Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / South Africa is undergoing a period of transition from Apartheid to democracy. In this process, redressing discriminatory factors (race and gender) is of utmost urgency and importance. The equity Act, and within this, affirmative action, are ways in which these isuses can be addressed. South Africa has undergone a process of dramatic change. Since the first democrataic election of 1994, notably so in the area of gender equity. This report examined female representivity in senior management within Drakenstein municipality in the Western Cape. The study evaluated employment barriers, which inhibits women from entering senior positions. The study also compared and analyzed past, present and future development, to evaluate the efforts that have been made to promote employment equity within local government. / South Africa

In 1979 the United Nations passed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), an international bill of rights for women. Much scholarship has focused on the degree to which states have adopted these new international gender norms, but have paid little attention to the fact that norms change in the processes of implementation. This dissertation focuses on that process assessing the translation of international gender equality norm in Lebanon. The study traces global gender equality norms as they are translated into a complex context characterized by a political structure that divides powers according to confessional groups, a social structure that empowers men as heads of families, and a geopolitical structure that opposes a secular West to the Muslim East. Through a comparison of three campaigns – the campaign to combat violence against women, the campaign to change personal status codes, and the campaign to give women equal rights to pass on their nationality – the study traces different ways in which norms are translated as activists negotiate the structures that make up the Lebanese context. Through ethnographic research, the process of norm translation was found to produce various filters, i.e., constellations of arguments put forward by activists as they seek to match international norms to the local context. The dissertation identifies six such filters and finds that these filters often have created faithless translations of international norms.

The overall aim of this master’s thesis is to increase our understanding about the framing of gender in EU’s development policies. To reflect to this aim, the thesis examines how gender is framed in EU’s development cooperation with Ethiopia in the governance sector. The EU is collectively the biggest donor for international aid in the world, while claiming to be “a global front-runner” in promoting gender equality as a key political objective of its external action. However, previous research has criticized the EU’s gender policies, explaining that gender is not mainstreamed in all the policies and that gender equality is often motivated on instrumentalist arguments. The previous research is however somewhat outdated, lacking the consideration of effects of the SDG’s and the improved gender equality policies by the EU. Previous studies are furthermore mostly concerned with country comparisons and therefore selecting one field of study and one country could shed light to matters that may have been left unnoticed in previous research. Therefore, based on previous research and theories focusing on gender equality and development, WID and GAD, this study analyses how the EU is framing gender. This study is designed as an in-depth case study which uses a frame analysis and interviews as a method to study the research question. The main findings of this study are that both references to WID and GAD framing of gender are actively used in EU’s development policies. Even though these approaches are contradictory in many ways they seem to be overlapping in several cases, presenting women as a vulnerable group that needs to be empowered. Arguments for WID approach include instrumentalist arguments, women seen ass add-ons’ to the development structures, women seen as a vulnerable and homogenized group and the effects of the girl effect. Arguments supporting GAD approach include women’s rights framing, patriarchal system framing, women’s empowerment framing and the social justice framing.

The purpose of this study is to see how the male and female gender are portrayed in the schoolbooks that the pupils daily meet in the Swedish and Indian school. The gender regime is what we find as a normal behavior for the two binary genders, meaning how we want them and how we expect them to be. Usually the men are seen as superior of women as men are looked at as strong and brave while women are looked at as weak and beautiful. India is not an equal country when it comes to gender, not if you compare it to Sweden, even though Sweden is not completely gender equal either. So how are the male and female portrayed in the Swedish and Indian schoolbooks? The method used for this schoolbook analysis is a multimodal text analysis used to analyze how boys and men as well as girls and women are represented in four schoolbooks from Sweden as well as from India.The results show us that males get a bigger part in the Indian schoolbooks than in the Swedish ones. We can see a big difference in the representation between boys and men as well as girls and women in the schoolbooks of Sweden and India. The Indian schoolbooks show a result were men take up three quarters of the pictures and four fifths of the main characters. We can see that grown women rarely get the main lead in the Indian schoolbooks. Instead the main parts go to young girls the few times that it happens. The Swedish schoolbooks show us how the stereotypical gender regime are sometimes followed, on the other hand the results show us a better result compared to India as the pictures and main characters are almost evenly distributed between men and women. / Syftet med den här studien är att se hur det manliga och kvinnliga framställs i de läromedel som eleverna dagligen kommer i kontakt med i den svenska och indiska skolan. Hur vi förväntar oss och vill att de två binära könen ska vara, vad som är ett normalt beteende, kallas genusregim. Enligt forskning ses män ofta som överordnande kvinnor då män ses som starka och modiga och kvinnor som svaga och vackra. Indien är inte ett jämställt land om man jämför med Sverige, trots att Sverige inte heller är helt jämställt ännu. Så hur framställs det manliga och kvinnliga i Sveriges och Indiens läromedel? I läromedelsanalysen används metoden multimodal textanalys för att analysera pojkar och män samt flickor och kvinnors framställning i fyra valda läromedel från Sverige respektive Indien. Resultaten visar att män får ta en betydligt större plats i de indiska läromedlen än i de svenska. Vi kan se en betydlig skillnad i framställningen av pojkar och män samt flickor och kvinnor i läromedlen i Sverige och Indien. I de indiska läromedlen syns ett resultat där män tar tre fjärdedelar av bilderna och fyra femtedelar av huvudrollerna. Vi kan även se att vuxna kvinnor sällan får ta stor plats i de indiska läromedlen, utan de få gånger det händer är det istället unga flickor som får huvudrollerna. I de svenska läromedlen kan vi i vissa fall se hur de stereotypiska könsmönstren följs, däremot ser vi ett bättre resultat jämfört med Indien då bilderna och huvudroller nästan fördelas jämt mellan män och kvinnor.

The Swedish police authority is an extended arm of the Swedish government. The government implements governmental policies for its authorities, aiming at sustaining and improving the safety and wellbeing of society. In Sweden, one of the main policy safeguards is gender equality, which has been the focus of this study. It builds upon a well-established regulatory system for the representation of women in leading positions and argues for the benefits associated with tackling certain equality challenges. Up until now, most of the scholarly contributions on organization management, in relation to governmental policy, have dealt with leadership power and its efficiency, rather than equality. This study showed that the contemporary application of governmental policy has an impact on organizational culture. Through policy, gender equality could be increased as it encompasses potential benefits associated with leadership and power distribution. The study showed that this is also the case for the police authorities in Sweden in which applying gender policies has implications for managers' decisions when these are used to make the organizational leadership structures more equal. The application of policies to allow gender equality has also implications for employees regarding their work performances when advancing up in hierarchies.

The aim with this case study was to do an intersectional, critical WPR (What’s the ‘problem’ represented to be) policy analysis of the Swedish governments preparatory work and government bill to achieve a more even distribution of parental leave between parents. In order to analyse the material, I used Carol Bacchi´s critical WPR approach to policy analysis. I critically examined how the preparatory work and government bill, that was later followed by the choice to introduce an additional reserved month for each parent, construct the ‘problem’, what presuppositions underlie the representation of the ‘problem’, what was left silenced and unproblematic and what effects and implications the representation of the ‘problem’ produces. Overall, the analysis showed that the problem is represented to be that the uneven distribution of parental leave is not gender-equal which could have negative effects for women. The underlying assumptions mainly focused on women, their participation in the labour market and other aspects that is connected to traditional gender norms and our doing of gender. Little, or non, attention has been put on intersectionality and therefore, something that is left unproblematic and silenced in the problem representation. The documents mainly talk about men and women, mothers and fathers which show that the preparatory work and the government bill did not adopt a clear intersectional approach and can, therefore, be at risk of being gendering and heteronorming in its effect.

Girls’ opportunity to attend and stay in school is a worldwide issue especially for secondary education predominantly experienced in Sub-Saharan Africa where poverty is particularly high. This issue is caused by gender inequality as most children who is not able to attend to school are female. This thesis investigates how the NGO Dandelion Africa attempts to tackle cultural obstacles for girls’ access to education in Kenya, where girls face a plethora of problems e.g. cultural norms. Through a qualitative case study comprising of online interviews with the staff, the data gathered presented the main initiatives that DA implement to improve girls’ access to education. The interviews are thematically analysed through combined theories; capability approach, cultural relativism, and feminist theory to examine the initiatives DA implements to provide girls with capabilities to gain access and completion of education defying cultural and societal norms e.g. preferences to boys, early pregnancy, menstrual stigma. The conclusion showed the need for all-inclusive development and education that teaches both children and parents about basic rights, gender equality and health.

This thesis concerns the recent debate about the so-called cover ban in Denmark, which has been known in media as the ‘burka ban’. The ban involves an illegalization of covering of the face that does not have a justifiable cause like weather conditions. Through a discourse analysis of media articles the aim of this thesis is to identify which arguments are represented in this debate. The material for the analysis is found in the two major Danish newspapers; Politiken and Berlingske. The analysis is inspired by the theories of Norman Fairclough. The theoretical framework of the thesis is centered on theories regarding gender equality and feminism, and the analysis focuses on the discourses of these topics that are reproduced in the debate. The results show how the discourse of gender equality is the most prominent in the debate, and it shows how this discourse is naturalized. Within this discourse, there is an element of liberation of women, and this liberation is presented as the goal for all women. Furthermore, only the majority has access to this discourse, and it is not possible for the minority to negotiate it in any way. I discuss how the debate can be seen as an expression of the discourse about Islam in Denmark in general, as well as how the ban can be seen in a context of objectification of the female body.

The purpose of this study is to look at how women are represented in neoliberal discourses of development, if there has been a change on representation of women over the last three decades and how these discourses reflect broader developments in gender equality. The World Bank has been selected to serve as an instance of neoliberal development discourse and one World Development Report (WDR) from each decade is analysed. The theoretical perspectives include discourse analysis and the three Western main approaches to feminist development theory; Women In Development (WID), Woman And Development (WAD) and Gender And Development (GAD); the methodology is related to critical discourse analysis. The analysis suggests that the Bank discourse on women has changed from a predominant WID approach in the end of the 90s where women were mainly depicted as passive and poor objects, and moved closer towards a GAD approach in the latest WDR that constructs women as empowered agents with aspirations. Despite changes in Bank language use over time, the underlying message has remained the same; women are discursively framed as a means to enhance economic efficiency. The discursive changes in the analysed WDRs have to a large extent followed the global developments on discourses on women and gender equality, of which the Bank itself is a key influencer. The discursive construction of women in development, structured around efficiency and economic growth thus sustains, rather than challenges, the hegemonic power structures that sustain gender inequalities. The practical consequences of the current development discourse of constructing women as economic actors without addressing the root causes to their subordination will most likely translate into an increase in the workload of women on the ground while gender inequality and poverty continue to exist.

South African law allows minors under the age of 18 to get married, under certain conditions. The minimum age at which a minor may enter into marriage under both civil and customary law is 12-17 for girls, and 14-17 for boys. The focus of this paper is not the practice of child marriage, nor measures aimed at combating child marriage, and recommends that South Africa set the age of marriage at 18 for both sexes without exceptions. However, until South Africa changes its laws, boys and girls will continue being treated differently under existing marriage legislation. This mini-dissertation is concerned with whether different minimum ages of marriage for minors contributes to the systemic discrimination that women and girls face in South Africa, and whether this violates the rights of girls to be treated equally to boys. The paper looks at the role of culture and gender stereotypes in the formation of marriage legislation, as well as the societal effects of the current legislation. / Mini Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Centre for Human Rights / MPhil Multidisciplinary Human Rights / Unrestricted