Shamim Meer

Women in communities affected by extractives projects face violence daily at the hands of police, army and private security who wreak havoc over women’s lives, often with the active support of the state. Women have been raped, gang-raped, sexually harassed, and coerced into exchanging sex for jobs, water and firewood. WoMin, together with its allies and women affected by such violence, have been grappling with how to understand such violence in order to take effective actions against it. This paper presents some of our ideas and is a collective effort of Shamim Meer, Winnet Shamuyarira and Samantha Hargreaves. The paper can be downloaded at this link:

https://womin.africa/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Extractives-and-Violence-Against-Women-Paper-ENG-FINAL.pdf

Proposals for post apartheid agrarian reconstruction in South Africa are founded on assumptions about gender relations and households that obscure the underlying basis of gender differentiated access to productive resources. Based on their assumptions, policy makers believe that legalistic approaches in themselves will be sufficient to redress existing gender inequalities in resource access. However even when such policy intends to benefit women they may end up reinforcing existing gender imbalances precisely because these very policies get reshaped by existing gender and household relations on the ground. A more nuanced understanding of processes of resource allocation stems from the realization that access to resources is shaped by a persons membership and status within a household as well as by the positions a person holds in non-domestic spheres. Household dynamics are diverse and evolving. A household is not a bounded, static unit. Instead its boundaries are permeable, and it i...

The issue of land lies at the heart of South Africa's democratic transformation, but the extremity of apartheid's racial legacy is in danger of obscuring a no less pervasive oppression: that of women. This volume brings together recent research on women by the National Land Committee of South Africa. What emerges is a sharp sense of transition and crisis - and a pressing need for women's organization, to ensure that development and legislation are informed by the priorities of women, and that South Africa's land question is treated not least as a problem of gender transformation.

Proposals for post apartheid agrarian reconstruction in South Africa are founded on assumptions about gender relations and households that obscure the underlying basis of gender differentiated access to productive resources. Based on their assumptions, policy makers believe that legalistic approaches in themselves will be sufficient to redress existing gender inequalities in resource access. However even when such policy intends to benefit women they may end up reinforcing existing gender imbalances precisely because these very policies get reshaped by existing gender and household relations on the ground. A more nuanced understanding of processes of resource allocation stems from the realization that access to resources is shaped by a persons membership and status within a household as well as by the positions a person holds in non-domestic spheres. Household dynamics are diverse and evolving. A household is not a bounded, static unit. Instead its boundaries are permeable, and it i...

become serving, nurturing creatures, rotating around the needs of our men and children as though we had no dreams, hopes and aspirations for our own fulfillment as persons. If we do not struggle we will be accepting a myth and helping to perpetuate a system of gender exploitation which gives men power while denying women basic rights. Through struggle we must try to achieve a time when relationships do serve men and women equally. Hopefully as a collective we will achieve this for future generations. For now we must accept the notion of struggle or remain put down. The struggle in relationships with men takes place over control of our time, over whether we should share housework and child care and over how we should do this. Over whether both men and women have

This chapter in a book offering perspectives from South Africa on women land and authority reports on a study that developed from a series of participatory workshops meetings and discussions with women in the Namaqualand Colored Rural Reserves in 1993-94. The resulting Namaqualand Womens Forum was created because women felt their occupational rights were threatened by a proposed law initiated by community men. This experience has revealed that 1) it is necessary to apply a gendered perspective to community development and legislation; 2) gender relations are in a constant state of flux revealed by tracing changes in the gender division of labor and status of women; 3) gender roles are often contested within the household state and economy; and 4) womens empowerment through organization is key to redressing existing gender imbalances. The chapter describes the study methodology and provides information on dispossession proletarianization and changes in the sexual division of labor. T...

Abstract This paper presents a gender analysis of the land reform process in South Africa. Topics discussed include: policy and organizational commitments to gender equity that have been made by the state; the assessment of gender impact; and the barriers to gender equity at the level of organizations and individuals. The paper concludes by setting out critical questions and issues for the Department of Land Affairs and non-governmental organizations with regard to their responsibilities to advance the goal of gender equity ...

Forward Introduction 1.Women in Communities: From the Pages of Speak:Women organise in their local communities, Rural Women's Movement, Women and Political Violence in Communities, Struggles Today, Say No -Gcina Mhlope, The Dancer - Gcina Mhlope 2. Women Workers: From the Pages of 'Speak'Women at Work, Women on Strike, Domestic Workers, Workrs are Parents Too! Women in FOSATU and COSATU, Sruggles Today, Madam - Roseline Naapo 3.Fighting Violence against women: From the Pages of Speak, Struggles Today, You Can't Stop the Spirit 4.The personal is political: from the Pages Of 'Speak,' A Woman'r Right to Choose, women and Fear - Paulinah Phungwayo 5. Women in Political Resistance:From the Pages of 'Speak,' Heroes of the Struggle Today -Nise Malange 6. Women in negotiations, Government and Civil society From the Pages of 'Speak':Women Make Their Voices Heard in the Negotiations, Women in the New South Africa, Struggles Today Women of Africa - S...

In this paper, I explore the opportunities and challenges presented by rights-based development approaches for advancing ideas and action for social change, including change with regard to unequal gender power relations. I tease out the particular understandings of rights and agency that I draw on in my work, and I reflect on a methodology for linking reflection and action through starting from the personal. In doing this I draw on my experiences both as political and feminist activist and as
development practitioner engaged in gender training.
(The paper was published in Revisiting gender training The making and remaking of gender knowledge A global sourcebook, Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Franz Wong Guest Editors, KIT (Royal Tropical Institute), The Netherlands Oxfam GB, 2007) http://213ou636sh0ptphd141fqei1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/gender/wp content/uploads/publications/1031_Gender-revisiting-web2.pdf

This paper presents a gender analysis of the land reform process in South Africa. Topics discussed include: policy and organizational commitments to gender equity that have been made by the state; the assessment of gender impact; and the barriers to gender equity at the level of organizations and individuals. The paper concludes by setting out critical questions and issues for the Department of Land Affairs and non-governmental organizations with regard to their responsibilities to advance the goal of gender equity ...

Through this case study, SHAMIM MEER, notes the slow pace of land reform in South Africa today and the difficulties of meeting gender equity goals within the land reform programme
Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity
Volume 15, Supplement 1, 1999
Special Issue:  Agenda AGI Monograph

In this paper, I explore the opportunities and challenges presented by rights-based development approaches for advancing ideas and action for social change, including
change with regard to unequal gender power relations. I tease out the particular understandings of rights and agency that I draw on in my work, and I reflect on a methodology for linking reflection and action through starting from the personal. In
doing this I draw on my experiences both as political and feminist activist and as development practitioner engaged in gender training.

The liberation struggle in South Africa highlighted racial and class oppression as key causes of poverty, inequality, and a lack of rights for most South Africans. Drawing on the language of the struggle, women political and trade union activists brought attention to their oppression and exploitation as women, and were able to place non-sexism alongside non-racism and democracy as key liberation principles. However, while men in these organisations ostensibly accepted the idea of non-sexism, they were not ready to change their behaviour or give up their power, and women activists met with ongoing resistance. During the negotiations for democracy, women drew on their experience of the years of struggle and were able to ensure a high proportion of women in parliament, influence the country’s constitution, and advocate the establishment of State machinery to mainstream gender equality. However, in the post-apartheid era of reconstruction and development, both the demobilisation of protest movements and the emphasis on the technical aspects of development stand in the way of gender mainstreaming via the State.

This Article highlights key contributions of second wave feminism, arguing that these are of relevance today, as
we struggle to deal with questions of social justice within a context of increasing poverty and inequality.
I look at feminist understandings of expanded social justice which highlighted crucial links between the
economic, political and the cultural, and which stressed that the personal was political. I look at feminist
strategies which stressed women’s agency and the need for separate women’s movements even as feminist
women challenged men alongside whom they worked in trade unions, liberation movements and radical social
movements. I look at how feminist struggles have fragmented over the decades alongside an increasing
hegemony of economic and political neoliberalism, and the demobilisation of emancipatory movements. While
women made gains within state institutions and the United Nations (UN) system in the 1990s, alongside these
gains was the co-option and depoliticisation of feminist concepts forged in the throes of struggle of the earlier
decades.
Women’s agency too came under threat and was challenged as men’s movements came to be promoted as
vehicles for gender equality. I argue that while men can play a vital role in struggles for gender equality it is
women’s movements that need to be advanced and supported as key actors in repoliticising feminism today.

Shamim Meer highlights the need for ongoing
organization in civil society in order to achieve the redistribution
necessary to change unequal and oppressive social relations that
continue to exist in South Africa despite the new democracy. She
explores how and why shifts took place in South Africa from a
liberation movement’s dreams of socialism or at the very least social
democracy, and an end to sexism, to a pragmatic acceptance that
there is no alternative to a neoliberal economic and political order, as
that movement became the ruling party in a new democratic order.
She points to the need to engage in struggles over meanings of both
democracy and feminism, at the same time as material struggles are
waged.

This book is based upon the premise that while politics and power play a central role in decisions governing the lives of many women in developing countries, international development agencies supporting the good governance agenda in the 1990s largely failed to acknowledge this in their approaches. The authors counter that starved of resources and isolated from the arena of politics, these machineries have had little influence on policy making.
The book focuses on sixteen organisation's initiatives across eight countries in Africa and South Asia. The organisations shared a strategy to negotiate and bargain with the state for recognition, rights, and resources and more equitable sharing of power between women and men. They each investigated how women among marginalised groups could be enabled to stake their claim to participation in governance, and how to create accountability of governance institutions to poor women’s interests and rights. The objectives of the programme were to explore what constitutes good governance and inclusive citizenship from a gender perspective and to identify strategies to promote gender equality in governance and enhance citizen participation.
Chapters are devoted to a variety of topics, including:
creating voice and carving space
women’s political representation
increasing responsiveness and accountability of governance institutions
citizenship
Each chapter also includes a variety of case studies.
The book is available as a free download at:
http://213ou636sh0ptphd141fqei1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/gender/wp-content/uploads/publications/646_2111.bw.CreatingVoice.pdf

The issue of land lies at the heart of South Africa's democratic transformation, but the extremity of apartheid's racial legacy is in danger of obscuring an equally pervasive oppression: that of women. New initiatives to restore land rights and redistribute colonial landholding often fail to address women's disadvantage in matters of land. This volume brings together research on women conducted by the National Land Committee in the 1990s. It reveals the circumstances of tenure and rights of access to land in a changing South Africa, from the perspective of women.
What emerges is a sharp sense of transition and crisis - and a pressing need for women's organisation, to ensure that development and legislation are informed by the priorities of women, and that South Africa's land question is treated not least as a problem of gender transformation.
Edited by Shamim Meer
Contributing Authors: Catherine Cross, Michelle Friedman, Lisa Thorp, Janet Small, Cherryl Walker, Sue Middleton, Fiona Archer, Linda Waldman, Mampe Ntsedi, Sandra Hill-Lantz, Kathy O'Grady, Bronwyn James and Sibongile Ngcobo.
Published by Oxfam UK and Ireland and David Philip Cape Town in association with National Land Committee, 1997

A record of the setbacks and victories of South African women from early local community-level organisation in 1982 up to the challenges of living in the 1990s and being in government in the new South Africa. This book brings together the voices of a variety of women on some of the critical issues of the times: women organising in their own communities, in trade unions and in political organisations, violence against women and personal struggles regarding relationships, lobola, lesbianism and abortion. The final chapter focuses on women in negotiations and in government. The articles are all taken from the South African community magazineSpeak; and gives a sense of what concerned women most acutely during the 1980s and early 1990s. Through most recent interviews, conducted in 1996 and 1997, the debates are brought up to date.

A book review written in 1988 on  "Take Back the Night- Women on Pornography" Edited by Laura Lederer, Afterword by Adrienne Rich, New
York, William Morrow & Co, 1980
(The review appeared in the Journal Agenda Empowering women for gender equity  Volume 2, 1988 - Issue 2 1988 for Agenda )