Search Results (13)

Eurocentric portrayals of Africa remain entrenched in European educational systems, perpetuating stereotypes of poverty, primitiveness, and exoticism. This study investigates how such representations are mirrored in German students’ mental conceptions and how they are interpreted by future educators. Using an interpretivist qualitative design, the study analyzes open-ended responses from 41 Grade 5 and 7 pupils at a lower secondary school in Münster, Germany, and written reflections from 17 teacher trainees enrolled in a master’s course in geography education. Thematic analysis reveals five dominant pupil schemas: poverty and deprivation, environmental determinism, racialization and othering, infrastructural deficit, and the wildlife-tourism gaze, rooted in media, textbooks, teachers, and social networks. Teacher trainees’ reflections ranged from emotional discomfort to critical awareness, with many advocating pedagogical pluralism, the normalization of African modernity, and the cultivation of critical consciousness. However, most proposals remained reformist, lacking a deep epistemological critique. The findings highlight the urgency of integrating decolonial theory, postcolonial critique, and epistemic justice into teacher education. Without such structural reorientation, schools will risk reproducing the very global hierarchies they purport to challenge. Full article

Participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields is crucial, as these fields present an opportunity for individuals to overcome socio-economic adversities such as unemployment and poverty. In South Africa, access to STEM education has improved in recent years, partly due to the availability of study grants for learners interested in these fields. However, evidence shows that women remain underrepresented in STEM fields. Gender stereotypes, bullying, and pay disparities are cited as some of the contributing factors. Despite these overwhelming challenges, female learners are increasingly pursuing STEM education. Guided by the resilience theory, we explored the factors motivating female learners to enroll in STEM fields at a public secondary school level in South Africa. The research adopted the snowball sampling technique to recruit learners attending a public secondary school in South Africa. Due to COVID-19-related restrictions in 2022, the research data was collected through telephonic one-on-one interviews. The findings revealed that access to competitive employment opportunities, impactful careers, personal growth, and financial independence were some factors sparking the female learners’ interest in STEM. However, the learners experienced gender stereotypes and discrimination, which made them doubt their abilities to thrive in STEM education/fields. To cope with the complexities of STEM, the learners relied on their caregivers for emotional support, and they attended extra lessons and tutorials offered by the education system. The findings highlight the need for the government to prioritize support programs for female learners who must continuously fight rejection in STEM fields. Full article

Over the past few decades, numerous efforts have been made to increase the proportion of women in the construction industry, coupled with various calls for legislation and rules to prohibit gender discrimination. Despite these efforts, minimal progress has been noticed in the construction industry. While recruitment remains crucial, the current culture in construction reveals a knowledge gap in recruitment and retention in employment—a concept known as a ‘leaky pipeline’. Lack of awareness of career options and the challenges of working in a male-dominated, occasionally discriminatory workplace are some of the significant barriers to attracting and keeping women in the construction industry. Much of the research in South Africa shows that most construction companies employed few women but only in lower secretarial and administrative positions. Therefore, this study investigated the barriers facing women’s entry and retention in construction-related employment in South Africa using fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) to understand and prioritise the barriers. Data were collected through the administration of online and paper-based questionnaires. The results of the analysis show that the barriers in the order of criticality include support and empowerment issues (SEs), educational/academic-related barriers (ABs), barriers from professional conditions and work attributes (BPs), social perception and gender stereotype barriers (SPs), professional perceptions and gender bias (PP), and individual confidence/interest/awareness/circumstance-related barriers (IBs), respectively. Based on the findings of the study, several recommendations, including on-the-job tutoring and flexible work arrangements, amongst others, were provided. Full article

Background: Gender-based violence (GBV) remains a significant and entrenched issue affecting various aspects of daily life. Entrenched within South African institutions, cultures, and traditions, GBV disproportionately impacts women and girls, exacerbated by prevailing gender stereotypes and biases. Despite South Africa’s reputation as one of the most difficult countries for women, this assertion is debatable. This study aimed to delve into the firsthand experiences of GBV victims during the COVID-19 lockdown in Region F of Gauteng Province, South Africa. Methods: A qualitative approach and interpretative phenomenological design were used. The setting of the study was a non-governmental organization in Region F of Gauteng Province. The population of women aged 18 to 49 who encountered GBV during the lockdown was sampled. Twelve participants were interviewed through face-to-face unstructured interviews guided by a central question. Thematic analysis was employed to scrutinize the data and ethical protocols and trustworthiness were meticulously observed throughout the study. Results: Findings revealed that GBV victims during the lockdown encountered various challenges, including limited access to transportation, financial constraints, poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, and inadequate welfare services, contributing to heightened suicidal tendencies. Recommendations were formulated based on the research findings. Full article

Throughout the history of management theories, masculine ideals have dominated the development of organisational leadership structures, often leading to a belief in the inherent superiority of men in leadership roles. Despite progress, many organisations still operate under the assumption that women are somehow deficient compared to men in leadership capabilities. The research objective was to investigate the difficulties Black African women encounter in leadership positions in Kenyan and South African banks, specifically concerning how society views women in leadership roles. The study conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups involving 41 Black African women managers from the banking sectors of both countries, employing an inter-categorical intersectionality approach. The research revealed a perceived lack of fit for top executive leadership positions among African-Black women. A comparison between masculine and feminine leadership styles underscored the gendered sex-role stereotypes that hindered the advancement of Black African women into top executive roles within the banking sector. In summary, the findings emphasise that, as long as ‘think manager, think male’ persists in leadership, Black African women will continue to encounter obstacles in attaining top executive positions within the banking sectors of Kenya and South Africa. The study’s practical implications are that it emphasises the understanding of women and leadership and its role as an obstacle for Black women managers in the Kenyan and South African banking sectors. The originality of this study is that it contributes to the understanding of women and leadership literature in the banking sectors of Kenya and South Africa, as well as sub-Saharan African countries. Full article

This essay is based on a case study of international medical graduates (IMGs) in Canada who migrated from sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter examines how narratives of race are situated and deployed in the field of medicine and can produce some aversive social–psychological landscapes in the credentialing and the professional-entry process as it relates to persons of African descent. It will show that, often without predetermination or intent, professionals of African descent in Canada are highly susceptible to implicit racial associations and implicit racial stereotyping in relation to evaluations of character, credentials, and culture. The article exposes some of the critical intersections of common experience, such as: (a) cultural deficit bias—Whiteness as an institutionalized cultural capital attribute; (b) confirmation bias—reaching a negative conclusion and working backwards to find evidence to support it; (c) repurposed sub-Saharan Blackness stereotypes—binary forms of techno-scamming and fraud; and (d) biased deception judgement—where the accuracy of deception judgements deteriorates when made across cultures. These social psychological phenomena result in significantly disproportionate returns on their foreign education and labour market experience for Black medical professionals that require decisive efforts in changing the narratives. Full article

Scholars examining racial stereotyping and prejudice in racially organised social systems have largely focused on how non-White ethnic and racial groups experience racial stereotyping in White-majority national contexts such as the US, Australia and European countries. There is only scant scholarship on experiences of ethno-racial communities in Black-majority countries such as South Africa, a country where Whites are a minority. Even though there is ample scholarly work on racial stereotyping of racial groups in South Africa such as Coloured people, much of it is focused on their experiences during colonial and Apartheid eras. Little is understood about how Coloured people experience racial stigmatisation in post-Apartheid South Africa. This paper addresses this gap. Based on interviews with fourteen Coloured participants from Westbury, Johannesburg, this study found that many interviewees claimed that Coloured South Africans were negatively racially stereotyped as people who use drugs, as aggressive and violent people, as alcoholics and as criminals. Many participants also resisted and countered the negative stereotypes by talking about Coloured people in positive ways, which shows their agency. The negative stereotyping of Coloured people which prevailed during colonial and Apartheid times is still deployed by society to describe Coloured people in post-Apartheid South Africa. To capture the continuity of negative stereotyping in South Africa about Coloured people, I developed the analytical term of ‘perpetual racial stereotyping’. Many decades after the end of the Apartheid system, negative racial stereotyping of Coloured South Africans still continues in everyday life, and Coloured people are still associated with racist prejudices, narratives, discourses and stereotypes that were invented many decades ago by settler colonialism and Apartheid. Full article

Despite the government’s call for students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the gender gap in STEM education is still of significant concern in South Africa. This study aimed to describe different push-pull factors that influenced male and female students when choosing STEM education at the TVET college level. This study used qualitative research methods and focus-group interviews with a sample of 20 students studying at a TVET college in a rural part of the Limpopo province. In addition, a thematic analysis was used to analyse the data collected. The study revealed that the following factors: lucrative salary, graduate unemployment rate, aptitude for mathematics and science, parental education and autonomy and independence, and rejecting stereotypical feminine identities were push-pull factors that influenced both male and female TVET college students to choose STEM education. The policy implication of this study is that an Afrocentric approach should be infused into the teaching and learning of STEM at TVET colleges. Full article

After decades of political, economic, and scientific efforts, humanity has not gotten any closer to global sustainability. With less than a decade to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deadline of the 2030 Agenda, we show that global development agendas may be getting lost in translation, from their initial formulation to their final implementation. Sustainability science does not “speak” most of the 2000 languages from Africa, where the lack of indigenous terminology hinders global efforts such as the COVID-19 pandemic fight. Sociolinguistics, social psychology, cognitive ergonomics, geography, environmental sciences, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all relevant disciplinary fields to uncover the “foreign language effect” that hinders the implementation of the SDGs in Africa. We make the case for detecting and addressing language barriers towards multilingual sustainability in Africa by (1) exploring the ”foreign language effect” among African decision-makers and recognising their alternative social representations about sustainability; and (2) detecting Western language stereotypes about sustainability. We propose rethinking SDG-related scientific notions through participatory natural language processing (NLP) and the study of African social representations of sustainability, thus enabling a more inclusive and efficient approach to “sustainability(ies)”. Full article

South Africa has about 2.5 million households without electricity access, most of which are located in rural areas and urban informal settlements. The nexus of energy poverty and gender is at play in the affected communities, as women and girls are culturally stereotyped with the task of collecting unclean fuels (e.g., firewood) and using these for their households’ energy demands. Therefore, this study prioritized rural women and girls as respondents in the provinces most affected by gendered energy poverty (GEP) in the country. The study was carried out in selected rural unelectrified areas of Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and KwaZulu-Natal provinces using structured interviews. The study revealed that GEP in the rural areas has exposed women and girls living there to security concerns, health hazards, premature death, domestic fire accidents, time poverty, income poverty, illiteracy, drudgery in households and farm tasks, etc., at different levels of severity. It also showed the effects of perceptions, age, income, and culture on the choice of energy use among the respondents. Mitigation strategies against GEP in rural South African communities through clean energy adoption are also proposed in this paper. Full article

The peripheral role of divination in religious studies reflects centuries of misrepresentation and depreciation in the textual record. This long history dates back to the travel literature of early modern times, particularly in West Africa, where two stereotypical themes took form: divination as mumbo jumbo, and the diviners as charlatans who shamelessly deceive their credulous clients. These two stereotypical themes persisted through the anthropological discourse about African divination until the 1970s. To undo this long history of misrepresentation and depreciation, a change of analytical focus from reified differences to similar engagement with broad ideas and big questions is in order. By considering a particular case study—basket divination in northwest Zambia—through the theoretical lens of worldviews and ways of life, it becomes possible to take divination seriously and grant it a more central place in religious studies. Four broad, inclusive ideas or big questions emerge from the ethnography of basket divination in northwest Zambia: ontology, epistemology, praxeology, and the place of suffering in human existence. Full article

In this paper, we use a qualitative reflexive approach to understand the dynamics of Chinese migrant perceptions of Africans upon arrival in Africa and the changes in their views upon returning to China. The research is based on in-depth, semi-structured field interviews with Chinese workers and managers in Mozambique and South Africa, as well as interviews with returning migrants to China, carried out in Beijing. Thus, we are able to gauge the learning experience that occurs and how the underlying Confucian philosophy that has been embraced by the Chinese polity manifests such changes in perception. The research suggests that there is a positive learning process which occurs through the migrants’ experience and underlying racial stereotypes of Chinese regarding Africans are eroded. Confucian framing of China’s role in Africa is also mitigated towards a more hybridized view of African cultures and societies that reflects to adaptive propensities of contemporary Chinese society. Full article

Many orphaned chimpanzees whose mothers are illegally killed for their meat (bushmeat) in Africa are sold as pets or kept caged at hotels and businesses to attract tourists. As a result of being separated from their mothers and other chimpanzees at an early age, and spending years in impoverished captive conditions, some of these individuals engage in abnormal behaviors, including stereotypically scratching at their flesh and repetitively rocking back and forth. This paper presents case studies of Poco and Safari, two chimpanzees who were rescued by sanctuaries after living alone on display for humans at businesses for the first 7 to 8 years of their lives. Decades after their rescue, they still engage in stereotypical behaviors as a result of the psychological and physical trauma they endured early on. This paper combines data from in depth interviews with caregivers and direct observations of abnormal behaviors to assess psychological distress in captive-living chimpanzees. Our results highlight some lesser known harms of the bushmeat trade and the detrimental life-long consequences that keeping chimpanzees as “pets” can have on their mental health. Full article