Townships in Transition: Women's Caring Keeps the Township Together*

Maren Bak

Journal of Southern African Studies, 2008, vol. 34, issue 2, 255-268

Abstract: This article is based on a qualitative community study that explores the everyday life of black South African women living in a township on the outskirts of Cape Town. Through the life stories told by the women, their contribution to the township's social fabric becomes apparent. Based on these life stories, an analysis of transitions in the gendered division of labour and more specifically the gendered division of care as well as of transitions in family formation is presented and discussed. Finally, the article argues that governmental efforts to improve life in the township through, for example, developmental social welfare must be embedded in a deeper understanding of gendered power processes in order to avoid continuing to exploit women's caring capacities and also must promote caring masculinities if the township community is to keep together.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03057070802037928 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjssxx:v:34:y:2008:i:2:p:255-268

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjss20

DOI: 10.1080/03057070802037928

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Southern African Studies is currently edited by Ralph Smith

More articles in Journal of Southern African Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().