There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. The late Helen Joseph was one of those who turned her dream into reality. Honouring Joseph as an iconic figure who played a significant role in the struggle for freedom in South Africa, the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) will host its annual memorial lecture on Tuesday, 14 September 2010 at 17:30 at the Council Chambers, Kingsway Campus, Auckland Park, Johannesburg.

The keynote address entitled Worlds Apart: rethinking Care in a Development Context will be delivered by Shahra Razavi, a specialist in the gender dimensions of social development and research coordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva. Razavi’s lecture will sketch some of the paradoxes and puzzles surrounding issues such as ‘indigenous social policy’, the inequalities in care provision and the role of proper care in a social development context.

The lecture draws on research based in six countries in the Global South namely, South Africa, Tanzania, Argentina, Nicaragua, India and the Republic of Korea.

Cryptic account of the Women’s Anti-Pass March:

On the ninth of August 1956, Ms Helen Joseph was one of the women who led the anti-pass march to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, one of the largest demonstrations staged in South Africa. Women played a leading role in the resistance to unjust pass laws, even while being at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy. Because of the tenuous nature of their employment - largely in the domestic service and informal sectors, African women were particularly vulnerable to removal from the urban areas as "idle Africans” or "superfluous appendages". 

Apartheid laws made it far more difficult for African women than men to acquire urban residency rights and accommodation in the urban areas. Influx control laws, and by extension the pass system, were intentionally used by government to bar African women from the urban areas and to confine them to the African reserves.

 Shahra Razavi Biography:

Shahra Razavi is Senior Research Co-ordinator at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in Geneva, where she oversees the Institute’s Programme on Gender and Development.  Shahra specializes in the gender dimensions of social development, with a particular focus on livelihoods and social policy. She is a member of the editorial board of Development in Practice, Global Social Policy, and Journal of Peasants Studies, as well as advisor to WIEGO (Women in the Informal Economy Globalizing and Organizing) and CROP (Comparative Research Programme on Poverty). Her recent books include The Gendered Impacts of Liberalization: Towards “Embedded Liberalism”? (Routledge, 2009), and Gender and Social Policy in a Global Context: Uncovering the Gendered Structure of ‘the Social’, edited with Shireen Hassim (Palgrave, 2006). Shahra was born in Iran and now lives in Geneva.

Contact Nokuthula Siqebengu on 011-559-4147 or nsiqebengu@uj.ac.za to reserve a seat.

Click here to read Shahra Razavi's full speech