Gender and Women’s Empowerment Programme

Gender and Women’s Empowerment Programme

About the Programme: 

The Gender and Women's Empowerment Programme includes three projects: The Women’s Advice Centre, the Building Women’s Activism Project and the Gender Audit Project.

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Since the advent of a non-racial democracy in South Africa various developments have taken place that suggest an improvement in the overall position of women in South African society. However, these developments have taken place in a larger context, that of economic globalization. Economic globalization has effected an increased transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, and that working class women have borne the brunt of this process, economically, politically and socially. South Africa has been no exception. The state’s overall policy orientation, which has been to facilitate this process of economic globalization, has undermined its own measures, laws and institutions aimed at entrenching and improving the rights of women in South African society. The position of women, and black working class women in particular, has consistently deteriorated despite the advent of a non-racial democracy. The Gender programme of Khanya College seeks to contribute to raising consciousness about gender inequality among progressive mass organisations and social movements, and to assisting these formations to develop approaches to overcome gender inequality.

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Women's Advice Centre

State strategies have dramatically worsened the position of black working class women in South African society. This has partly been made possible and compounded by the weakness of women’s organisations and the absence of a strong women’s movement able to defend working class women. The purpose of the Women’s Advice Centre is to contribute towards addressing these various problems.

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Objectives of the Centre are to ensure:

  1. More working class women have access to their rights
  2. An extension of the existing rights women enjoy
  3. An improvement in the quality of life of working class women in particular in the process
  4. The development of women’s consciousness and confidence to participate in the broader struggle for social justice and in the struggle for women’s emancipation

Activities:

  • Advice/basic counselling
  • Education/awareness-raising
  • Campaigns, advocacy and lobbying
  • Training and development
  • Network building
  • Documenting and profiling

For more information please contact:

Martha Legong
Phone: 011-336 9190 (ext 126)
E-mail: maria.vandriel_at_khanyacollege.org.za

 

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Building Women’s Activism Project

The new social justice movement has seen a strong presence of women activists. Women members, however, make up a disproportionately small membership of the leadership structures of the new organisation. Nor do the social justice movements reflect this dominance of women in their internal cultures, ways of organising or the formulation of their demands. This project seeks to raise the profile of women activists in the new movements, and to provide support for the development of their leadership capacities.

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The objectives of the Project are to:

  1. Provide women activists with the space and tools to discuss and analyse key political-economic debates
  2. Enable women activists to develop a political and economic framework for understanding current debates around South Africa’s development
  3. Develop the confidence of women, in particular when confronted with debates around economic issues, and to encourage them to pursue ongoing study of political economy
  4. Assist women activists with some of the conceptual skills that are needed in social movement building
  5. Assist in developing a layer of women activists with the confidence to deal with gender oppression and inequalities within organisations.

Activities

  • A seminar series on topical issues dealing with gender issues in the social justice movement
  • Skills training workshops for women in the movements
  • Political and economic literacy training for women in the social movements
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Gender Audit Project

While part of the College’s approach is to undertake gender training work with women activists and women in general, the key to its approach is to integrate gender issues in all its work. It is against this background that Khanya is setting up a gender audit project.

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The objectives of the Project are to:

  1. Undertake an ongoing evaluation of the gender approach in Khanya’s overall work and programmes
  2. Develop strategies to deepen gender work across all programmes and work
  3. Undertake analysis of gender approaches in the work of the movements Khanya works with, and suggest strategies of how to deepen this aspect of Khanya’s perspectives

Activities

  • Produce an internal Khanya gender audit report on all aspects of the College’s work
  • Produce strategy papers on integrating gender in the overall work of the College
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