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Bringing Back the Heart THE TRANSFORMATION OF WORK: CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES Bringing Back the Heart: The Gender at Work Action Learning Process with Four South African Trade Unions The Transformation of Work research series is produced by the Solidarity Center to expand scholarship on and understanding of issues facing workers in an increasingly globalized world. The series is a product of the Solidarity Center’s USAID-funded Global Labor Program, which supports the efforts of the Solidarity Center and its consortium partners—the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)—to document challenges to decent work and the strategies workers and their organizations engage to overcome those challenges. This report was made possible through support provided by the Office of Democracy and Governance, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, U.S. Agency for International Development, under the terms of Award No. AID-OAA-L-11-00001. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Any errors found in the research are the author’s own. © 2013 Solidarity Center Bringing Back the Heart: The Gender at Work Action Learning Process with Four South African Trade Unions Authorship and Acknowledgements The Solidarity Center commissioned this report in 2012 to explore the Gender at Work approach as it furthered gender equality objectives with four labor unions in South Africa. Michel Friedman, manager of the Gender at Work South Africa Program and Gender at Work facilitator/mentor, wrote the introductory chapter and the case study on Sikhula Sonke. Nina Benjamin, Labour Research Service gender coordinator and Gender at Work facilitator/mentor, wrote the case studies on the Building, Construction and Allied Workers Union (BCAWU) and the Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (HOSPERSA). Shamim Meer, facilitator of Gender at Work knowledge management in 2005-2006 and facilitator of writing processes in 2010-2011, wrote the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU) case study. She also led the team in writing the concluding chapter and edited the report. Michel Friedman managed and coordinated the process of developing the case studies. Michel would like to acknowledge and thank Gender at Work colleagues who have been important in influencing her thinking and practice—Aruna Rao, David Kelleher, Ray Gordezky, Srilatha Batliwala and Gender at Work facilitators and documentalists who have worked on these different processes: Makhosazana Xaba, Lungisa Huna, Nina Benjamin, Fazila Gany, Celeste Fortuin, Shamim Meer, Maia Marie, Daniela Prado- Castro, Susan Holland-Muter, Nosipho Twala and Kwezilomso Mbandazayo. September 2013 2 CONTENTS 1. Gender at Work Action Learning Program as an Approach to Furthering Gender Equality Page 4 2. SACCAWU Case Study: Bringing Gender Equality to the Center of Union Work Page 14 3. Sikhula Sonke Case Study: Challenging Deep-rooted and Pervasive Exploitation and Internalized Oppression Page 34 4. BCAWU and HOSPERSA Case Studies Page 58 Critical Reflection and Action for Gender Equality 5. Conclusion: What Can We Learn from Gender at Work’s Experiences with Trade Unions? Page 84 3 Chapter 1 Gender at Work Action Learning Program as an Approach to Furthering Gender Equality Gender at Work partners with organizations around the world that have recognized the limits of traditional gender mainstreaming approaches1 and are seeking alternatives. The Gender at Work approach promotes women’s empowerment and gender equality through addressing institutional norms and rules (stated and implicit) that maintain women’s unequal position in societies.2 These institutional rules determine who gets what, what counts, who does what and who decides. They include values that maintain the gendered division of labor, prohibitions on women owning land, restrictions on women’s mobility and perhaps most fundamentally, the devaluing of reproductive work. Institutional rules are lived out through organizations which are the social structures that exist in any society. Through the Gender Action Learning Process (GALP), we attempt to combine feminist thinking and practice with insights from organizational development to build internal cultures of equality and contribute to the transformation of cultural norms that support achieving gender equality and social justice. Since the formation of Gender at Work in the 1990s, we have worked with a range of organizations, including international development groups, labor unions, governments, women’s networks and community based organizations in India, Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. Our work with labor unions is specific to South Africa and was facilitated by our partnership with the Labour Research Services, a labor support organization based in Cape Town. This set of case studies explores Gender at Work’s approach to furthering gender equality objectives within four trade unions participating in the Gender at Work South Africa Gender Action Learning Program: the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU); Sikhula Sonke; Building, Construction and Allied Workers Union (BCAWU) and Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (HOSPERSA). In this chapter, we describe the Gender at Work Action Learning Process (GALP), its underlying assumptions about change and its methodology. In chapters two through to five, we discuss how the four trade unions engaged in this process, we explore what worked well and we examine the factors that led to advancing gender equality in these four trade unions. In the final chapter, we pull together key reflections on the Gender at Work Action Learning Process in the context of trade union struggles to advance worker rights. 1 Rao and Kelleher (eds.), Gender at Work: Organisational Change for Equality, Kumarian Press, 1999, http://www.genderatwork.org/sites/genderatwork.org/files/resources/GAW_REDUCE_2-3_0.pdf (accessed on May 20, 2013); Kelleher and Rao: 2005, “Is There Life after Gender Mainstreaming?” in Gender and Development, Vol. 13, No. 2, July 2005; http://www.genderatwork.org/sites/genderatwork.org/files/resources/gaw_is_there_life_after_gender_mainstreaming.pdf (accessed on May 20, 2013); Mukhopadhyay, Maitrayee, Gerard Steehouwer and Franz Wong, Politics of the Possible: Gender and Organizational Change Experiences from the Field, Oxfam, 2006. 2 Kelleher and Rao, “What Is Gender at Work’s Approach to Gender Equality and Institutional Change?” n.d., http://www.genderatwork.org/article/what-is-gender-at-work-s-approach-to-gender-equality-and-institutional-change (accessed on May 20, 2013). 4 Gender at Work Approach in South Africa The Southern African region emerges from a history of colonialism, apartheid, uneven development, massive inequality between rich and poor and significant wars of liberation in which many women were active members. In the post-apartheid era, South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. Some 40 percent of parliamentarians are women, many women hold senior positions in government, and numerous policies and a plethora of institutional structures support gender equality, including the National Commission for Gender Equality. At the same time, South Africa has one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world; high rates of HIV infection, particularly among low-income women; and the euphemistically termed “hate crimes” in which gay and transsexual-identified people, and particularly lesbian-identified women, are murdered because of their sexual orientation. The social and economic conditions of the region stemming from war, political and economic developments and environmental crises have traumatized many people. In turn, these conditions have resulted in dire consequences for cultural change and have made it difficult to harness energy to engage in relationships in new ways. As Nicaraguan social psychologist Martha Cabrera3 has noted: “Personal change is key to organizational processes. There can be no social change without personal change, because one is forced to fight every day to achieve that change ... Reconstructing the sense of our national and personal histories is a path to understanding that there is meaning in what we are and what we have lived through despite everything, and this is what allows us to go forward in life. But going forward is only possible if people can find new energy … We begin to reconstruct both the social fabric and ourselves insofar as we allow ourselves to work through our personal history and open ourselves up to this possibility. So many projects have the stated goal of ‘reconstructing the social fabric,’ but who reconstructs a society’s fabric? People do. So first we have to reconstruct people. This recognition should lead us to analyze the development model we are proposing in our projects. Are they really people- centered projects?” In light of the South African context, and with the understanding that gender inequality is always interwoven with other inequalities (such as class and race) and embodied in people’s daily lives and practices, Gender at Work has deliberately searched out methods for working with individuals and organizations to increase agency and facilitate hope and the possibility of new ways of thinking, seeing and being. Our work is designed to encourage and support sustained
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