Tamara Shefer

• D Phil
• Professor at University of the Western Cape

This paper is written in memory of our friend and colleague, Elmarie Costandius, a visual artist and academic, whose untimely and unexpected death deeply affected us. While we had worked with Elmarie in various research projects, short courses, and workshops, over a period of ten years or so, in this article we refer to a series of encounters, in w...

How and to what extent can pedagogies in higher education work towards disrupting injustices and promoting participatory parity for students? This article emerges from a doctoral study which explored this question through investigating the pedagogies of two undergraduate modules in the Women’s and Gender Studies department at the University of the...

Our oceanic swimming practice began as part of the project of doing scholarship differently in contemporary South African post-apartheid contexts. Swimming-writing-reading not only enables different ways of doing inquiry but also prompts new ways of communicating environmental injustices as we face them in/with/through the ocean. We argue the value...

Although often unacknowledged and unrewarded, peer reviewing is a crucial part of the process of academic scholarship. Surprisingly, not much has been written on the process and experience of peer reviewing, besides a few articles in journals of teaching and learning in higher education. Nor has there been much consideration of peer reviewing as a...

The current emphasis in research and education on women and girls is fraught with problems. It has raised a concern that boys and men should be included in research and intervention work on gender equality and transformation. As a result, academics with a background of many years of work in women’s and gender studies undertook a research project fo...

Sexual and Reproductive Justice: From the Margins to the Centre offers new insights and perspectives on sexual and reproductive justice. The thought-provoking and diverse contributions in this volume — which range from indigenous approaches to sexual violence to gender-affirming primary and mental healthcare — extend sexual and reproductive justice...

In this article, I reflect on the last few decades of research on young sexual practices in the post-apartheid context of South Africa. I am concerned here to critically interrogate this body of work and its political effects, much of it spurred on by a global industry of reproductive health and HIV that has proliferated in the context of the HIV p...

Drawing on experiences of research, and teaching research, and other current scholarship within local critical, decolonial and feminist research, I argue the importance of a more nuanced application of reflexive practices in research. Located in the larger project of social justice in higher education and critical feminist psychology, the paper ref...

Its November 2001. A university in dire straits, financially bankrupt burdening a debt in excess of R100-million, a disillusioned and demoralised staff complement still reeling from the trauma of retrenchments, coupled with an academic project facing collapse as student numbers dwindle by a third to less than 10 000. Is there a future for such an i...

Reflecting on narratives collected as part of the Apartheid Archive Project, a memory project of “ordinary” experiences of living under apartheid, this paper engages with stories that articulate white South Africans’ shame/ful relationships with Black female domestic workers. It is increasingly of concern that the dominant response to apartheid abu...

The last few years of widespread protest and activism initiated by young Black South Africans within a project of decolonization have been critical for the larger context of social justice in the post-apartheid democracy. Importantly student activism has reminded not only higher education, but the country more widely, that the challenges in the ‘ne...

Democratic South Africa post-1994 boasts an impressive constitutional and legal commitment to human rights, including the enshrinement of sexual and gender rights. Notwithstanding, a growing body of work documents continued widespread homophobia, heterosexism and violence against gender and sexual non-conforming people that intersect with other ine...

This editorial piece introduces a special issue on the feminist politics of shame. It locates the special issue in the larger framework of scholarship on feminist approaches to shame and specifically feminist psychological emphases, and contextualises the foregrounding of the productive possibilities of shame for feminist social justice projects. T...

It matters how academic peer-reviewing processes are carried out in higher education. Written as a Manifesto, this piece proposes an ethical, intra-active and generous way to do academic reviews. This is an alternative practice to the usual method of anonymous peer-reviewing of manuscripts which is located in a tradition of critique and contestatio...

South African schools are tasked with providing sexuality education through the Life Orientation curriculum as a means of challenging continued high rates of HIV, unwanted pregnancy and gender-based violence. While in theory schools are well positioned to provide appropriate knowledge for reproductive health and navigating sexual challenges within...

Background Sexual and physical abuse in childhood creates a great health burden including on mental and reproductive health. A possible link between child abuse and HIV infection has increasingly attracted attention. This paper investigated whether a history of child physical and sexual abuse is associated with HIV infection among adult women. Met...

Anonymised data set. (DTA)

Shame has typically been understood as a negative emotion, a view which is prevalent in individualist, psychologising discourses about human experience. Elspeth Probyn's approach to shame departs significantly from these tropes. As interviewers, we share a common interest in feminist ethics and productive affects in teaching and scholarship. Hence,...

Student protests in South Africa flag the well-documented lack of progress in transforming universities which mirror deeply entrenched inequalities. The imperative to challenge a system of higher education that continues to rationalise and reproduce injustice is even more keenly felt. Efforts to understand the lived experiences of young people with...

Background: Sexual and physical abuse in childhood creates a great health burden including on mental and reproductive health. A possible link between child abuse and HIV infection has increasingly attracted attention. This paper investigated whether a history of child physical and sexual abuse is associated with HIV infection among adult women. Met...

Young people in contemporary South Africa inhabit a multiplicity of diverse, often contradictory, economic and socio-cultural contexts. These contexts offer a range of possibilities and opportunities for the affirmation of certain identities and positionalities alongside the disavowal of others. Dress – clothes, accessories and body styling – is on...

Transformation efforts in South African higher education have been under increased scrutiny in recent years, especially following the last years of student activism and calls for decolonization of universities. This article presents data from a participatory photovoice study in which a group of students reflect on their experiences of feeling safe...

This paper uses Nancy Fraser’s concept of participatory parity to reflect on data gathered by and from third year students in a final year research module in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape in 2015. During the course students developed a research proposal, collected and shared data with other students...

L’éducation sexuelle, comme composante du programme de Life Orientation (LO, cours de préparation à la vie) dans les écoles sud-africaines, a pour but de doter les jeunes de connaissances et compétences leur permettant de faire des choix éclairés sur leur sexualité, leur santé et celle des autres. Les effets du pouvoir, des relations de pouvoir et...

Given the growing emphasis on academic research output and the challenges encountered in expediting completion of doctoral studies especially, mentorship is increasingly being utilised as a capacity development strategy for supporting scholars to complete post-graduate studies. This article reports on a mentorship project aimed at academic staff en...

South Africa has seen a rapid increase in scholarship and programmatic interventions focusing on gender and sexuality, and more recently on boys, men and masculinities. In this paper, we argue that a deterministic discourse on men's sexuality and masculinity in general is inherent in many current understandings of adolescent male sexuality, which t...

The last 20 years have seen a proliferation of research, spurred by the imperatives of the HIV epidemic and reportedly high rates of gender-based violence, on heterosexual practices in the South African context. Research has focused on how poverty, age and gender within specific cultural contexts shape sexual agency and provide a context for unequa...

Dialoguing across national borders and specifically global North-South centres and margins has increasingly been viewed as a way to enhance critical and feminist studies and engagement with men and masculinities. This article draws on narratives generated by a group of researchers in South Africa and Finland who have been engaged in a transnational...

Dialoguing across national borders and specifically global North–South centres and margins has increasingly been viewed as a way to enhance critical and feminist studies and engagement with men and masculinities. This article draws on narratives generated by a group of researchers in South Africa and Finland who have been engaged in a transnational...

Editorial Available: http://www.perspectives-in-education.com/ViewPublication.aspx?PublicationID=29

Progressive policies protecting women's rights to make reproductive decisions and the recent increase in literature exploring female sexual agency do not appear to have impacted on more equitable sexual relations in all contexts. In South Africa, gender power inequalities, intersecting with other forms of inequality in society, pose a challenge for...

Young women's sexuality is a contested terrain in multiple ways in contemporary South Africa. A growing body of work in the context of HIV and gender-based violence illustrates how young women find it challenging to negotiate safe and equitable sexual relationships with men, and are often the victims of coercive sex, unwanted early pregnancies and...

Much of South African psychology has pursued the national imperative of critical engagement and reconstruction since 1994, in spite of collusion with Apartheid ideologies before 1994. Critical psychologists who mobilised against apartheid were also active post-1994 in reshaping the discipline and profession. Many of these efforts were directed towa...

Research has foregrounded the way in which heterosexual practices for many young people are not infrequently bound up with violence and unequal transactional power relations. The Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum in South African schools has been viewed as a potentially valuable space to work with young people on issues of reproductiv...

This article reflects on the findings of the International Men and Gender Equality survey through the lens of contemporary South African contexts of change. While huge strides have been made toward gender justice in South Africa since 1994, there are many indications, including high rates of gender-based violence, that inequalities on the basis of...

Background HIV status disclosure is a central strategy in HIV prevention and treatment but in high prevalence settings women test disproportionately and most often during pregnancy. This study reports intimate partner violence (IPV) following disclosure of HIV test results by pregnant women. Methods In this cross sectional study we interviewed 195...

South African nursing remains a largely feminised and devalued profession, further undermined by the popular construction of nurses as indifferent and the healthcare systems as hindered by multiple challenges. Over the last 20 years of democracy, multiple efforts have been made at the level of policy, practice and knowledge production to address th...

This thematic cluster of essays, titled “Gendered Violence: Continuities and Transformation in the Aftermath of Conflict in Africa,” focuses on the continuities between regimes of violence during organized political conflict and persisting violence against women in the postconflict era of democratic governance. The genesis for this collection evolv...

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The legacy of apartheid and continued social and economic change have meant that many South African men and women have grown up in families from which biological fathers are missing. In both popular and professional knowledge and practice this has been posed as inherently a problem particularly for boys who are assumed to lack a positive male role...

Reproductive rights in South Africa continue to be undermined for young women who fall pregnant and become mothers while still at school. Before 1994, exclusionary practices were common and the majority of those who fell pregnant failed to resume their education. With the adoption of new policies in 2007, young pregnant women and mothers are suppos...

Recent research on young women’s sexuality highlights the transactional nature of relationships among young people, as well as the increase in intergenerational sexual relationships. These unequal and often coercive sexual practices may increase young women’s vulnerability to unsafe sexual practices. Within this context, while there have been some...

Given the extent of alcohol and substance abuse in South Africa, there is an urgent need for effective, evidence-based interventions. This study reports on process evaluations of a public out-patient treatment programme in the Western Cape conducted over two years. A mainly qualitative methodology was used, involving individual interviews and focus...

South African national education policy is committed to promoting gender equality at school and to facilitating the successful completion of all young people's schooling, including those who may become pregnant and parent while at school. However, the experience of being pregnant and parenting while being a learner is shaped by broader social and s...

Objective: To describe the occurrence, dynamics and predictors of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy, including links with HIV, in urban Zimbabwe. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of 2042 post-natal women aged 15-49 years was conducted in six public primary healthcare clinics in low-income urban Zimbabwe. An adapted WHO questionna...

Knowledge production in South Africa remains framed by the legacies of apartheid. Developing emerging authors and local knowledges through co-authorship between supervisors and post graduate students is an important strategy aimed at challenging these legacies. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with students and supervisors to explore their e...

A wide range of literature across disciplines has explored the complex intersections of ‘race’, gender, class and other forms of difference and power inequality that were rooted in colonisation and formed the cornerstones of apartheid. This chapter draws on a group of the narratives that have been generated by the Apartheid Archive Project (www.apa...

Applying a Freudian psychoanalytic frame, informed by a Fanonian approach to a psychology of colonial oppression, we unpack narratives from the Apartheid Archive Project that speak to the complex ways in which stories about sexuality and racism are intricately enmeshed. We are particularly interested in exploring the way in which these intersecting...

Since a recent Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) prevalence study highlighted the relationship between intergenerational sex and risk of HIV infection, a range of studies in southern Africa have documented the commonality of sexual relations between older men and young women. For the most part, these studies have focused on the material and st...

The absence of biological fathers in South Africa has been constructed as a problem for children of both sexes but more so for boy-children. Arguably the dominant discourse in this respect has demonized non-nuclear, female-headed households. Fathers are constructed as either absent or 'bad'. Thus it has become important to explore more closely how...

Media reports are emerging on the phenomenon of young girls who travel with older mini-bus taxi drivers, and who are thought to have sex with the drivers in exchange for gifts and money. The extent to which such relationships might facilitate unsafe sexual practices and increased risks for both the men and the young women, often referred to as taxi...

Globally, studies report a high prevalence of intimate partner sexual violence (IPSV) and an association with HIV infection. Despite the criminalisation of IPSV and deliberate sexual HIV infection in Zimbabwe, IPSV remains common. This study explored women's and health workers' perspectives and experiences of sexuality and sexual violence in pregna...

Arguing that the complex dynamic inherent in institutionalized domestic work during apartheid and its impact on social and institutional relationships is still salient in contemporary South Africa, I unpack the way in which White narrators construct their relationship with Black domestic workers in their memories of apartheid. Drawing on the nearly...

Drawing on a qualitative study that included 20 focus group discussions with male and female students at an urban-based university in South Africa, this article reports on perceptions, attitudes and reported behaviour with respect to HIV and AIDS and safer sex in the campus setting, with an aim to better understand how young people are responding t...

Given the imperatives of HIV and gender equality, South African researchers have foregrounded transactional sex as a common practice that contributes to unsafe and inequitable sexual practices. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study with a group of students at a South African university, drawing on narratives that speak to the dynami...

In an effort to disentangle the threads of the complex, interwoven fabric of apartheid sexualities, this paper draws on narratives of the Apartheid Archive Project to explore the sexualizing force of racism and the racialising force of gendered sexuality. We do this by isolating three key dynamics operating on both the material and the psychical te...

In January 2009 Julius Malema, president of the youth wing of the ruling party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), told a meeting of students that “when a woman didn’t enjoy it, she leaves early in the morning. Those who had a nice time will wait until the sun comes out, request breakfast and ask for taxi money” (Pillay 2009; Smit...

In this article I reflect on the way in which racist practices intersect with gender as this emerges in narratives on living through apartheid, from a group of academics in contemporary South Africa. A wide range of literature has explored the complex intersections of ‘race’, gender, class and other forms of difference and power inequality through...

South African law forbids excluding pregnant teenagers from school and permits young parents to continue with their schooling. However, the existence of progressive policy and law does not by itself ensure that pregnant teenagers and young parents remain in school or experience as little disruption to their studies as possible. Two of the factors i...

This article discusses how the gendering of activity by boys coincides with, contests or recreates constructions of hegemonic masculinity in the context of South Africa. The study used a qualitative methodology including a series of three focus groups with 14-16 year-old boys across six different schools in the Western Cape, South Africa. A discurs...

The healing paradigm implicit in many sub-Saharan African cultures is embedded in African cosmology, and thus the recognition of this is essential for understanding Traditional African Healing practices and implementing collaborative counselling practices. To this end, this article focuses on the cultural importance, or voice, of traditional healer...

When a 22-year-old University of the Western Cape (UWC) female student was stabbed to death by her boyfriend (another student) in her room in the university residence on 25 August 2008. the entire campus was left reeling. Bringing the stark reality of gender-based violence (GBV) so close to home, the tragedy was a powerful reminder of the limits of...

This study investigates how women and men in the Western Cape, South Africa, construct their gender identities and roles. As part of the development of an HIV prevention intervention for men, key informant interviews and focus group discussions were conducted. Several themes regarding the construction of gender were identified. First, participants...

The Gender Attitudes-Power-Risk (GAPR) model of HIV risk behavior was tested using survey data collected from among 309 men who were attending STI services in a primary health care clinic in Cape Town, South Africa. Results showed that negative attitudes towards women were significantly positively associated with a high level of HIV risk behavior,...

This article constitutes a single case study of snapshots of the life of a young, gay isiXhosa-speaking man, and his narrative on relationships. The case study is a part of a broader study exploring gay male relationships with a particular focus on the dynamics of control, power, and abuse. The broader literature on gay relationships, both internat...