What’s Going On In The Labor Industries? Pt. 3 – The Evolution of Women’s Rights in South Africa

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By Jiin Hur

You’re listening to WFHB News. Up next, WFHB News Youth Radio Correspondent Jiin Hur reports on the South African labor industries. 

Just 4 days ago, BBC published an article titled “Suspect in South African student’s murder killed in police shootout” detailing a South African student’s death. Her name is Olorato Mongale. Furthermore, the article stated that “Ms Mongale’s death has sparked a fierce debate about the levels of violence faced by women in South Africa. The country has one of the highest rates of femicide and gender-based violence in the world.” Femicide is quoted by the UN as “the most brutal and extreme manifestation of violence against women and girls”. In today’s modern world, South African women face this as a form of gender-based violence meant to degrade the country’s next generation of vital female workers in its labor industries. 

To better put this into context, it’s best to look at this in numbers. According to an article published by South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council on November 18 of last year, they released

Its first national study on gender-based violence (aka GBV) prevalence in the country. Its results were shocking to me. 31% of women with disabilities have experienced sexual or physical violence throughout the course of their life. Nearly 70 percent of men they surveyed felt a wife should obey her husband, and 15 percent felt a husband had the right to “punish” his wife for wrongdoings. However, a patriarchal structure emphasized throughout much of South Africa’s history can be seen as one possible factor of why gender-based violence is so prevalent in South Africa’s society today. According to an article published by the National Institute of Health in 2022, this African patriarchal system started out with the male child being prioritized heavily before the female child. In the modern world, females often work and earn significantly more than the males, which makes it harder for the males to dominate the familial structure unless they exercise any sort of violence (physical, emotional, sexual) to regain the patriarchal structure. 

Up next, WFHB Youth Radio Correspondent Jiin Hur spoke to Indiana University Professor of History and American Studies Alex Lichtenstein.