Investigating women's participation in protest politics between 1991 and 2001

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT:The involvement of women in both conventional and unconventional forms of politicalparticipation in South Africa has over the past 10 years, and often at present, beenexperienced as problematic and limited. Exacerbating the problem of limited access andinformation, the study of, and literature about, women's participation in unconventionalforms of politics have also been limited. It is the aim of this study to contribute to ourknowledge in this area.This study investigates women's participation in unconventional politics between 1991and 2001. This period is specifically important, as it makes possible the examination oftrends in women's political participation before and after the democratic transition in1994. This makes it possible for us to speculate about the influence of transition onwomen's political participation.I propose and evaluate two mam hypotheses in which I; firstly, expect women'sparticipation in protest politics to decrease between 1991 and 2001, and secondly, expectto find women's levels of participation in protest to be consistently lower than that oftheir male counterparts. The complex set of variables influencing women's participationis evaluated according to the socialization and structural approaches, which offerdifferent assumptions about the reasons for the trends in women's participation.In conclusion, I offer the main findings of my research, as well as suggesting possibleareas still to be investigated within the field, as deduced from the questions arising out ofmy analysis in this project.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University