Training for Citizenship: The Women's Suffrage Movement and Modernising the State in Early Twentieth‐Century South Africa

Abstract

The Women's Enfranchisement Association of the Union of South Africa (WEAU) was founded in 1911, only a year after the declaration of the Union of South Africa. While scholars of the South African women's suffrage movement have paid particular attention to the race politics of the WEAU and its allied organisations, comparatively little scholarship has focused on white suffragists’ claims to citizenship. This article addresses this scholarly lacuna and argues that the South African women's suffrage movement's demands for citizenship were entangled with a broader project to reform and modernise the South African state. In so doing, the article explores how members of the WEAU imagined what it meant to be ‘South African’ in the 1910s and 1920s, and particularly in relation to their framing of citizenship as a tool for shoring up white supremacy in South Africa.

‘Truly a three‐dimensional job’: The feminisation of clerical work in Cape Town, 1900–1960

“…While white women gained the vote in 1930, this accomplishment was for white women alone and was accompanied by restricted rights for men and women of other races. 4 The overarching questions are: did the feminisation of clerical work take place in Cape Town and what role did race play in this process?…”