Anti-Apartheid Religion NGOs' Responses to Gender-Based Violence in South Africa

• In Event: 442 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Paper Session. Feminist and Intersectional Approaches to Social Movements

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how three faith-based NGOs in South Africa that were involved in the struggle against apartheid have varied in their approach to gender-based violence (GBV) in the democratic context. The differences in their approaches to GBV are partly due to structural influences, both internal and external. Their responses are contingent upon their constituencies, relation to the political sphere, internal organizational structure, and dependence upon particular resources. Yet, while these factors are important, they do not fully explain the variation in the organizations’ responses to GBV.
I contend that the organizations’ theological cultures play a central role in the constitution of their responses to GBV. That is, the cultural schemas that are developed over time in the organizations shape how the problem of GBV is defined institutionally (Polletta 2008:84-86). I show that the organizations’ responses to GBV, an issue that emerged in broad public awareness in the context of the transition to democracy in South Africa, are rooted in their historical patterns of discourse. Thus I also build an “endogenous” explanation of culture’s social power: the organizations’ cultural patterns established in apartheid explain their cultural patterns of discourse concerning GBV (Kaufman 2004). This paper illuminates the fragility of possibilities for the recognition of gender inequality in tandem with other forms of social injustice. In so doing, it develops an account of the historical and cultural dimensions of intersectionality, seeing intersectionality as a contingent process.

Author

• Meredith C. Whitnah, Westmont College