Gender, poverty and inequality: exploration from a transformative perspective

Abstract

International Women???s Month (March) is a reminder of how women have been engaged in the struggles for emancipation throughout the world. In South Africa, the month of August was also set aside as Women???s Month to mark that fateful day on 9 August when over 20,000 women marched to the Union Building in Pretoria to protest against the 1950 Pass Laws. They sang and chanted the now-familiar slogan Wathint??? Abafazi wa thint??? imbokodo (literally translated from isiZulu to mean: ???if you strike women, you strike a rock or grindstone). In 1966, the anti-apartheid South African liberation icon, the late Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela, also declared: ???To those who oppose us, we say, ???Strike the woman, and you strike the rock??????. It is against this background that we will first situate the concepts of poverty and inequality before examining some of the methodological approaches and their limitations. It is in this light that we draw some tentative conclusions that enable us to introduce the contributions to this Special Issue. These contributions take stock of the progress that has been made in terms of gender, poverty and inequality, provide a portrayal of women that interrogates class, ethnicity, race and other categories besides, and envision the future