Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (OSISA)

In many instances, people want to evade the truth for fear of offending those involved and so the facts remain untold. However, more often than not, they realise that their silence has done more harm than if they had spoken. This is especially true of the situation of young women in marginalised communities, including farming, mining and rural communities. Some – and these are many – are afraid to tell their stories, and as such they continue to languish in poverty. Others hide behind the cliché that all young women can rise above adversity. The truth of the matter is – it matters where you are born. And your economic status and ultimately how people perceive you depends a great deal on where on earth your home is. And thus, around the globe, we find vast life discrepancies closely linked to geography and economic injustice. More so, these differences in socio-economic status are more pronounced when you are a woman and when you are young and living in geographical localities of farming, mining and rural communities.

A number of social, economic and political realities in southern Africa have worked to confine women in general and young women in particular to the unfortunate situation that they find themselves in. I will try in this article to examine some of these harsh realities and proffer in my own thinking, how these can be addressed.

Documentation : 

young_women_in_marginalised_communities_of_southern_africa.pdf