The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Sometimes being moody is a good thing. For women, small fluctuations in mood allow for a more personal analysis of one's emotions. Expressing these emotions is important, argues psychiatrist Julie Holland who discusses the many benefits of small bad moods and why trying to suppress them through unnatural remedies is not a good idea. “The idea of why being moody can be good for you has to do with taking advantage of one of the biggest assets that women have, which is intuition. Knowing...
Samantha Hargreaves and Hibist Kassa -
Battles between coal mining companies, the municipalities that host them and affected local residents are now drawing blood with last week’s rubber-bullet shootings and arrests of activists (including key women organisers) fighting coal and demanding a decent life in Emahlahleni (formerly Witbank).
This battleground stretches east across the continent’s main coal seam, out to Mozambique’s Tete Province. There, Mama Life (we use a pseudonym to protect her from reprisal), a...
The Marikana massacre most certainly turned the spotlight on the women in mining communities by bringing into sharp focus the challenges facing the widows of the slain mineworkers.
Fazila Farouk of SACSIS talks to Samantha Hargreaves of WoMin about the broader impact of mining on women in mining communities and learns about land grabs, water grabs and the health impacts of environmental degradation and water pollution, which create an additional burden for the women behind the...
Gillian Schutte -
In the wake of the many global revolutionary rumblings over the past two years I have been pondering the prospect of a mass women’s revolt against the male-owned beauty industry that mostly diminishes women to mere objects and creates untold conflict in our psyches. This industry, along with the mainstream media, is premised on beautyism and has employed a very effective tool of “othering” those who do not fit into the idealised picture of what is pleasing to the...
Gillian Schutte -
In April 2009 women stripped half naked and took to the streets of Ado-Ekiti (Nigeria) to protest the rerun governorship election. Protesting under the title “Peace rally in support of democracy in Nigeria,” the protesters gathered under the auspices of Ekiti Women for Peace and Development.
Led by a former Commissioner for Women Affairs in the state, Chief Ronke Okusanya, more than 300 women, comprising the young and the elderly, took part in the protest over the delay in...
Liepollo Pheko -
Women's month in South Africa has come and gone without much fanfare, and perhaps rightfully so, since African women continue to be confronted by institutions, policies and systems within an economy that entrenches patriarchy and a fundamentalist brand of neoliberalism.
The broad context is that African women pay the price for failing states and a hostile political economy that deepens poverty and widens inequalities in many societies of the global South, while polarising social and living...
