Moving the fence: Gender in the ciskei and border textile industry, 1945–1986

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This paper traces the incorporation of women into semi‐skilled wage labour in the textile industry in the Ciskei and Border region. It aims to demonstrate that gender is crucial for an understanding of the working class in the region. The processes of proletarianisation, as well as the nature and experience of work, altered the position of women in regard to the economic, political and ideological relations that structured their lives. These factors also affected women's consciousness and the terms of their resistance. White wage employment allowed women a measure of economic autonomy and strength in the face of patriarchal controls in the family, it increased their vulnerability to exploitation as women workers in the factory. Political restructuring has confined many African women to the Bantustans and to a future of insecure, highly exploited, gender defined employment in decentralised industry.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: