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Thesis (MBA.) -- University of Limpopo, 2017 / This study looked into the effectiveness of the Social and Labour Plan on addressing the gender equity in selected mining houses in Lephalale. The newly elected democratic government of South Africa introduces numerous strategic policies to open all sectors of economy for all South Africans, but with special emphasis on the historically disadvantaged, which include women and people with disability as part of its economic emancipation policy. Hence the Social and Labour Plan was adopted. The main aim of the study was to investigate the effect of the Social and Labour Plan (SLP) in selected mining houses in Lephalale. A qualitative approach was used for this study, and interviews were contacted to collect data and thematic analysis used to analyse the data. It was found that the Social and Labour Plan (SLP) in the mines was not working fully and effectively. Also the research findings included, among others slow implementation of policies, more males than females, white male dominance, and discrimination of women, transformation, where taking place both on race and gender, only at snail pace and the lack of enforcement for implementation of policies such as the Social and Labour Plan (SLP) by the Department of Miners and Resources (DMR). Amongst other revelations were inequality issues, discrimination and nepotism experienced by women. Based on the finding the researcher recommended that mining organisations should review their mining Social Labour Plan (SLP) so that they state very clearly the number of women to be employed by the organisations, and such document once approved by the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), should be complied to. Furthermore the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) should commit to an annual review of the Social and Labour Plan Report performance by mining companies, instead of waiting for five years.

Studiens syfte var att undersöka om en jämställd fördelning av hushållssysslor och omsorg om barn påverkar föräldrars planer på att utöka familjen, samt hur värderingar angående jämställdhet samspelar med beteende gällande arbetsfördelning. I många europeiska länder är fertiliteten låg vilket kopplas till att kvinnors roller har förändrats under senare decennier. Andelen kvinnor i högre utbildning samt i förvärvsarbete har ökat, medan kvinnorna fortsätter att ta majoriteten av ansvaret för hem och barn. I Sverige är andelen förvärvsarbetande kvinnor hög samtidigt som även barnafödandet är relativt högt. Svensk familjepolitik har sedan 1960-talet skapat förutsättningar för jämställdhet och givit föräldrar konkreta möjligheter att dela lika på omsorgen om barn. Studiens teoretiska ramverk bygger på tre perspektiv. Gender equity theory utgår från att obalansen mellan graden av jämställdhet i samhället respektive inom familjen bidrar till lägre barnafödande. Gender revolution perspektivet vidareutvecklar detta och menar att ett ökat barnafödande är kopplat till att männen deltar aktivt i omsorg om barn och hem. Gender ideology perspektivet undersöker samspelet mellan värderingar och beteende, och hur detta har en betydelse för hur man upplever sin situation. Data är inhämtat från Generations and Gender Survey, och urvalet består av kvinnor och män som är 25-44 år, som lever i parförhållande och har ett eller två barn. Studiens beroende variabel är “barnplaner”, förklaringsvariabler är fördelning av omsorg om barn och hushållssysslor, samt variabler om jämställda attityder avseende mammors och pappors arbete, och materialet analyserades med hjälp av logistisk regression. Resultaten visade ett positivt samband mellan jämställd fördelning av omsorg om barn och planer på att utöka familjen, som dock endast var signifikant när interaktionen mellan värderingar och arbetsfördelning inkluderas i modellerna. Högst benägenhet att vilja utöka familjen har de individer som jämställt delar på omsorgen om barnen, men som har traditionella värderingar angående mammors arbete.

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<p>The problem investigated in this study is that gender equity and change management in the City of Cape Town and in particularly the Diversity Equity and Change Management Department, has not been adequately assessed and a coherent set of options to address this problem has not yet been adequately researched. In particular, the situation is that senior management is not representative and that recruitment and appointment procedures as well as the change management process are not conducive to gender equity. The nature of this study is qualitative and the case study method has been utilized. The scope of the study is on gender equity and the change management process followed by management and staff at the City of Cape Town, in particular the Diversity Equity and Change Management Department since 2000 to 2007, with the view of proposing options for improvement. In 2006 the City of Cape Town Employment Statistics indicated that 80% of top management within departments across the City is still white males. At professional and middle management level white males and females dominated this level with 69.5%. In the technical and associate professions, the tally for whites is 38% and at elementary level 6.5% (Department Human Resources HRD IT System, July 2006). In order to equalize employment statistics in the COCT drastic steps should be taken to eliminate imbalances between both Black and white employees in terms of occupational levels. Disadvantaged Black women and men should benefit from employment, recruitment and selection, appointments and training and development processes and the acquisition of knowledge and skills beyond those acquired within the realm of empowerment. However, women should be adequately represented not nearly in the workplace but overall to enable them to participate in the decision-making of important work related and home related issues. Women should keep on addressing inequality and gender equity to enhance change processes and gender awareness amongst themselves and in the workplace. The gender institutional framework within the COCT as a whole in particularly the Diversity Equity department and the active participation in decision-making in the various structures of the City combines with their history of politics in the women&rsquo / s movement to augur well for continued gender sensitivity in policy formulation and outcome.</p>

Reducing health disparities requires intervention on the social determinants of health, as well as a means to monitor and evaluate these actions. Indicators are powerful evaluation tools that can support these efforts, but they are often developed without the input of those being measured and invariably reflect the value judgments of those who create them. This is particularly evident in the measurement of subjective social constructs such as gender equity, and the participation and collaboration of the intended beneficiaries are critical to the creation of relevant and useful indicators. These issues are examined in the context of a study to develop indicators to measure gender equity in the Nicaraguan Fair Trade coffee cooperative PROCOCER. Recent studies report that Fair Trade cooperatives are not adequately addressing the needs of its women members. Indicators can provide cooperatives with a consistent means to plan, implement, and sustain actions to improve gender equity. This study used participatory and feminist research methods to develop indicators based on focus groups and interviews with women members of PROCOCER, the cooperative staff, and external experts. The findings suggest that the cooperative has a role in promoting gender equity not only at the organizational level, but in the member families as well. Moreover, gender equity requires the empowerment of women in four broad dimensions of measurement: economic, political, sociocultural, and wellbeing. The indicator set proposes 22 objective and subjective indicators for immediate use by the cooperative and 7 indicators for future integration, mirroring its evolving gender strategy. The results also highlight salient lessons from the participatory process of indicator development, where the selected indicators were inherently shaped by the organizational context, the emerging research partnership, and the unique study constraints. These findings speak to the need for continued efforts to develop a critical awareness and organizational response to gender inequities, as well as the importance of providing spaces for women to define their own tools of evaluation.

Although Fair Trade provides better trading mechanisms and a set of well-documented tangible benefits for small-scale coffee producers in the Global South, large inequities persist within Fair Trade certified cooperatives. In particular, gender equity and womens empowerment are considered to be integral considerations of this system but visible gender inequities within certified cooperatives persist. Responding to this apparent contradiction, local partners in Nicaragua articulated a need to better understand how gender equity is understood and acted upon and thus this research projectan exploration of implemented gender equity-promoting processes at three different organizational levels (a national association of small-scale coffee producers, a second-tier cooperative, and a base cooperative)emerged. Drawing on feminist and social determinants of health approaches to research, the study was informed by semi-structured key informant interviews and document revision. Both the interviews and the documents revealed that although gender work is being considered at all three levels, each organizations approach and interpretation is unique, which exposes different challenges, tensions, and experiences.<p> Notably, results indicate that there is no clear definition of gender equity amongst the different organizational levels. As a result, these groups appear to be interpreting gender equity, and therefore initiating equity-promoting processes based on different criteria. Interviews also revealed that although there is no evidence of active discrimination or exclusion of women within cooperatives, gender equity work is nonetheless constrained by a constellation of socio-cultural and organizational challenges that women face. Examples of socio-cultural challenges revealed through the interviews include illiteracy, ascribed child-rearing responsibilities, household chores, machista culture, land tenure arrangements and gendered power relations in terms of decision-making, while organizational challenges include the attitudes and influence of leaders, a lack of gender mainstreaming in the cooperatives work and the fact that becoming a member requires an input of resources that most women do not have access to.<p> In eliciting experiences and perspectives from various levels of organizations in the Fair Trade coffee sector, the research revealed numerous tensions between rhetoric and practice. These tensions reflect blind spots in Fair Trade marketing and research wherein existing rhetoric does not reflect the experiences of the women, cooperatives, and organizations shared in this research. The three most predominant tensions that are explored in this study are: empowerment and organizational autonomy versus standardization; the subordination of gender work to commercial interests and; the concentration of power within democratically-organized cooperatives. The study acknowledges that it is not the primary role of Fair Trade to solve gender inequities, but does suggest that through some basic changes, including most notably a stronger consideration of local contexts, Fair Trade and local cooperatives can effectively support local gender work and contribute to womens empowerment and health.

Reducing health disparities requires intervention on the social determinants of health, as well as a means to monitor and evaluate these actions. Indicators are powerful evaluation tools that can support these efforts, but they are often developed without the input of those being measured and invariably reflect the value judgments of those who create them. This is particularly evident in the measurement of subjective social constructs such as gender equity, and the participation and collaboration of the intended beneficiaries are critical to the creation of relevant and useful indicators. These issues are examined in the context of a study to develop indicators to measure gender equity in the Nicaraguan Fair Trade coffee cooperative PROCOCER. Recent studies report that Fair Trade cooperatives are not adequately addressing the needs of its women members. Indicators can provide cooperatives with a consistent means to plan, implement, and sustain actions to improve gender equity. This study used participatory and feminist research methods to develop indicators based on focus groups and interviews with women members of PROCOCER, the cooperative staff, and external experts. The findings suggest that the cooperative has a role in promoting gender equity not only at the organizational level, but in the member families as well. Moreover, gender equity requires the empowerment of women in four broad dimensions of measurement: economic, political, sociocultural, and wellbeing. The indicator set proposes 22 objective and subjective indicators for immediate use by the cooperative and 7 indicators for future integration, mirroring its evolving gender strategy. The results also highlight salient lessons from the participatory process of indicator development, where the selected indicators were inherently shaped by the organizational context, the emerging research partnership, and the unique study constraints. These findings speak to the need for continued efforts to develop a critical awareness and organizational response to gender inequities, as well as the importance of providing spaces for women to define their own tools of evaluation.

Although Fair Trade provides better trading mechanisms and a set of well-documented tangible benefits for small-scale coffee producers in the Global South, large inequities persist within Fair Trade certified cooperatives. In particular, gender equity and womens empowerment are considered to be integral considerations of this system but visible gender inequities within certified cooperatives persist. Responding to this apparent contradiction, local partners in Nicaragua articulated a need to better understand how gender equity is understood and acted upon and thus this research projectan exploration of implemented gender equity-promoting processes at three different organizational levels (a national association of small-scale coffee producers, a second-tier cooperative, and a base cooperative)emerged. Drawing on feminist and social determinants of health approaches to research, the study was informed by semi-structured key informant interviews and document revision. Both the interviews and the documents revealed that although gender work is being considered at all three levels, each organizations approach and interpretation is unique, which exposes different challenges, tensions, and experiences.<p> Notably, results indicate that there is no clear definition of gender equity amongst the different organizational levels. As a result, these groups appear to be interpreting gender equity, and therefore initiating equity-promoting processes based on different criteria. Interviews also revealed that although there is no evidence of active discrimination or exclusion of women within cooperatives, gender equity work is nonetheless constrained by a constellation of socio-cultural and organizational challenges that women face. Examples of socio-cultural challenges revealed through the interviews include illiteracy, ascribed child-rearing responsibilities, household chores, machista culture, land tenure arrangements and gendered power relations in terms of decision-making, while organizational challenges include the attitudes and influence of leaders, a lack of gender mainstreaming in the cooperatives work and the fact that becoming a member requires an input of resources that most women do not have access to.<p> In eliciting experiences and perspectives from various levels of organizations in the Fair Trade coffee sector, the research revealed numerous tensions between rhetoric and practice. These tensions reflect blind spots in Fair Trade marketing and research wherein existing rhetoric does not reflect the experiences of the women, cooperatives, and organizations shared in this research. The three most predominant tensions that are explored in this study are: empowerment and organizational autonomy versus standardization; the subordination of gender work to commercial interests and; the concentration of power within democratically-organized cooperatives. The study acknowledges that it is not the primary role of Fair Trade to solve gender inequities, but does suggest that through some basic changes, including most notably a stronger consideration of local contexts, Fair Trade and local cooperatives can effectively support local gender work and contribute to womens empowerment and health.

<p>The problem investigated in this study is that gender equity and change management in the City of Cape Town and in particularly the Diversity Equity and Change Management Department, has not been adequately assessed and a coherent set of options to address this problem has not yet been adequately researched. In particular, the situation is that senior management is not representative and that recruitment and appointment procedures as well as the change management process are not conducive to gender equity. The nature of this study is qualitative and the case study method has been utilized. The scope of the study is on gender equity and the change management process followed by management and staff at the City of Cape Town, in particular the Diversity Equity and Change Management Department since 2000 to 2007, with the view of proposing options for improvement. In 2006 the City of Cape Town Employment Statistics indicated that 80% of top management within departments across the City is still white males. At professional and middle management level white males and females dominated this level with 69.5%. In the technical and associate professions, the tally for whites is 38% and at elementary level 6.5% (Department Human Resources HRD IT System, July 2006). In order to equalize employment statistics in the COCT drastic steps should be taken to eliminate imbalances between both Black and white employees in terms of occupational levels. Disadvantaged Black women and men should benefit from employment, recruitment and selection, appointments and training and development processes and the acquisition of knowledge and skills beyond those acquired within the realm of empowerment. However, women should be adequately represented not nearly in the workplace but overall to enable them to participate in the decision-making of important work related and home related issues. Women should keep on addressing inequality and gender equity to enhance change processes and gender awareness amongst themselves and in the workplace. The gender institutional framework within the COCT as a whole in particularly the Diversity Equity department and the active participation in decision-making in the various structures of the City combines with their history of politics in the women&rsquo / s movement to augur well for continued gender sensitivity in policy formulation and outcome.</p>