“You strike a woman, you strike a rock”. This powerful phrase was chanted by brave South African women of all races who, in 1956, refused to accept plans to extend the apartheid era pass laws to women.
When one considers what it means to literally strike a rock, the most immediate image that comes to mind is one of self-inflicted pain. This symbolism is powerful — the collective societal striking of women (oppression) inevitably results in the infliction of pain to the whole. Gendered discrimination not only severely impacts the lived reality of women but stifles the development and progress of society as a whole.
South Africa is a nation plagued by gendered discrimination which manifests in many ways, most notably as violence against women. National Women’s Day — 9 August — and Women’s Month serve to remind us of the power of resistance.
The significance of approximately 20 000 women marching to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest the apartheid-era pass laws cannot be underestimated and each year the month of August presents yet another opportunity to reflect on our role as individuals in resisting gendered discrimination. In resisting, however, it is vital to acknowledge the influence of harmful socio-cultural norms in maintaining institutional and economic systems of gendered discrimination.
Socio-cultural norms persist through the process of socialisation. Socialisation is a natural human phenomenon where norms and values are transmitted within society. It shapes the way in which we think about our place and role in society.
Gender socialisation refers to the internalised norms, rules and stereotypes dictating the place of women and the way women ought to behave. These socio-cultural norms are often harmful to women and undermine their rights and freedoms as guaranteed in law.
Indeed, women’s humanity and dignity has long been undermined in favour of normalised, harmful narratives. Every individual has a vital role to play in questioning and resisting such narratives, assumptions, biases and stereotypes about women that are simply accepted as truth. In this process of resistance, narratives are modified in favour of those reflecting the equal humanity of women — a process I call resocialisation.
In a 2019 Constitutional Court judgment relating to rape, Acting Justice Margie Victor made this insightful remark: “Our jurisprudence in the context of rape has moved in an inexorable direction consonant with our constitutional norms and values. There is, however, still a lot of work to be done. It is a method of conscientisation of gender inequalities in society and the commencement of raising questions that could influence thought and societal practices.”
Victor’s remark is a form of resistance. Indeed, it is a call for resocialisation.
International and African regional human rights law obligates member states to modify the root causes of gendered discrimination. The need for resocialisation, therefore, was clear to the drafters of the law from the very outset. Change to the lived realities of women requires a transformation of society, which can only come about if we resist and modify normalised conceptions of the role and value of women in society.
The “foreplay” judgment provides an example of the power that harmful socio-cultural norms and stereotypes have on the rights of women. In this case, the Eastern Cape high court acquitted an accused of rape on the basis of rape myths and stereotypes — that consent to one aspect of sexual encounter is consent to sexual intercourse, that consent cannot be revoked and that rape is characterised by force and coercion.
Fortunately, the supreme court of appeal came to a different conclusion, one that challenged such rape myths and stereotypes. Indeed, the court noted that allowing the high court judgment to stand not only impedes the realisation of gender equality but “would also entrench patriarchal attitudes, stereotypes and mindsets that the rights of women and children, in particular, to their dignity and physical integrity, count for little and can therefore be gratuitously violated with impunity”.
The supreme court’s decision thus resists (and condemns) gendered discrimination and the perpetuation of normalised socio-cultural norms.
The Embrace Project’s application challenging the constitutionality of rape and consent definitions in the Sexual Offences Act is another example of the influence that harmful socio-cultural norms and stereotypes have on the rights of women.
The basis of this application is that, as the law currently stands, an alleged rapist may be acquitted where there was a belief, regardless of the reasonableness of that belief, that consent to a sexual encounter was given. The burden of proving that consent was not given is placed on victims. As the Embrace Project notes, this is a “legislative endorsement and entrenchment of patriarchal beliefs and male sexual entitlement when a defence of rape may be based on an accused person’s subjective sexist beliefs”.
South Africa, as a party to both the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Maputo Protocol, is obliged to give effect to its resocialisation obligations, as guaranteed by these instruments. The constitutional challenge brought by the Embrace Project demonstrates the importance of active resistance to harmful socio-cultural norms and narratives, such as male entitlement to women’s bodies, and the legal imperative of resocialisation.
While the above examples demonstrate the impacts of harmful socio-cultural norms on the rights of women within the context of violence against women, it is important to remain mindful that discrimination against women manifests in many other ways. For instance, the gender pay gap, sexual harassment, unequal care load on women, the exclusion of women from historically male-dominated spaces and the motherhood penalty, among many others. These forms of discrimination are considered less serious manifestations of gender inequality, often escaping scrutiny.
However, overlooking these other practices only serves to further normalise them and entrenches the underlying socio-cultural narratives that continue to relegate women to positions of inferiority. Where discrimination is viewed exclusively through the lens of the most extreme and egregious violations of women’s rights such as femicide, child marriages and female genital mutilation, for example, individual responsibility for resisting gendered oppression becomes an elusive concept.
Questioning harmful socio-cultural norms that act as justification for discrimination against women is a powerful form of resistance. Everyone plays a significant role — either as upholders or as modifiers of such norms. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Maputo Protocol, through resocialisation provisions, confirm faith in the capacity of society to alter its conceptions about women. Indeed, societal capacity exists to emulate the courage displayed by the very women who marched to the Union Buildings to resist oppression.
The process of resocialisation — the questioning, dismantling and replacing of harmful narratives about women with human rights-centred narratives — is something we are all capable of and duty-bound to engage in. Failure to do so will maintain systems of gendered oppression that have inevitable consequences for society as a whole.
Dr Anisa Mahmoudi is a postdoctoral fellow at the HF Oppenheimer Chair in Human Rights in the Department of Public Law at Stellenbosch University.
