comfortable life for the white settlers in the border area.
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Arunga, Marcia Tate. "Back to Africa in the 21st Century: The Cultural Reconnection Experiences of African American Women." Antioch University / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch149315357668899.
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Munyangane, Nditsheni Norman. "Tsenguluso ya u tambudzwa ha vhanna nga vhafumakadzi kha dirama dza Mahamba, Netshirando na Muyai na Netshivhuyu." Thesis, University of Limpopo, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10386/1255.
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Thesis (MA. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2014Ṱhoḓisiso iyi yo sengulusa u tambudzwa ha vhanna nga vhafumakadzi kha ḓirama dza Mahamba (1989), Ṋetshiranḓo na Munyai (2007) na Ṋetshivhuyu (1989). U tambudzwa ha vhanna nga vhafumakadzi hu khou bvelela fhedzi a hu dzhielwi nṱha. Muvhuso na Madzangano a si a Muvhuso a simesa u amba nga ha u tambudzwa ha vhana na vhafumakadzi ngeno vha sa iti zwo linganaho kha u lwa na u tambudzwa ha vhanna nga vhafumakadzi.
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Jadezweni, Mhlobo Wabantwana. "Aspects of isiXhosa poetry with special reference to poems produced about women." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006364.
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This study investigates the use of modern and izibongo (praise poetry) techniques in representing women in selected isiXhosa poems. The main interest of the study is to determine whether the same techniques to depict men are used when writing about women. It is also the interest of the study to ascertain how gender issues are dealt with in the selected poems. Seminal studies on izibongo by eminent scholars in this field show a serious lack of critique and little recognition of women in African languages’ poetry in general and in isiXhosa in particular. Pioneering studies in Nguni poetry about women have thus recommended that serious studies on poetry about women be undertaken. The analyses of selected poems by established isiXhosa poets show that modern poetry conventions are significantly used together with izibongo techniques. These techniques are used without any gender differentiation, which is another point of interest of this study. There are however instances where images specific to women are used. Such use has however not been found to be demeaning of women in any way. Poems where modern poetry forms and conventions are used tend to deal with subjects who have international or an urban area background. Even though the modern poetry conventions are used with izibongo techniques the presence of the modern literary conventions is prominent. This is the case particularly with poems about women in politics. That some female poet seems to accept some cultural practices that are viewed to be undermining the status of women does not take away the voice of protest against this oppression by some of the selected poets. These two voices, one of acceptance and the other one of protest are used as a basis for a debate around a need for a literary theory that addresses the question of African culture with special reference to isiXhosa poetry about women. The success of the selected poets with both modern and izibongo techniques is a good sign for the development of isiXhosa poetry in general and isiXhosa poetry about women. It is strongly recommended that continued research of a serious nature concerning poetry about, and produced by women, be undertaken.
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Stewart, Beth. "Gender and the difficulty of decolonizing development in Africa in the late 1960s and early 1970s : a Canadian effort for partnership among women." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1555.
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In the 1960s, Irene Spry served as the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada (FWIC) representative to the Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW). In 1967 she accepted an offer to be the ACWW deputy president, a post that she held until the mid-1970s. During this time, the ACWW and its member societies engaged in international development efforts around the world. This was a critical moment in the history of international development. The Canadian movement for development was propelled by domestic and global politics, as well as a changing society that embraced a sense of global citizenship. Arising out of this context and armoured with her own socialist politics, Spry carefully navigated the development efforts of the ACWW. These efforts straddled grassroots ideals and mainstream pressures from the United Nations (UN). As a women's Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), the ACWW was part of the initial force behind the global shift in the approach to development referred to as Women in Development (WID).
Contemporary research, however, suggests that WID has not succeeded in addressing the concerns of women in "developing" countries. As a case study, this paper examines some of the historical roots of WID and identifies the historical continuities that persist in today's development discourse. Analyzing Spry's documents from the Library and Archives Canada through the lens of feminist postcolonial theory reveals the dominance of Eurocentric ideologies within the development practices of the ACWW. The impetus to reach out to help people in developing countries became socially and politically part of the Canadian identity and, as Spry's navigation through the discourses of the international agencies and ACWW members reveal, such sentiments of international benevolence were inherently neo-colonial. In much the same way that Himani Bannerji suggests that subjects are "invented," women involved in this movement intersected discourses of modernity and "race" with essentializing notions of gender, which contributed to a standardized practice of development. This case study ultimately demonstrates that good intentions were not enough to decolonize western women's efforts to "develop" parts of Africa in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
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Kenny, Christina Mary. "'They would rather have the women who are humbled': Gendered citizenship and embodied rights in post-colonial Kenya." Phd thesis, Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/148124.
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For all the effort and attention Kenyan women receive from the international rights community and at times, from their own government, human rights frameworks are not significantly improving the lives of Kenyan women. Attempting to address this, a great deal of work has been done on monitoring and evaluating human rights based interventions, including tightening funding structures, making recipient organisations more accountable to donors, and assessing the progress of governments and non-government organisations in promoting human rights based reform. I take a different approach. Rather than assess individual projects or goals of aid, my approach questions the assumptions which underpin these interventions from their conception. Following Sally Engle Merry’s work on the vernacularisation of transnational gender rights projects, and taking Kenya as a case study, I argue that the local histories, understandings and hierarchies of gendered power must be understood in much more nuanced and critical manner that we are doing presently. Further, I contend that internationalist human rights discourses create certain kinds of subjects and requires these subjects to behave in particular ways. The current failure to recognize and make space for individual and cultural complexity means that human rights based interventions are only superficially affecting relationships and power dynamics in women’s lives, making substantive, long term change very difficult. My thesis is an interdisciplinary project, and combines an engagement with scholarly literature on gender, post-colonial feminism, human rights theory and practice, as well as Kenyan history and historiography, with research gathered during 13 months of field work. My field work is based on focus groups and interviews with women in Nairobi and rural areas around Lake Victoria and engages with the lived experience of African women. These discussions illustrate the ways in which the discourses of international human rights in fact reproduce the very patterns, structures, and hierarchies which are at the core of women’s disenfranchisement and marginalization. This project historicises women’s current experiences of human rights through Kenya’s late colonial and post-colonial history, and follows these colonial legacies into the modern period through four thematic cases: women as victims and objects of cultural violence; myths of the sorority of African women; women as victims of political and state violence; and women as actors in national political processes. These four cases carry two overarching concerns, firstly, that we need to challenge ourselves to locate women’s agency within their own politics and goals, rather than through what Saba Mahmood describes as the diagnostic and prescriptive lens of feminist analysis. And secondly, we need to be vigilant that our continued attention to the bodies of women does not re-inscribe the embodied-ness of women, and the disembodied-ness of men. In centring the lived experiences and views of Kenyan women, and historicising the production of gender, I critically evaluate the efficacy of modern human rights discourses and projects in local contexts, contributing to the post-colonial feminist project which explores the complex and intersecting dimensions of gender, race, and culture.
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Grabska, Katarzyna. "In-flux:(re)negotiations of gender, identity and ‘home’ in post-war Southern Sudan." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2010. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/2525/.
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Ackerman, Carla. "The power of patriarchy : its manifestation in rape." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/54906.
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Thesis (MA) -- Stellenbosch University, 1995.Includes bibliography
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study investigates womens' perceptions of social power, as illustrated by their experiences of rape. In the first chapter the principles of subjective feminist research are analyzed against the background of feminist critique on so-called objective science. This introduction also discusses the feminist research methodology used in the study. This is followed by an examination of mainstream political science's conception of "power". How mainstream political scientists conceptualise "power", how they define "the exercise of power". Analyses of the feminist critique against the mainstream conception of "power" are discussed. The account of Foucault's ideas on "power" is, to some degree, a link between mainstream political science's views and feminists views. An examination of patriarchy, the three main dichotomies present in our society that determine female/male relations and gendered sexuality follows. It is against the aforementioned background that the literature study moves into a practical research stage. The next chapter analyses womens' conceptions and experiences of "power" relations by looking at the feminist theory of rape. This is followed by an analysis of the research data and a discussion of the popular rape myths in our society. A historical overview and analysis of the current rape law is then given, while the last chapter examines a feminist alternative conception of "power"relations by re-visiting "power" and by providing a feminist vision of women-power.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie studie ondersoek vrouens se persepsies van sosiale mag soos geïllustreer deur hulle ervarings van verkragting. In die eerste hoofstuk word die beginsels van subjektiewe feministiese navorsing geanaliseer teen die agtergrond van die feministiese kritiek teen sogenaamde objektiewe wetenskap. Dit verskaf 'n bespreking van die feministiese navorsingsmetodologie wat in die studie gebruik is. In die daaropvolgende hoofstuk word hoofstroom politieke wetenskap se konsepsie van "mag" ondersoek deur te kyk na hoe hoofstroom politieke wetenskap "mag" konseptualiseer, hoe dit "die uitoefening van mag" definieer en deur die analise van feministiese kritiek teen hoofstroom politieke wetenskap se konsepsie van "mag". Die opsomming van Faucault se idees oor "mag" is in sommige opsigte 'n skakel tussen hoofstroom politieke wetenskap se sieninge en die van feministe. 'n Ondersoek na patriargie, die drie belangrikste tweeledighede ("dichotomies") in ons samelewing wat die verhoudings tussen vrouens en mans bepaal en geslagtelike seksualiteit ("gendered sexuality") volg. Dit is teen die agtergrond van die voorafgaande dat die literatuurstudie gevolg word deur 'n praktiese navorsingsfase. Daar volg'In analise van vrouens se konsepsies en ondervindings van "magsverhoudinge" deur eerstens na die feministiese teorie van verkragting te kyk. Hierna volg 'n analise van die navorsingsdata en In bespreking van populêre verkragtingsmites in ons samelewing. In aansluiting by bogenoemde volg 'n historiese oorsig en analise van die huidige verkragtingswet en vrouens se ervarings daarvan. Laastens volg 'n feministiese alternatiewe konsepsie van "magsverhoudinge" deur 'n her-analise van "mag" voor te stel en deur 'n feministiese visie van vroue-mag ("women-power") te verskaf.
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Greenfield-Liebst, Michelle. "Livelihood and status struggles in the mission stations of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), north-eastern Tanzania and Zanzibar, 1864-1926." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2017. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/270105.
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This thesis is about the social, political, and economic interactions that took place in and around the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) in two very different regions: north-eastern Tanzania and Zanzibar. The mission was for much of the period a space in which people could – often inventively – make a living through education, employment, and patronage. Indeed, particularly in the period preceding British colonial rule, most Christians were mission employees (usually teachers) and their families. Being Christian was, in one sense, a livelihood. In this era before the British altered the political economy, education had only limited appeal, while the teaching profession was not highly esteemed by Africans, although it offered some teachers the security and status of a regular income. From the 1860s to the 1910s, the UMCA did not offer clear trajectories for most of the Africans interacting with it in search of a better life. Markers of coastal sophistication, such as clothing or Swahili fluency, had greater social currency, while the coast remained a prime source of paid employment, often preferable to conditions offered by the mission. By the end of the period, Christians were at a social and economic advantage by virtue of their access to formal institutional education. This was a major shift and schooling became an obvious trajectory for future employment and economic mobility. Converts, many of whom came from marginal social backgrounds, sought to overcome a heritage of exploitative social relations and to redraw the field for the negotiation of dependency to their advantage. However, as this thesis shows, the mission also contributed to new sets of exploitative social relations in a hierarchy of work and education.