White women's long 'work' to freedom : an analysis of the inconsistencies surrounding the inclusion of white women in affirmative action

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Since 1994 the new ANC led South African Government has introduced a number ofpolicies that have been aimed at promoting equality in all spheres of life including theemployment sector. Forming an important part of these policies has been theupliftment of women who were severely discriminated against under the formerApartheid government. But in recent years uncertainty has risen over whether whitewomen should be included in these upliftment policies.The research problem this thesis tries to address consists of two related problems.Firstly inconsistency seems to exist between the government's two differentupliftment policies namely Affirmative Action and Transformation with regards to theinclusion of white women. The second problem is that inconsistency exists betweenpeople's opinions over whether white women should be included in policies aimed atpromoting equality in the employment sector.This thesis used both qualitative and quantitative methods to address the researchproblem. With regards to the first problem this thesis studied Affirmative Actionlegislation the most important being the Employment Equity Act as wellgovernment's Transformation policies the most important being the Black EconomicEmpowerment Act in order to identify the inconsistencies that exist between the two.In order to address the second problem this thesis studies the qualitative arguments ofacademics for and against the inclusion of white women in Affirmative action. Twocase studies are also included which identify the experiences of African and whitewomen in the employment sector under Affirmative Action. Once this is done thisthesis moves onto a quantitative method of measurment by study the results of theMarkinor M-Bus survey conducted in 2004 in order to identify the opinions of thegeneral South African population with regards to the inclusion of white women inAffirmative Action.The results of the M-Bus survey is also used to test the hypotheses introduced in thisthesis. These hypotheses aim at identifying whether demographic variables affectSouth African's opinions on the inclusion of white women in Affirmative Action. Sixdemographic variables were studied namely race, gender, political party support,education, income and age.This thesis clearly finds that Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowermentdo not correspond with each other with regards to the inclusion of white women inAffirmative Action. While this thesis identifies that tension exists between academicssupporting the inclusion of white women in Affirmative Action and those opposing it,it argues that it is difficult to discem which group is right especially when this thesistries to maintain an objective position. After studying the results of the M-Bus surveythis thesis finds that overall the general South African population is seen to oppose theinclusion of white women in Affirmative Action.After testing the hypotheses this thesis also finds that age and gender do not affectSouth African's opinions with regards to the inclusion of white women in AffirmativeAction. They therefore do not play the role of independent variables. Education,income, political party support and race are found to play the role of independentvariables. This thesis argues that these four demographic variables are all componentsforming a larger composite independent variable in the study. This thesis also arguesthat some of these demographic variables may play the role of more significantindependent variables than others. Race is argued as being possibly the mostsignificant independent variable within this composite independent variable affectingincome, political party and education. It is also seen to affect gender and age.Education is also argued by this thesis as possibly being a more signi ficantindependent variable than income and political party support.This thesis concludes by arguing that education could possibly replace race in thefuture as the most significant independent variable which affects the opinions ofSouth Africans with regards to the inclusion of white women in Affirmative Action.This would have a positive affect it could narrow the racial cleavage existing betweenrace groups in South Africa today. This thesis also concludes by arguing that theinconsistency that exists between Affirmative Action and the Government'sTransformation policies as well as the polarization of opinions between SouthAfricans with regards to the inclusion of white women in Affirmative Action has anegative affect on democratic consolidation.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University