Khanya College Gender Programme

At the beginning of 2003 Khanya College established a Strategy Center for the Practice and Theory of Social Movements (The Strategy Centre). The Center emerged as a result of our ongoing activist training with emerging social movements. For the past five years the College has been involved in a continuous process of reflecting on our relationship to the emerging social movements in both the rural and urban areas. Through a number of largely spontaneous struggles new layers of activists are beginning to experiment with different forms of mass mobilization and organisation building.

Women in the new social movements

An important feature of the emerging social movements is the large number of women participating in mass mobilization and in the building of community-based organizations. What is important to note is that even though women are active members and in some cases even founder members of community based organizations, they often do not have a significant influence in the decision making processes of the social movements. Men still largely staff leadership structures of these movements, make up its key theoreticians, and influence and shape the agenda of the social movements. Women activists in these movements have also indicated that the patriarchal nature of society often manifests itself strongly in the emerging social movements.

In addition to developments in the emerging social movements, Khanya’s gender work is also shaped by a long history of gender work with the trade unions. Our gender work with the social movements build on the work done with trade unions and other mass organizations since the early 1990s, and carries forward the themes of the impact of neoliberal restructuring on women, and how women are responding to the processes of globalisation.

As with their counterparts in the unions, women in the new social movements also carry the burden of housework, childcare, subsistence food production and finding forms of informal employment in order to feed families. These activities often make it difficult for women to engage in activities outside of the framework of the family. Yet we are finding more and more women willing to engage in struggle. Even in a context where the meetings and activities of the social movements clash with their household chores, women continue to enter the movements in large numbers.

Given this context Khanya College has recognised the importance of broadening its gender work beyond the unions, and to include among its objectives the need to provide women activists with a space to reflect on their existing roles in the emerging social movements.

The Gender programme will be directed at members, both women and men, within the emerging social movements. Different kinds of activities e.g. workshops, seminars and popular publications will be organized with a range of both urban as well as rural organisations.

Aims and Objectives

Although Khanya’s approach to gender work is that every aspect of our work as college must include a perspective on gender, we also feel that it is important to have a programme dedicated to promoting gender equity in the social movements. The Gender programme is aimed at:

1. Providing women activists with a space to reflect on their existing roles in the emerging social movements.
2. Developing both life and leadership skills amongst women active in the emerging social movements.
3. Developing a broader layer of activists who can both recognize as well as understand the sources of gender oppression in society in general as well as in the emerging social movements in particular.
4. Facilitating discussions and debates that will assist activists in developing approaches to dealing with gender oppression and inequality within organisations – in particular to develop organisational strategies aimed at advanced the struggle for gender equity.
5. Assisting activists with analysing local and international experiences of struggles against gender oppression with a special emphasis on experiences in Southern Africa.
6. Developing popular publications as part of raising gender awareness amongst activists.

The Gender programme will be linked to the work of the Khanya College Strategy Center for Social Movements.