Ending Gender-Based Violence: Justice and Community in South Africa - Hardcover

Britton, Hannah E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 025204309X ISBN 13: 9780252043093

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2020

Synopsis

South African women's still-increasing presence in local, provincial, and national institutions has inspired sweeping legislation aimed at advancing women's rights and opportunity. Yet the country remains plagued by sexual assault, rape, and intimate partner violence.

Hannah E. Britton examines the reasons gendered violence persists in relationship to social inequalities even after women assume political power. Venturing into South African communities, Britton invites service providers, religious and traditional leaders, police officers, and medical professionals to address gender-based violence in their own words. Britton finds the recent turn toward carceral solutions—with a focus on arrests and prosecutions—fails to address the complexities of the problem and looks at how changing specific community dynamics can defuse interpersonal violence. She also examines how place and space affect the implementation of policy and suggests practical ways policymakers can support street level workers.

Clear-eyed and revealing, Ending Gender-Based Violence offers needed tools for breaking cycles of brutality and inequality around the world.

About this title

About the Author

Hannah E. Britton is a professor of political science and women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Women in the South African Parliament: From Resistance to Governance  and co-editor of Women's Activism in South Africa: Working across Divides.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 025204309X
• ISBN 13: 9780252043093
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232