Full Length
Research Paper
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Negotiating Respectability: White Women in the public service of
Southern Rhodesia
Ushehwedu Kufakurinani
Economic
History Department, University of Zimbabwe, MP 167, Mt Pleasant, Harare,
Zimbabwe. Email:
ushehwedu@gmail.com,
urcik@arts.uz.ac.zw; Tel: +263772584701.
Downloaded
25 May, 2012
Accepted
14 June, 2012 |
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White women in Southern Rhodesia were so much better off than black men,
let alone black women, that their own experiences of gender
inequality seemed inconsequential. Not surprisingly, studies on
women in Africa have tended to concentrate less on the experiences
of white women than on black women yet, in a number of ways, the
experiences of white women provide important lessons on women’s
struggles and experiences as well as help in historicizing modern
exploitation of women by capital in post colonial societies. A
historical evaluation of white women in the public service
illuminates on the various strategies used by women to subvert
unfair labour relations. Before independence, white as opposed to
black women were the first to access and dominate in formal
employment in the public service. These women faced widespread
gender discrimination in the work place some of which continued in
the post-colonial era. Years of protracted negotiations and
contestations between white women and their public service employer,
whose patriarchal ideology pervaded employment policy, shaped the
roles and status of women in general during and after independence.
This paper is about these protracted struggles. It is, however, not
concerned with the African women who entered the Service in the
later period of colonial rule, nor is it about their experiences in
the post colonial era. The clerical administrative branch of the
public service will be used to illustrate the main arguments of the
paper.
Keywords:
public service, respectability, gender discrepancies, patriarchal
ideology.
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