Amanda Gouws
Biographic Data
| ID | 3614022 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Amanda Gouws |
| GIVEN NAMES | Amanda |
| FAMILY NAME | Gouws |
| SIGNATURE | GOUWS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stellenbosch University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1260-3944 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 349 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Naked agency: Its versatile applicability
Toward Understanding Condonation of Gender-Based Violence the Interaction of Patriarchy Values and Contextual Elements of Violence Against Women
The State, the Domestic Sphere and Patriarchy: Thinking with Belinda Bozzoli
Feminist Encounters: Special Issue on Slow Intimacy
Editorial: Special Issue on Slow Intimacy
The Slow Intimacy of Necropolitics
Human beings seem to have a fascination with pictures of death or what can be called 'necrovoyeurism'. Circulating pictures of dead bodies has become easier with the use of social media. Necropolitics or the politics of death relates to the careless treatment of the lives of the marginalised, destitute and the ones without voice, the precariat. In late modernity one of the shadow sides of democracy is necropolitics, using processes of social excl…
White Women and Antiracism in the (Post)Colony of South Africa
Feminist scholars such as Ann Laura Stoler and María Lugones have shown how colonial patriarchy, or patriarchal coloniality, constructs and relies on a vulnerable, sexually pure, and passive white femininity in oppositional relation to a rapacious Black masculinity. This logic serves four political agendas: it racializes the colonized, secures and justifies (paternalistic) patriarchal control over white women and their reproductive sexuality, leg…
Policing Bodies: Law, Sex Work, and Desire in Johannesburg
Introduction to the Special Issue of Feminist Encounters on ‘Gender and the Anthropocene’
Studies in Culture and Politics is motivated by the need to craft a gendered, and specifically intersectional feminist, response to the Anthropocene. The term was coined in 2000 by scientists
Reducing Women to Bare Life: Sexual Violence in South Africa
This article investigates rape through the lens of biopolitics, using Agamben’s notion of a state of exception and bare life. I will argue that there needs to be a closer look at the neglected sexual and gender dimensions of biopolitics in settler colonial societies, and specifically at the continuities of sexual violence of the settler colony with high levels sexual violence in present day South Africa. Women in post-colonial South Africa are in…
Beijing +25
We have to do much more, demand much more and I think demonstrate radical impatience”: Conversation with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director
In 2010 the United Nations (UN) created UN Women to help deal with the UN’s challenges to establish gender equality globally. UN Women builds on and merges the work of Division for the Advancement
Women's movements and feminist activism
This issue is dedicated to the changing landscape of women’s movements and activism in South Africa (SA) as well as other countries in Africa.Over the last two decades the contributions and achieve
EndRapeCulture Campaign in South Africa: Resisting Sexual Violence Through Protest and the Politics of Experience
This article analyses the #EndRapeCulture campaign in South Africa, where women students took to the streets in 2016 to protest against the pervasive normalisation of sexual violence on university campuses. In many cases, some participated topless and brandished sjamboks (whips) to show their resentment and anger at the prevailing conditions of sexual violence. The article looks at the role of digital media in circulating slogans around the campa…
Constructing Citizenship and Identity: Exploring Political Participation Amongst Black African Women from Zimbabwean and South African Townships
How do Black African women from impoverished communities understand themselves as citizens? This article contributes to the theoretical and methodological development of citizenship, as well as the small body of literature on women’s participation in township community politics. The paper is based on a case analysis of women living in Zimbabwean and South African townships, who identify as members of the isiNdebele and isiZulu ethnic groups, resp…
Women and Power in Postconflict Africa, by Aili Mari Tripp
This book was long in the making but worth the wait. Aili Mari Tripp’s new book on women and power in postconflict Africa makes an important contribution to understanding exactly how and why postco
Making a difference in peacekeeping operations: Voices of South African women peacekeepers
Recruiting more women into peacekeeping operations due to the perceived unique contributions they are said to make to missions has been widely advocated by the United Nations (UN) and other agencie
Feminist intersectionality and the matrix of domination in South Africa
During the recent student protests in South Africa African women students articulated their identities as “radical, intersectional African feminists”. This reintroduced discussions of the concept of intersectionality into public debate and academic scholarship. Intersectionality refers to the interlocking relations of dominance of multiple social, political, cultural and economic dynamics of power that are determined simultaneously by identity ca…
Twenty Years of the Constitution: Reflecting on Citizenship and Gender Justice
This special issue of Agenda aims to consider the trajectory of gender equality and justice since the inception of the final South African constitution in 1996. During the run-up to the finalisatio
Women’s activism around gender-based violence in South Africa: Recognition, redistribution and representation
South Africa is a country struggling to come to grips with very high levels of gender-based violence (GBV) that is eroding the social fabric of society. Using Nancy Fraser’s theory of redistribution, recognition and representation as a starting point, the author shows the importance of acknowledging these dimensions in struggles and activism around GBV, illustrating the theory with the Shukumisa Campaign and the activities of the African National…
What's Trust Got to do with it? Measuring Levels of Political Trust in South Africa 20 Years after Democratic Transition
Democratic consolidation relies on a degree of political trust and support for new democratic institutions and actors. A decline in political trust threatens the legitimacy of institutions, and democracy itself. Using Ipsos Khayabus 2014 national public opinion survey data, the paper explores levels of political trust in South Africa's transitional society in late 2014. It asks whether there is a sufficient mass of 'critical citizens' to ensure a…
Introduction to the Special Issue: Citizenship (Local and Global) – 20 Years After the Constitution
At the end of 2015, South Africa faced both a serious political and economic crisis that puts the South African Constitution and its values central in the struggles to overcome these crises; some r
Towards a feminist ethics of ubuntu
Sex and international tribunals
"Sex and international tribunals." South African Journal of International Affairs, 22(3), pp. 401–402
From Esther to Kwezi
This article seeks to reflect on the issue of sexual violence in the context of the twenty year anniversary of democracy in South Africa bringing together views from the authors’ respective disciplines of Gender and the Bible on the one hand and Political Science on the other. We will employ the Old Testament Book of Esther, which offers a remarkable glimpse into the way a patriarchal society is responsible for multiple levels of victimization, i…
Recognition and redistribution: State of the women's movement in South Africa 20 years after democratic transition
This article attempts to analyse the shift from a mass-based women's movement in the form of the Women's National Coalition in South Africa to more localised temporal movements since political transition 20 years ago. I apply Nancy Fraser's theory of recognition and redistribution to illustrate how two alliances – the Shukumisa campaign around gender-based violence and the Alliance for Rural Democracy around the Traditional Courts Bill – meet the…
Social Identities and Political Intolerance: Linkages within the South African Mass Public
Social Identity Theory offers a useful understanding of the psychodynamics of affiliations with groups, while theories of political tolerance explain why some citizens are unwilling to tolerate their political enemies. Despite the obvious logical connection, little extant research has joined these two theories. We hypothesize that strong ingroup positive identities create strong outgroup negative identities, which are in turn connected to antipat…
Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Attributions of Blame and the Struggle over Apartheid
In an effort to put its past firmly behind, the New South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to document human rights abuses under apartheid and to grant amnesty to those confessing their nefarious deeds. South Africa's democratic experiment depends mightily upon whether truth does in fact bring about reconciliation. Consequently, we examine whether ordinary South Africans accept the theories of blame that underlie the truth a…
Making Tolerance Judgments: The Effects of Context, Local and National
The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of political context on tolerance judgments. Using an experiment embedded within a representative sample of the South African mass public, we explore the impact of four contextual factors on tolerance judgments. Generally, we discover that the actual attributes of a civil liberties dispute have little or no impact on tolerance judgments. Rather, pre-existing threat perceptions strongly dominat…
Overcoming intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion
"Analyzing South Africa's political culture during the initial years of the country's experiment with democracy, Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa provides the first comprehensive study of intolerance ever conducted outside the developed world (and the first outside the United States in nearly twenty years). In a field so heavily dominated by research on stable democracies, this book is a refreshing reminder that political tolerance is cruci…
Feminist intersectionality and the matrix of domination in South Africa
During the recent student protests in South Africa African women students articulated their identities as “radical, intersectional African feminists”. This reintroduced discussions of the concept of intersectionality into public debate and academic scholarship. Intersectionality refers to the interlocking relations of dominance of multiple social, political, cultural and economic dynamics of power that are determined simultaneously by identity ca…
EndRapeCulture Campaign in South Africa: Resisting Sexual Violence Through Protest and the Politics of Experience
This article analyses the #EndRapeCulture campaign in South Africa, where women students took to the streets in 2016 to protest against the pervasive normalisation of sexual violence on university campuses. In many cases, some participated topless and brandished sjamboks (whips) to show their resentment and anger at the prevailing conditions of sexual violence. The article looks at the role of digital media in circulating slogans around the campa…
Monitoring Perceptions of the Causes of Poverty in South Africa
Multiculturalism in South Africa: Dislodging the Binary between Universal Human Rights and Culture/Tradition
The aim of this article is to show how the binary opposition between the cultural rights of indigenous populations and constitutionally protected universal rights leads to a closure of the discourse about these concepts. The inability to dislodge the binary is particularly damaging in post-colonial societies where the misrecognition of cultural practices may have negative implications for women, because of its impact on the redistribution of reso…
Women’s activism around gender-based violence in South Africa: Recognition, redistribution and representation
South Africa is a country struggling to come to grips with very high levels of gender-based violence (GBV) that is eroding the social fabric of society. Using Nancy Fraser’s theory of redistribution, recognition and representation as a starting point, the author shows the importance of acknowledging these dimensions in struggles and activism around GBV, illustrating the theory with the Shukumisa Campaign and the activities of the African National…
South African Social Welfare Policy: An Analysis Using the Ethic of Care
New policies have been developed in South Africa since the demise of apartheid. This article examines one of these policy documents - the White Paper for Social Welfare - using the lens of a feminist political ethic of care. The ethic of care is used to trace the normative framework of this policy document and to make judgements about how adequately issues of care, welfare and citizenship are dealt with. Policy texts display authoritative ways of…
What's Trust Got to do with it? Measuring Levels of Political Trust in South Africa 20 Years after Democratic Transition
Democratic consolidation relies on a degree of political trust and support for new democratic institutions and actors. A decline in political trust threatens the legitimacy of institutions, and democracy itself. Using Ipsos Khayabus 2014 national public opinion survey data, the paper explores levels of political trust in South Africa's transitional society in late 2014. It asks whether there is a sufficient mass of 'critical citizens' to ensure a…
Recognition and redistribution: State of the women's movement in South Africa 20 years after democratic transition
This article attempts to analyse the shift from a mass-based women's movement in the form of the Women's National Coalition in South Africa to more localised temporal movements since political transition 20 years ago. I apply Nancy Fraser's theory of recognition and redistribution to illustrate how two alliances – the Shukumisa campaign around gender-based violence and the Alliance for Rural Democracy around the Traditional Courts Bill – meet the…
Support for the rule of law in the emerging South African democracy
Political tolerance and civil society: The case of South Africa
The recent debate about civil society in South Africa has focused mainly on relationships of power in the reconstruction of civil society. This article puts forward an argument about the importance of civility (expressed in the acceptance of people as bearers of rights), as a component of civil society. It is in the acceptance of others as rights‐holders that political tolerance is fostered. Tolerance, therefore, lies at the heart of civil societ…
Who's Afraid of Feminism? South African Democracy at 20: An introduction
This is the 100th issue of this journal since the first Agenda appeared in 1987. It coincides with the celebration of 20 years of democracy, a moment in which there is national reflection on the achievements and setbacks on the path to a more just and equal society. In this issue we look at the past 20 years through the lens of feminism, reminding ourselves of the dreams and strategies of women's movements in the country and analysing how far we …
Redefining the public space: Women's organisations, gender consciousness and civil society in South Africa
This article addresses the relationship between civil society and the women's movement in South Africa. It argues that civil society is not a gender‐neutral concept, but is founded on the separation between public and private as two distinct arenas in society. Women's movements in South Africa have constantly challenged these boundaries. The article also explores the emergence of a gender consciousness within South African women's movements. The …
Beyond Equality and Difference: The Politics of Women's Citizenship
Women's movements and feminist activism
This issue is dedicated to the changing landscape of women’s movements and activism in South Africa (SA) as well as other countries in Africa.Over the last two decades the contributions and achieve
Making a difference in peacekeeping operations: Voices of South African women peacekeepers
Recruiting more women into peacekeeping operations due to the perceived unique contributions they are said to make to missions has been widely advocated by the United Nations (UN) and other agencie
Democracy under Scrutiny – Elites, Citizens, Cultures
Ursula van Beek (ed) (2010) Democracy under Scrutiny – Elites, Citizens, Cultures (Oplanden & Framington Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich Publishers) ISBN 978 86649 306 3 This book is a comparative study
The Emerging Party System in the New South Africa
This report presents evidence from a recent national post-election study concerning South Africa's prospects for developing into either a truly competitive multi-party system or the one-party-dominant system characteristic of so many other emerging democracies. Focusing on long-term party identification, the evidence indicates that the African National Congress (ANC) not only commands an overwhelming, but also intense, share of partisan loyalty. …
The Angry Divide
Celebrating 40 Years: The State of Political Science in South Africa in 2014
The last state of the discipline survey was done 15 years ago. In \ncelebration of the 40th anniversary of Politikon the authors take stock of the \ntransformation of the discipline since 1994 to show how changes in the tertiary \neducation sector have influenced Political Science. Results of a survey of the \ndiscipline, which includes academic modules offered in Political Science and \nInternational Relations, as well as ratings of academic dep…
Women in Leadership Positions in South Africa: The Role of Values
There is a dearth of literature that focuses on women leaders' values. This article aims at making a contribution to this under-researched area from a South African perspective. Using a sample of respondents from different elite sectors in South Africa, it first analyses the difference in values between men and women in the sample. It then disaggregates the data to single out South African women parliamentarians, to see if their values differ fro…
The Rise of the Femocrat
Persgeloofwaardigheid in Suid‐Afrika: N politieke houdingstudie van sa Volksraadslede
This article is based on a study which representsan empirical inquiry into the attitudes of South African Members of Parliament towards the credibility of the South African press. The study was conducted in the field of Political Science, but literature from the field of Communication Science was also used to explain certain aspects of mass media behaviour and political communication
The Angry Divide
Women in political science: (An)other Look at the Discipline
This article is an attempt to address the invisibility of women within political science by looking at similar investigations made of the discipline in the United States of America, and by analysing the situation of women in the discipline in South Africa. Several explanations for the facts that women practitioners in South African political science are few in number and concentrated in junior ranks are discussed, and the rival merits of gender s…
Political tolerance and civil society: The case of South Africa
The recent debate about civil society in South Africa has focused mainly on relationships of power in the reconstruction of civil society. This article puts forward an argument about the importance of civility (expressed in the acceptance of people as bearers of rights), as a component of civil society. It is in the acceptance of others as rights‐holders that political tolerance is fostered. Tolerance, therefore, lies at the heart of civil societ…
The Emerging Party System in the New South Africa
This report presents evidence from a recent national post-election study concerning South Africa's prospects for developing into either a truly competitive multi-party system or the one-party-dominant system characteristic of so many other emerging democracies. Focusing on long-term party identification, the evidence indicates that the African National Congress (ANC) not only commands an overwhelming, but also intense, share of partisan loyalty. …
The rise of the femocrat
The institutionalisation of gender could shape women's issues outside government and create a new kind of woman, the ‘femocrat’, inside government. Signs of this at provincial level are evident where new ‘gender desks’ are taking different and disconcerting form, writes AMANDA GOUWS
The Rise of the Femocrat
Intolerance in KwaZulu‐Natal: Illustrating the Complexity of Tolerance Attitudes
One of the processes of consolidating democracy is the development of a democratic culture of which political tolerance is a crucial ingredient. Tolerance, however, is a puzzling and complex attitude because it does not correlate well with other indicators of democracy. A better understanding is needed of the link between political tolerance and civil liberties, the indicators of tolerance, the link between tolerance and public policy, the mallea…
Support for the rule of law in the emerging South African democracy
Redefining the public space: Women's organisations, gender consciousness and civil society in South Africa
This article addresses the relationship between civil society and the women's movement in South Africa. It argues that civil society is not a gender‐neutral concept, but is founded on the separation between public and private as two distinct arenas in society. Women's movements in South Africa have constantly challenged these boundaries. The article also explores the emergence of a gender consciousness within South African women's movements. The …
Beyond Equality and Difference: The Politics of Women's Citizenship
Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Attributions of Blame and the Struggle over Apartheid
In an effort to put its past firmly behind, the New South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to document human rights abuses under apartheid and to grant amnesty to those confessing their nefarious deeds. South Africa's democratic experiment depends mightily upon whether truth does in fact bring about reconciliation. Consequently, we examine whether ordinary South Africans accept the theories of blame that underlie the truth a…
Social Identities and Political Intolerance: Linkages within the South African Mass Public
Social Identity Theory offers a useful understanding of the psychodynamics of affiliations with groups, while theories of political tolerance explain why some citizens are unwilling to tolerate their political enemies. Despite the obvious logical connection, little extant research has joined these two theories. We hypothesize that strong ingroup positive identities create strong outgroup negative identities, which are in turn connected to antipat…
Making Tolerance Judgments: The Effects of Context, Local and National
The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of political context on tolerance judgments. Using an experiment embedded within a representative sample of the South African mass public, we explore the impact of four contextual factors on tolerance judgments. Generally, we discover that the actual attributes of a civil liberties dispute have little or no impact on tolerance judgments. Rather, pre-existing threat perceptions strongly dominat…
The study of political tolerance in the South African context
Overcoming intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion
"Analyzing South Africa's political culture during the initial years of the country's experiment with democracy, Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa provides the first comprehensive study of intolerance ever conducted outside the developed world (and the first outside the United States in nearly twenty years). In a field so heavily dominated by research on stable democracies, this book is a refreshing reminder that political tolerance is cruci…
South African Social Welfare Policy: An Analysis Using the Ethic of Care
New policies have been developed in South Africa since the demise of apartheid. This article examines one of these policy documents - the White Paper for Social Welfare - using the lens of a feminist political ethic of care. The ethic of care is used to trace the normative framework of this policy document and to make judgements about how adequately issues of care, welfare and citizenship are dealt with. Policy texts display authoritative ways of…
Political tolerance in South Africa: Self-Discrepancy and Change
Individuals have a representation of how they personally feel about issues (‘actual’ feelings), as well as a representation of the attitudes that they believe they should ‘ideally’ possess, reflecting personal values. Furthermore, existing in a social–political environment, individuals make estimations of how they believe others around them think that they ‘ought’ to feel. These different representations of self may conflict, especially where ext…
South Africa: One Party Dominance Despite Perfect Proportionality
Democratic elections in South Africa have been held using a closed-list PR system since 1994. Despite significant debate on whether the system should be reformed, the 1994 system has been retained. The South African electoral system is the most proportional system used in any democratic state, given that seat allocations are ultimately determined in one national constituency with 400 members. There is widespread agreement that it has performed we…
Women in Leadership Positions in South Africa: The Role of Values
There is a dearth of literature that focuses on women leaders' values. This article aims at making a contribution to this under-researched area from a South African perspective. Using a sample of respondents from different elite sectors in South Africa, it first analyses the difference in values between men and women in the sample. It then disaggregates the data to single out South African women parliamentarians, to see if their values differ fro…
Obstacles for Women in Leadership Positions: The Case of South Africa
Changing Women's Exclusion from Politics: Examples from Southern Africa
This article analyses different dimensions of institutional politics, such as women's representation in government and state structures such as National Gender Machineries, as well as the impact that institutionalization has had on women's organizations. To improve women's representation in government the acceptance of quotas to increase the number of women in legislatures has made a difference, but it is still unclear if women's presence leads t…
A Transformative Approach to Gender Mainstreaming: Changing the Deep Structure of Organizations
Mainstreaming: Changing the Deep Structure of Organizations. This article argues that gender mainstreaming will only be successful if a transformative agenda setting process is used through which the institutional cultures of organizations are changed. This implies an engagement with the deep structure of organizations. The deep structure of most organizations is the embedded masculinist values and norms that are normalized so that everyone accep…
Democracy under Scrutiny – Elites, Citizens, Cultures
Ursula van Beek (ed) (2010) Democracy under Scrutiny – Elites, Citizens, Cultures (Oplanden & Framington Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich Publishers) ISBN 978 86649 306 3 This book is a comparative study
Reflections on being a feminist academic/academic feminism in South Africa
Purpose The article engages the “double identity” of being a feminist activist and academic in a tertiary institution in a post‐colonial society. The aim is to grapple with the personal experiences of a “change agent” in a tertiary education sector that is going through political transformation. The author also reflects on the impact of neo‐liberal capitalism on tertiary institutions, and its depoliticising effect on feminist activism. It engages…
Sociology (50 works) · Political science (48 works) · Law (37 works) · Politics (35 works) · Gender Studies (34 works) · Law (29 works) · Gender Studies (25 works) · Gender Politics and Representation (15 works) · Democracy (12 works) · Political economy (12 works)