Abstract
M.A. (Sociology)
The increasing deployment of clothing factories in the border industrial areas, has resulted in an increase in the demand for black female labour in this industry. This need, together with a sharp decline in the number of black male employees in the clothing industry, traditionally employed in all functional levels, forced employees to invest in black female labour on a large scale. It is practice to select first level supervisory staff from the higher operator levels, but a shortage of male workers in these positions created opportunities for black female operators to fulfil the need for supervisory staff. This however resulted in complications for both black women and employers, since factors emerged that could affect the black woman's achievement orientation. The objective of this research is to determine a job profile for the black
woman in terms of her achievement orientation and also to investigate other
variables that relate to her job profile and achievement orientation. Research conducted in this field on the European woman's achievement orientation, provided a framework for an explorative and qualitative research study on the achievement orientation of 15 non-supervisory and 15 supervisory black women. In order to gather sufficient information, interview guides were developed as an aid to conducting personal interviews with the sample group. A similar method was applied in investigating the attitude towards black female supervision, of 15 black male supervisors and 4 employers. From the case studies, three job profiles were distinguished namely a high achievement/high economical, a moderate achievement/moderate economical and a non-achievement/low economical orientated profile. For purposes of analysis the three profiles were reduced to two, namely an achievement/economical and a non-achievement/low economical orientated profile.