Agriculture plays a significant role in South Africa’s export earning and in providing employment opportunities. Amongst the major agricultural crops is citrus. Within the context of postmodern and feminist geographies and utilizing the intensive research design, this thesis discusses citrus production with a focus on growers and black women workers in the Kat River Valley area in Fort Beaufort, Eastern Cape. The thesis also explores the challenges and implications of restructuring within agriculture for growers, cooperatives and labour within the citrus industry. It is argued that whilst legislation related to labour and tenure within agriculture has changed since the mid-1990s, power relations in the citrus industry have remained firmly entrenched. Consequently, the flexible labour strategies that the citrus farmers adopted have had serious consequences for women worker

In modern South African society, many women have overcome traditional notions of gender by becoming breadwinners in their homes and providing primary financial support for their families. Employing a Phenomenological Feminist viewpoint, this dissertation contextualises the meaning that South African female breadwinners (FBW) ascribe to their experiences within their lived environment, utilising data collected from in-depth, unstructured interviews with FBW from the Mpumalanga and Gauteng provinces. While taking into consideration their intersectional experiences of gender, race, as well as cultural and traditional societal pressures, this study represents these womens’ voices in order to understand how they make meaning of and negotiate their spaces and roles as breadwinners. In the course of interviews and analysis, the realities faced by FBW revealed experiences, individual and communal, shared and unique, which expose archaic divisions of gender within our society, which have been hiding behind constructions of reform advocating equality among the sexes. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

In modern South African society, many women have overcome traditional notions of gender by becoming breadwinners in their homes and providing primary financial support for their families. Employing a Phenomenological Feminist viewpoint, this dissertation contextualises the meaning that South African female breadwinners (FBW) ascribe to their experiences within their lived environment, utilising data collected from in-depth, unstructured interviews with FBW from the Mpumalanga and Gauteng provinces. While taking into consideration their intersectional experiences of gender, race, as well as cultural and traditional societal pressures, this study represents these womens’ voices in order to understand how they make meaning of and negotiate their spaces and roles as breadwinners. In the course of interviews and analysis, the realities faced by FBW revealed experiences, individual and communal, shared and unique, which expose archaic divisions of gender within our society, which have been hiding behind constructions of reform advocating equality among the sexes. / Psychology / M. A. (Psychology)