Academic literature on the topic 'Gender identity – Lesotho'

Abstract Introduction Over 1 million burns occur in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) each year leading to significant morbidity and mortality. Financial constraints, social stigma, political strife, inaccessible healthcare facilities, limited perioperative resources, and low workforce capacity results in steep barriers to obtaining timely and effective burn care. This study set out to better define the burn burden as well as the age and gender-related disparities within SSA, to identify specific sub-regions and countries that would benefit most from targeted interventions to enhance burn care. Methods Data for all 46 SSA countries were acquired from the 2017 Global Burden of Disease (GBD17) database of the Global Health Data Exchange. Information regarding fire, heat, and hot substance-related injuries was derived from 17,792 data sources to estimate burn-related incidence, deaths, and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) by year, sex, age, and location from 1990 to 2017. Summative statistics were created for burn incidence, deaths, DALYs, and mortality ratio (deaths: incidence; %). Spatial mapping was performed to identify burn burden for specific regions and countries. Results An estimated 28,127,199 burns occurred in SSA from 1990–2017. On average, SSA accounted for 16% of worldwide burns, 21% of burn deaths, and 25% of DALYs. Furthermore, the mortality rate was 2.2 times the global average and remained nearly double the entire 27-year period. While all SSA regions had higher incidence, deaths, and DALYs compared to the global cohort, the Southern SSA region consistently had the highest incidence (211 cases per 100,000), deaths (7 per 100,000), and DALYs (355 years per 100,000) throughout the time period, with Lesotho, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe having the highest rates. In contrast to gender similarities globally for burn indicators, all regions within SSA showed higher incidence rates (144 vs 136 cases per 100,000), deaths (5.4 vs 4.7 deaths per 100,000), and DALYs (289 vs 272 years per 100,000) for men than women when age standardized. Conclusions With an estimated 1.4 million burn injuries in 2017, SSA accounted for over 15% of all worldwide burns and 20% of global burn deaths. Although all trended rates improved over the years for each country, they were consistently worse and slower to improve in all regions of SSA compared to the rest of the world. While both Central and Southern SSA regions had the greatest burn burden, burns in Central SSA more significantly impacted those under 5 years whereas Southern SSA saw the greatest burden on the 15–49-year age group.

By posing a provocative question, “What is a Woman?” this thesis intended to deconstruct normative conceptions of womanhood which are essentialised to marriage. To achieve these ends, I located the key questions of this thesis within intersecting theoretical premises of decolonial, African and Black feminisms. Intersectionality augmented by the framework of uMakhulu , that privileges the indigenous world-senses, are the tools of analysis to achieve better insight into how notions of womanhood bear multiplicities, complexities and ambiguities. Through the narrated life-stories of twenty ‘unmarried’ Basotho women (Methepa), I explored re-constructions of womanhood and the role of women’s agency in this process. Through these ‘invisibilised’ narratives, it is established that womanhood and the meanings thereof are located within a messy terrain of intersecting religio-socio-cultural and indigenous forces. I argued that these beg unpacking in identity re-construction to reveal multidimensional and complex constructions of Mosotho womanhood. Untangling these intricacies provides an anchor for deconstructing, and finally debasing, colonial hetero-patriarchal eurocentric universalism that plagues contemporary constructions of womanhood essentialised to marriage. At the core of this thesis lies the contention that ‘unmarried’ Basotho women (Methepa) are agents who are aware of the gendered social, cultural, religious terrain that necessitates marriage; which in turn, shapes their constructions of womanhood and agency. Unstructured interviews on past lived experiences of childhood and adulthood reveal self-definition characteristic to ‘unmarried’ Basotho women’s (Methepa) agency constructed and enacted within the locus of marginality. Within the analytic chapters titled ‘(Re)construction of womanhood’ is an appreciation of how women’s agency and their re-constructions of womanhood are shaped by childhood experiences of ‘becoming’ Woman as reflected upon in the chapter titled ‘The young Mosotho girl’. These chapters reflect the continuities of time; ‘then-now’ and space; ‘there-here’, to illustrate how ‘unmarried’ women’s senses of self and subjectivities are located in intersecting ‘modern’ Christianised and ‘indigenous’ terrains. Moreover, the findings reveal multiple reconfigurations of womanhood characterised by a complex, contradictory and convoluted enmeshment of multiple forces borne out of the world-senses of ‘unmarried’ Basotho women (Methepa). My conclusion is, partly that ‘unmarried’ Basotho women’s (Methepa) constructions of womanhood deconstruct the hegemonic constructions of womanhood. Therefore, not only does the analysis achieve epistemic redress by giving voice to historically silenced and subordinated knowledges, but it also places as central the indigenous African world-senses as the new anchor of African women’s identity and agency.
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020.
Sociology
PhD
Unrestricted

Background This report examined the association and relationship between Migration, Gender and STIs among young adults in Lesotho. To achieve this, the first objective was to understand the historical trans-boundary relationship between Lesotho and South Africa and how it contributed to STIs among young adults in Lesotho. The report then described the relationship between migration and having had any STIs among young adults in Lesotho. After multivariate analysis the association, between gender and having had any STIs among young adults in Lesotho was explored for understanding. Methodology For data analysis, secondary data from the 2009 Lesotho Demographic Health Survey (LDHS) were used. The LDHS is a cross-sectional study, designed to provide estimates of health and demographic indicators at the national level, for urban-rural areas and for each of the ten districts in Lesotho. The sample size used for this report was N=6,270. The statistical methods employed for data analysis were descriptive analysis, to establish the distribution of young adult migrant groups, according to STIs, demographic, socioeconomic and sexual practices. A Chi-square test was done to test for association. And a multivariate analysis was done using the forward selection process, to examine the relationships between STIs, migration, gender and significant variables. Results Migration status was found to have an insignificant (p=0.237) association with STIs. On the other hand, after considering migration status and gender at multivariate level, migration status, specifically urban-non migrants, were found to have a significant (p<0.05) relationship with having had any STIs. Gender was found to have an insignificant (p=0.587) association with having had any STIs and an insignificant (p=0.365) relationship with having had any STIs. However at multivariate level being female was found to be 16% protective against having had any STIs. Conclusion The report found that the relationships between migration status and having had any STIs were closely linked to factors related to gender and social and cultural norms pertaining to sexual behaviour. These influences were reflected in the literature and empirical evidence of this research report.

his thesis reports on a qualitative study of stakeholders’ constructions of gender in the context of the Free Primary Education policy in three primary schools in Lesotho. Through the lens of the social constructionist paradigm, the thesis examines how parents, teachers and children living in and around these primary schools think, act, and feel in relation to gender in their academic and social worlds. It looks at the ways in which these stakeholders engage with issues of gender in Lesotho communities ravaged by gender inequality. Based on parents’, teachers’ and children’s constructions of gender, the thesis suggests strategies that might help address inequitable gender relations in and around the primary schools. The thesis grounded my personal life experiences, as the researcher, as crucial in the development of methodological strategies and processes of this study. In a flexible and responsive manner, the study utilised informal conversations, semistructured interviews, observations, questionnaires and document analysis, as methods of data collection. It found that, influenced by ‘discursive constructs’ of providence and God’s will, child-adult relations, naturalness of gender differences and attributes as well as the Basotho culture, parents and teachers constructed gender in ways that reinforced existing gender inequality in and around the primary schools. The structural and social organisation of the schools that tended to allocate girls and boys into rigid social categories, and parents’ and teachers’ constructions of gender which reinforced inequitable gender relations, were found to have significant impact on the regulation of children’s experiences and meanings of gender. The study found that children’s experiences of gender informed how they actively engaged with issues of gender and the meanings they attached to being girls and boys. The study traces how Basotho culture and religion have been fundamental to gender inequality and violence in Lesotho. These factors encouraged the schools to use structural/physical identities (such as having biological sex as a boy/girl), as the bases for allocation of girls and boys into rigid and inequitable social categories. The dominant discourses of gender that emanated from these factors, ascribed stereotypic attributes to males (boys and men) and females (girls and women) as means to ground inequitable gendered human aptitudes, which were used to justify gender inequality. The study also identifies ways in which girls defy the insistence on their subordination, and sees fault lines where gender inequality can be confronted without abandoning Basotho culture.
Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This study attempts to broaden the knowledge and understanding of issues of sexual harassment experienced by girls in a high school in Lesotho. It does this by focussing on Form D girls in one high school in Maseru, here referred as Fora High School; and consequently how they cope with it. The study locates itself as concerned with gender justice. It assumes that it constitutes a discursive position that contrasts and opposes dominant patriarchal discourses. It sets out also to establish to what extent sexual harassment occurred and how it was perceived by those that experience it. It is a qualitative study that employs narratives and observation as the research methods. To achieve this, a module that introduced concepts of sexuality and sexual harassment preceded the data collection. Although the study was confined to Form D girls and did not include all the girls in this school, findings reveal that girls in this class experienced and observed sexual harassment in this school and more specifically in the classroom than anywhere else. Teachers were the major perpetrators of sexual harassment. Studying the narratives presented as data, physical harassment was the most frequently reported form of harassment. When such behaviours are reported, teachers ignore it and this suggests that they 'normalise' sexual harassment and thus reinforce dominant patriarchal discourses of hegemonic masculinity. Based on the participants' narratives and also arguing from the discursive position of gender justice, recommendations are suggested for this school and others to introduce sexuality and sex education in an attempt to make schools more equitable places for girls. It proposes that educational policies and curricular development more generally be revisited and to ensure that they are addressing sexuality education and therefore sexual violence particularly.
Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

This study explores the operations of Sesotho masculinity: its dominant ideas and practices and their effects on Basotho women and men and this latter‟s resistance to a gender-ethical consciousness gaining momentum in Lesotho. It challenges a deep running belief among the Basotho that being born male necessarily means being born into a superior social position and status that is naturally and divinely sanctioned. It investigates how the dominant postcolonial discourse called sekoele (a return to the traditions of the ancestors) and the Christian churches‟ discourses of the “true”/“authentic” Christian life, framed by the classical biblical and confessional dogmatic traditions, actually support and sustain this belief and so reinforce the imbalance of power in favour of men in the order of gender relations in Lesotho. On the contrary, through the principles of the contextual theologies of liberating praxis, social construction theory, a narrative approach to therapy, gender-ethical consciousness and participatory approach, the study argues that masculinity and ways of being and thinking about men are socially constructed through historical and cultural processes and practices. It is in these processes and practices that Basotho men have been and continue to be advantaged and privileged over women. This study has challenged this situation by tracing the existence of alternative, more ethical ways of being and thinking about men in those historical and cultural processes and practices; ways which are more open to women and children and their wellbeing in the everyday life interactions. In this way, the study argues for a gender-ethical consciousness, which, in particular, invites Basotho men to engage in a reflection on their participation in a culture and practices which oppress the other, especially women and children. It invites Basotho men to accountability and responsibility. In this sense a gender-ethical consciousness is understood as watershed of masculinity in Lesotho. The participation of a group of Basotho men who offered to reflect on their relationship with the dominant masculinities, demonstrates how Basotho men are struggling to transform yet they fill us with the hope that change is possible.
Humanities Social Sciences and Theology
D. Th. (Practical Theology with specialisation in Pastoral Therapy)