Abstract
M.A. (Sociology)
In October-November 2015, South African universities experienced widespread protests as students demanded that there should be no fee increases in 2016. An additional demand raised in this period was that university subcontracted workers should be insourced rather than outsourced. Outsourced workers, it was argued, earned starvation wages, and were subjected to poor working conditions and job insecurity. The research for this minor dissertation, conducted prior to the protests, captured the deep frustration and unhappiness of university-based cleaning staff about their poor earnings, working circumstances and their struggles to manage the multiple demands associated with work and family life.
This study offers a qualitative understanding specifically of the experiences of subcontracted women workers employed at a South African university in terms of how they balanced their work and family responsibilities, attended to their children’s needs and the strategies that they prioritise in addressing the various challenges they face. The literature review shows that family sociologists tend to focus on middle-class women, rather than on working class women, when probing issues around work-family balance. Hence, the study makes a contribution by adding insight into the family contexts of working class women. In-depth interviews were conducted with twelve women workers of various ages. It was found that the women workers were keen to be directly employed by the university. They believed that this would lead to better earnings and conditions of employment. Higher earnings would allow them to improve the lives of their families and enable them to cater adequately for their children. Currently, they travel long hours to work, leave others to assist with child care, engage in physical labour once they get home late, and suffer guilt and emotional distress about their failure to fulfil all the tasks at hand. Viewed through a gendered lens, the research highlights the lived experiences of working-class women and their contention with gender, racial and class oppression in post-apartheid South Africa.