- Title
- Women and volunteerism in environmental management : a case study of wildlife and environment society of South Africa (WESSA), East London, South Africa
- Creator
- Nyamahono, James Donald
- Subject
- Environmental management
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- Sociology
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/15100
- Identifier
- vital:40175
- Description
- The literature on community participation in development processes has established a high level of consensus around the fact that the sharing of the burdens and benefits of participation is devoid of equality or equity. While some have emphasised the imperative of participation, others have highlighted the inherent contradictions in the process, describing it as an avenue for manipulation and exploitation. Still some have questioned the usefulness of the broad-based grassroots participation. This study is located within this debate and focuses on female volunteers‘ involvement in coastal protection in East London, South Africa. A survey was carried out with 100 unemployed women volunteering under a major environmental protection non-governmental organisation in addition to key-informants within the study organisation. The female volunteers‘ motives and their overall perspectives on their participation as volunteers were uncovered using the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI) questionnaire, while in-depth interviews were conducted with key officials of the study organisation to access their perspectives on why institutional stakeholders engage women as volunteers in environmental management. The findings revealed that voluntary environmental participation was driven by multiple, but contradictory, impulses. While the volunteers attached great importance to environmental management, hence, their involvement, factors such as age, educational background, employment status, income level, dependency, population group membership, social ties and other psycho-social dynamics played a role in their decision to work as volunteers. The data also revealed a crucial shared sentiment among the volunteers: they all felt people in the higher echelons of the organisation were unfairly ―profiting‖ from their unpaid labour. When these perspectives were analysed against the views of the officials of the study organisation, the contradictions of voluntary environmental participation became stark. The study concludes from the findings that in the crucial arena of environmental participation, participation is not the same thing as voluntary environmental participation, and voluntary environmental participation is not the same thing as voluntary environmental participation by women.
- Format
- 240 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
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| View Details | SOURCE1 | NYAMAHONO_J.D_DISSERTATION_WOMEN AND VOLUNTEERISM IN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT_ A CASE STUDY OF WILDLIFE AND ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY OF SOUTH AFRICA (WESSA), EAST LONDON, SOUTH AFRICA .pdf | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |