Dependency, Paternalism and Financial Control of Women on South African Wine Farms
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/10874Keywords:
global production networks, wine farms, paternalism, financial control, reproductive labourAbstract
This study examined the experiences of women farmworkers on South African wine farms, which have a troubling history of paternalism and dependency. This article discusses the enactment of patriarchal norms on South African wine farms today, especially concerning women of colour. Our qualitative study draws on the experiences of 30 farmworkers on five wine farms in the Western Cape. We argue that the women on these farms are reduced to the most exploited participants in the production network and that their exploitation and dependency subsidise the functioning of farm production networks. Our study finds that farms are able to secure the reproductive and casual labour of women through their dependency on men as their partners and farmers, with their partners sometimes acting as informal labour brokers. Increased labour casualisation on wine farms places women at risk, exposing them to the danger of financial control and abuse. We conclude that current norms and practices on South African wine farms rely on the continued oppression of women farmworkers.
References
Addison, L. 2014a. “The Sexual Economy, Gender Relations and Narratives of Infant Death on a Tomato Farm in Northern South Africa.” Journal of Agrarian Change 14 (1): 74–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12008.
Addison, L. 2014b. “Delegated Despotism: Frontiers of Agrarian Labour on a South African Border Farm.” In “Agrarian Lineages of Paternalism,” edited by P. Gibbon, B. Daviron and S. Barral, special issue, Journal of Agrarian Change 14 (2): 286–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12062.
Akinola, A. O. 2019. “Farm Conflicts and the South African Unresolved Land Question.” Ubuntu: Journal of Conflict and Social Transformation 8 (2): 75–92. https://doi.org/10.31920/2050-4950/2019/8n2a4.
Aliber, M., and B. Cousins. 2013. “Livelihoods After Land Reform in South Africa.” In “Agrarian Change, Rural Poverty and Land Reform in South Africa Since 1994,” edited by B. O’Laughlin, H. Bernstein, B. Cousins and P. E. Peters, special issue, Journal of Agrarian Change 13 (1): 140–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12012.
Andrews, M. 2021. “Trapped in Debt: Gendered Life and Western Cape Farms.” Gender Questions 9 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/7407.
Anitha, S. 2019. “Understanding Economic Abuse through an Intersectional Lens: Financial Abuse, Control, and Exploitation of Women’s Productive and Reproductive Labor.” Violence Against Women 25 (15): 1854–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801218824050.
Atkinson, D. 2007. Going for Broke: The Fate of Farm Workers in Arid South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Bair, J. 2010. “On Difference and Capital: Gender and the Globalisation of Production.” In “Feminists Theorize International Political Economy,” edited by S. M. Rai and K. Bedford, special issue, Signs 36 (1): 203–26. https://doi.org/10.1086/652912.
Bek, D., C. McEwan, and K. Bek. 2007. “Ethical Trading and Socioeconomic Transformation: Critical Reflections on the South African Wine Industry.” Environment and Planning A 39 (2): 301–19. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3831.
Bolt, M. 2016. “Accidental Neoliberalism and the Performance of Management: Hierarchies in Export Agriculture on the Zimbabwean-South African Border.” The Journal of Development Studies 52 (4): 561–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2015.1126252.
Bolt, M., and D. Rajak. 2016. “Introduction: Labour, Insecurity and Violence in South Africa.” In “Making the Right Connections: Globalization, Economic Inclusion and African Workers,” edited by K. Meagher, L. Mann and M. Bolt, special issue, Journal of Southern African Studies 42 (5): 797–813. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2016.1232513.
Bond, P. 2007. “Introduction: Two Economies or One System of Superexploitation.” Africanus: Journal of Development Studies 37 (2): 1–21.
Coe, N. M., and M. Hess. 2007. “Global Production Networks: Debates and Challenges.” Paper presented at GPERG Workshop, University of Manchester, January 25–26, 2007.
Corder, C. K. 1997. “The Reconstruction and Development Programme: Success or Failure?” Social Indicators Research 41 (1): 183–203. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006808720498.
Cousins, B. 2009. “Capitalism Obscured: The Limits of Law and Rights-Based Approaches to Poverty Reduction and Development.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (4): 893–908. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150903354098.
Dagut, S. 1997. “Paternalism and Social Distance: British Settlers’ Racial Attitudes, 1850s–1890s.” South African Historical Journal 37 (1): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02582479708671289.
Dunaway, W. A., ed. 2014. Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804788960.
Du Toit, A. 1993. “The Micro‐Politics of Paternalism: The Discourses of Management and Resistance on South African Fruit and Wine Farms.” Journal of Southern African Studies 19 (2): 314–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079308708362.
Du Toit, A., S. Kruger, and S. Ponte. 2008. “Deracializing Exploitation? ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ in the South African Wine Industry.” Journal of Agrarian Change 8 (1): 6–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2007.00161.x.
Eriksson, A. 2018. “Resisting Feminised Precarity: Farm Workers in Post-Strike Western Cape, South Africa.” PhD diss., Stockholm University. http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1221811&dswid=-1477.
Ewert, J., and J. Hamman. 1999. “Why Paternalism Survives: Globalisation, Democratisation and Labour on South African Wine Farms.” Sociologia Ruralis 39 (2): 202–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9523.00102.
Ewert, J., A. Martin, and V. Nelson. 2005. Assessment of the Social Impact of Adoption of Codes of Practice in the South African Wine Industry. Washington, DC: Natural Resources Institute and DFID. Accessed July 15, 2022. http://projects.nri.org/nret/revised_final_sa_main_report.pdf.
Ferreira, S. L. A., and C. A. Hunter. 2017. “Wine Tourism Development in South Africa: A Geographical Analysis.” In “Tourism Places,” edited by A. A. Lew, special issue, Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment 19 (5): 676–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2017.1298152.
Foster, C., and M. Graham. 2017. “Reconsidering the Role of the Digital in Global Production Networks.” Global Networks 17 (1): 68–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12142.
Henderson, J., P. Dicken, M. Hess, N. Coe, and H. W.-C. Yeung. 2002. “Global Production Networks and the Analysis of Economic Development.” Review of International Political Economy 9 (3): 436–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290210150842.
Herman, A. 2012. “Tactical Ethics: How the Discourses of Fairtrade and Black Economic Empowerment Change and Interact in Wine Networks from South Africa to the UK.” Geoforum 43 (6): 1121–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.07.006.
Kaur, T. 2018. “Making Wine Production ‘Fair’ through Sports? An Analysis of Sports as an Aspect of Farm Worker Development in the Cape Winelands.” In “Sporting Subalternities and Social Justice: Rethinking South African Sports Studies,” edited by T. Kaur and G. Akindes, special issue, Acta Academica 50 (2): 116–35. https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa50i2.6.
Kaur, T. 2022. “As Jy Arm Is, Is Jy Vokkol!—Poverty, Personalism, and Development: Farmworkers’ Experiences of Neoliberal South Africa.” Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/23802014.2021.2017340.
Keahey, J. 2015. “Fair Trade and Racial Equity in Africa.” In Handbook of Research on Fair Trade, edited by L. T. Raynolds and E. A. Bennett, 441–56. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Maloyi, L. 2016. “South Africa’s Changing Macroeconomic Policy Shifts: 1994–2010.” MPPM diss., University of the Witwatersrand. https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/23759/Thesis%20Final-Lunga%20Maloyi%20Final%20Edit%202.pdf?sequence=1.
Morrell, R., R. Jewkes, and G. Lindegger. 2012. “Hegemonic Masculinity/Masculinities in South Africa: Culture, Power, and Gender Politics.” Men and Masculinities 15 (1): 11–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X12438001.
Moseley, W. G. 2008. “Fair Trade Wine: South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Vineyards and the Global Economy.” Globalizations 5 (2): 291–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747730802057753.
Ross, R. 1995. “Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans.” South African Historical Journal 32 (1): 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/02582479508671824.
Sithomola, T. 2020. “The Imperilled Right to Life, Femicide Crisis in South Africa: Critical Considerations for Legislators.” International Journal of Criminology and Sociology 9: 74–86. https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-4409.2020.09.08.
Stats SA (Statistics South Africa). 2021. “South African Labour Market Is More Favourable to Men Than to Women.” August 24, 2021. Accessed June 17, 2022. https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=14606.
Svenssonstiftelsen. n.d. “Laureates.” Accessed November 8, 2020. https://www.svenssonstiftelsen.com/laureates.
Swanby, H. 2021. “Embracing Humanity and Reclaiming Nature: Neglected Gendered Discourses in the Struggles of Western Cape Farm Workers.” Gender Questions 9 (1): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/7409.
Sylvain, R. 2001. “Bushmen, Boers and Baasskap: Patriarchy and Paternalism on Afrikaner Farms in the Omaheke Region, Namibia.” Journal of Southern African Studies 27 (4): 717–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070120090709.
Selwyn, B. 2019. “Poverty Chains and Global Capitalism.” Competition and Change 23 (1): 71–97. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1024529418809067.
Vestergaard, M. 2001. “Who’s Got the Map? The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Daedalus 130 (1): 19–44.
Visser, M., and S. Ferrer. 2015. Farm Workers’ Living and Working Conditions in South Africa: Key Trends, Emergent Issues, and Underlying and Structural Problems. Pretoria: International Labour Organization. Accessed July 15, 2022. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---africa/documents/publication/wcms_385959.pdf.
Waldman, L. 1996. “Monkey in a Spiderweb.” African Studies 55 (1): 62–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020189608707840.
Webb, C. 2017. “Between Precarity and Paternalism: Farm Workers and Trade Unions in South Africa’s Western Cape Province.” Global Labour Journal 8 (1): 49–64. https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v8i1.2842.
Wilderman, J. 2015. “From Flexible Work to Mass Uprising: The Western Cape Farm Workers’ Struggles.” Working Paper 4, Society, Work and Development Institute. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand. Accessed July 15, 2022. https://global-labour-university.org/wp-content/uploads/fileadmin/books/SWOP__FarmWorkers_-_Jesse_Wilderman.pdf.
World Bank Group. 2018. Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: An Assessment of Drivers, Constraints and Opportunities. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29614.
World Bank Group. 2022. Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union. Washington, DC: World Bank. Accessed July 15, 2022. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099125303072236903/P1649270c02a1f06b0a3ae02e57eadd7a82.
Addison, L. 2014b. “Delegated Despotism: Frontiers of Agrarian Labour on a South African Border Farm.” In “Agrarian Lineages of Paternalism,” edited by P. Gibbon, B. Daviron and S. Barral, special issue, Journal of Agrarian Change 14 (2): 286–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12062.
Akinola, A. O. 2019. “Farm Conflicts and the South African Unresolved Land Question.” Ubuntu: Journal of Conflict and Social Transformation 8 (2): 75–92. https://doi.org/10.31920/2050-4950/2019/8n2a4.
Aliber, M., and B. Cousins. 2013. “Livelihoods After Land Reform in South Africa.” In “Agrarian Change, Rural Poverty and Land Reform in South Africa Since 1994,” edited by B. O’Laughlin, H. Bernstein, B. Cousins and P. E. Peters, special issue, Journal of Agrarian Change 13 (1): 140–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12012.
Andrews, M. 2021. “Trapped in Debt: Gendered Life and Western Cape Farms.” Gender Questions 9 (1): 1–10. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/7407.
Anitha, S. 2019. “Understanding Economic Abuse through an Intersectional Lens: Financial Abuse, Control, and Exploitation of Women’s Productive and Reproductive Labor.” Violence Against Women 25 (15): 1854–77. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801218824050.
Atkinson, D. 2007. Going for Broke: The Fate of Farm Workers in Arid South Africa. Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Bair, J. 2010. “On Difference and Capital: Gender and the Globalisation of Production.” In “Feminists Theorize International Political Economy,” edited by S. M. Rai and K. Bedford, special issue, Signs 36 (1): 203–26. https://doi.org/10.1086/652912.
Bek, D., C. McEwan, and K. Bek. 2007. “Ethical Trading and Socioeconomic Transformation: Critical Reflections on the South African Wine Industry.” Environment and Planning A 39 (2): 301–19. https://doi.org/10.1068/a3831.
Bolt, M. 2016. “Accidental Neoliberalism and the Performance of Management: Hierarchies in Export Agriculture on the Zimbabwean-South African Border.” The Journal of Development Studies 52 (4): 561–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2015.1126252.
Bolt, M., and D. Rajak. 2016. “Introduction: Labour, Insecurity and Violence in South Africa.” In “Making the Right Connections: Globalization, Economic Inclusion and African Workers,” edited by K. Meagher, L. Mann and M. Bolt, special issue, Journal of Southern African Studies 42 (5): 797–813. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2016.1232513.
Bond, P. 2007. “Introduction: Two Economies or One System of Superexploitation.” Africanus: Journal of Development Studies 37 (2): 1–21.
Coe, N. M., and M. Hess. 2007. “Global Production Networks: Debates and Challenges.” Paper presented at GPERG Workshop, University of Manchester, January 25–26, 2007.
Corder, C. K. 1997. “The Reconstruction and Development Programme: Success or Failure?” Social Indicators Research 41 (1): 183–203. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006808720498.
Cousins, B. 2009. “Capitalism Obscured: The Limits of Law and Rights-Based Approaches to Poverty Reduction and Development.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 36 (4): 893–908. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150903354098.
Dagut, S. 1997. “Paternalism and Social Distance: British Settlers’ Racial Attitudes, 1850s–1890s.” South African Historical Journal 37 (1): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02582479708671289.
Dunaway, W. A., ed. 2014. Gendered Commodity Chains: Seeing Women’s Work and Households in Global Production. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804788960.
Du Toit, A. 1993. “The Micro‐Politics of Paternalism: The Discourses of Management and Resistance on South African Fruit and Wine Farms.” Journal of Southern African Studies 19 (2): 314–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079308708362.
Du Toit, A., S. Kruger, and S. Ponte. 2008. “Deracializing Exploitation? ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ in the South African Wine Industry.” Journal of Agrarian Change 8 (1): 6–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2007.00161.x.
Eriksson, A. 2018. “Resisting Feminised Precarity: Farm Workers in Post-Strike Western Cape, South Africa.” PhD diss., Stockholm University. http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1221811&dswid=-1477.
Ewert, J., and J. Hamman. 1999. “Why Paternalism Survives: Globalisation, Democratisation and Labour on South African Wine Farms.” Sociologia Ruralis 39 (2): 202–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9523.00102.
Ewert, J., A. Martin, and V. Nelson. 2005. Assessment of the Social Impact of Adoption of Codes of Practice in the South African Wine Industry. Washington, DC: Natural Resources Institute and DFID. Accessed July 15, 2022. http://projects.nri.org/nret/revised_final_sa_main_report.pdf.
Ferreira, S. L. A., and C. A. Hunter. 2017. “Wine Tourism Development in South Africa: A Geographical Analysis.” In “Tourism Places,” edited by A. A. Lew, special issue, Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment 19 (5): 676–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2017.1298152.
Foster, C., and M. Graham. 2017. “Reconsidering the Role of the Digital in Global Production Networks.” Global Networks 17 (1): 68–88. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12142.
Henderson, J., P. Dicken, M. Hess, N. Coe, and H. W.-C. Yeung. 2002. “Global Production Networks and the Analysis of Economic Development.” Review of International Political Economy 9 (3): 436–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290210150842.
Herman, A. 2012. “Tactical Ethics: How the Discourses of Fairtrade and Black Economic Empowerment Change and Interact in Wine Networks from South Africa to the UK.” Geoforum 43 (6): 1121–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.07.006.
Kaur, T. 2018. “Making Wine Production ‘Fair’ through Sports? An Analysis of Sports as an Aspect of Farm Worker Development in the Cape Winelands.” In “Sporting Subalternities and Social Justice: Rethinking South African Sports Studies,” edited by T. Kaur and G. Akindes, special issue, Acta Academica 50 (2): 116–35. https://doi.org/10.18820/24150479/aa50i2.6.
Kaur, T. 2022. “As Jy Arm Is, Is Jy Vokkol!—Poverty, Personalism, and Development: Farmworkers’ Experiences of Neoliberal South Africa.” Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal. https://doi.org/10.1080/23802014.2021.2017340.
Keahey, J. 2015. “Fair Trade and Racial Equity in Africa.” In Handbook of Research on Fair Trade, edited by L. T. Raynolds and E. A. Bennett, 441–56. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Maloyi, L. 2016. “South Africa’s Changing Macroeconomic Policy Shifts: 1994–2010.” MPPM diss., University of the Witwatersrand. https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/23759/Thesis%20Final-Lunga%20Maloyi%20Final%20Edit%202.pdf?sequence=1.
Morrell, R., R. Jewkes, and G. Lindegger. 2012. “Hegemonic Masculinity/Masculinities in South Africa: Culture, Power, and Gender Politics.” Men and Masculinities 15 (1): 11–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X12438001.
Moseley, W. G. 2008. “Fair Trade Wine: South Africa’s Post-Apartheid Vineyards and the Global Economy.” Globalizations 5 (2): 291–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747730802057753.
Ross, R. 1995. “Paternalism, Patriarchy and Afrikaans.” South African Historical Journal 32 (1): 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/02582479508671824.
Sithomola, T. 2020. “The Imperilled Right to Life, Femicide Crisis in South Africa: Critical Considerations for Legislators.” International Journal of Criminology and Sociology 9: 74–86. https://doi.org/10.6000/1929-4409.2020.09.08.
Stats SA (Statistics South Africa). 2021. “South African Labour Market Is More Favourable to Men Than to Women.” August 24, 2021. Accessed June 17, 2022. https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=14606.
Svenssonstiftelsen. n.d. “Laureates.” Accessed November 8, 2020. https://www.svenssonstiftelsen.com/laureates.
Swanby, H. 2021. “Embracing Humanity and Reclaiming Nature: Neglected Gendered Discourses in the Struggles of Western Cape Farm Workers.” Gender Questions 9 (1): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/7409.
Sylvain, R. 2001. “Bushmen, Boers and Baasskap: Patriarchy and Paternalism on Afrikaner Farms in the Omaheke Region, Namibia.” Journal of Southern African Studies 27 (4): 717–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070120090709.
Selwyn, B. 2019. “Poverty Chains and Global Capitalism.” Competition and Change 23 (1): 71–97. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1024529418809067.
Vestergaard, M. 2001. “Who’s Got the Map? The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Daedalus 130 (1): 19–44.
Visser, M., and S. Ferrer. 2015. Farm Workers’ Living and Working Conditions in South Africa: Key Trends, Emergent Issues, and Underlying and Structural Problems. Pretoria: International Labour Organization. Accessed July 15, 2022. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---africa/documents/publication/wcms_385959.pdf.
Waldman, L. 1996. “Monkey in a Spiderweb.” African Studies 55 (1): 62–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020189608707840.
Webb, C. 2017. “Between Precarity and Paternalism: Farm Workers and Trade Unions in South Africa’s Western Cape Province.” Global Labour Journal 8 (1): 49–64. https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v8i1.2842.
Wilderman, J. 2015. “From Flexible Work to Mass Uprising: The Western Cape Farm Workers’ Struggles.” Working Paper 4, Society, Work and Development Institute. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand. Accessed July 15, 2022. https://global-labour-university.org/wp-content/uploads/fileadmin/books/SWOP__FarmWorkers_-_Jesse_Wilderman.pdf.
World Bank Group. 2018. Overcoming Poverty and Inequality in South Africa: An Assessment of Drivers, Constraints and Opportunities. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29614.
World Bank Group. 2022. Inequality in Southern Africa: An Assessment of the Southern African Customs Union. Washington, DC: World Bank. Accessed July 15, 2022. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099125303072236903/P1649270c02a1f06b0a3ae02e57eadd7a82.
Downloads
Published
2022-11-08
How to Cite
Bell, Joshua, and Sally Matthews. 2022. “Dependency, Paternalism and Financial Control of Women on South African Wine Farms”. Gender Questions 10 (2):16 pages. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/10874.
Issue
Section
Articles
