The state, bureaucracy and gender equity in South African education

South Africa’s transition to democracy has highlighted the role of the state and bureaucracy in tackling gender inequalities in education. New initiatives at national and provincial level have focused on the establishment of an extensive machinery to institutionalise gender concerns. Gender equity has found pride of place in the new constitution and legislative frameworks based on it. And yet there is also evidence of continuing conflict and resistances around gender issues at the level of both the state and civil society. In this context, how, to what extent and with what effect new initiatives are addressing gender inequalities becomes a key question. The state has historically been a crucial agency in the subordination of women. It is now seen as an agency and instrument in the liberation of women. To what extent it is actually capable of being so requires much closer scrutiny. The role of the state and bureaucracy can be addressed in a number of ways. On the one hand, it is possible to sketch the actual changes in constitution and legislation and examine the extent to which gender relations and inequalities appear to have altered inside the education system. While helpful and important, such an analysis will simply describe what needs to be explained: the role of the state and bureaucracy in shifting gender relations. On the other, it is possible to draw on an extensive body of feminist literature in other contexts on constraints and possibilities of transformation through the state. In so doing, new light may be cast not only on the extent to which gender inequalities are and can be addressed, but also on the nature of the transitional state in South Africa. This paper will thus proceed by examining new initiatives by the state and bureaucracy to address gender equity in education against the backdrop of the principal insights emerging from the feminist literature on the state. It will look specifically at efforts to mainstream gender and two case studies illustrating the limited reach of the state in addressing the full complexity of gender relations in educational institutions. It will argue that the majority of new initiatives can be described as classically liberal feminist, and are bound to encounter many of the difficulties already pointed to in the literature. The South African state remains a deeply patriarchal state; as such there are significant contradictions between the policy discourse and actual interventions. In analysing these, the paper will make use of Stromquist’s differentiation between those gender policies in education which are essentially coercive and not transformative, those which are supportive and those which are constructive, and embody new attempts to change the ideological processes and values which underpin gender inequality (1997). The paper will first examine feminist theories of the state and bureaucracy. It will then consider the discourse of gender equity in education in South Africa and follow this with an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of efforts to mainstream gender including here a brief consideration of the role and position of gender machinery and women in the bureaucracy. It will conclude with a brief analysis of two incidents of gender violence in schools.

Publisher: University of Witwatersrand
Year of Publication: 2010