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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | 'Good Girls' vs 'Bad Girls' |
| Author: | Eales, Kathy |
| Year: | 1989 |
| Periodical: | Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity |
| Issue: | 4 |
| Pages: | 1-22 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | women domestic workers Cultural Roles |
| External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.1989.9675042 |
| Abstract: | Before the First World War, men dominated all sectors of the labour market in the Witwatersrand, South Africa, from child care to factory work, from domestic work to ditch digging. There were 60,000 black men working in the kitchens and gardens of white homes. White capitalists opposed this because they needed these male workers in order to keep the mines running profitably. More opposition to 'house-boys' came from those concerned about the safety of white women in homes where black men worked (the 'black peril'). No alternative source of cheap labour, however, was available. There were not enough black women in Johannesburg to take over these jobs. In any case, black women were stereotyped as immoral and unreliable as servants, and employers were reluctant to hire them. The commission of enquiry into incidents of 'black peril' in 1912 proposed to potential employers training schemes for black domestics, pass laws and health examinations to transform the so-called whores of the mining settlements into angels in white kitchens. This article explores the context of this proposal in more detail and demonstrates the complexity of the dynamics at play. Sections: behind the stereotype: black women on the mines - contending with the stereotype: black women as poor servants - transforming the stereotype: keeping good girls respectable and bad girls out of town. Notes, ref. |
