GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL BIASES: A RE-READING OF GENDER DISPARITIES AMONG THE VATSONGA

Abstract

Matters to do with gender imaging and exploitation have adamantly sailed across decades, and much of the exerted efforts have often been realised in the form of financial, temporal, and physical losses, with very minimal resolutions towards significant policy reform, implementation, and gender-oriented mainstreaming. Even today, issues to do with domestic violence, gender inequalities, depravity, suppression, and harassment are still evident and continue to manifest in various settings and manifestations across sex divides. Whilst it can be conceded that a multiplicity of unfavourable encounters have, in many instances, hampered mercilessly upon the ‘vulnerable female counterpart’, this study aims to challenge the widely growing parochial and unanimously celebrated facet of presenting females as the only victims while the males are the sole perpetrators within both the traditional and legal fraternities. Using the case of the Tsonga culture, the study attempts to present a well-balanced investigation of gender-based abuses and the often ignored side where males’ sufferings and negative imaging are often ignored and objected to as trivial, absurd, and ridiculous cases. The study is, therefore, an endeavour to explore (far from bias) the concept of gender mainstreaming among the Tsonga people as enshrined in some traditional practices and other socio-cultural creeds in a bid to present a rationalised and balanced presentation of both the female and male vulnerable to the now, continuously narrowing discipline of gender studies.