NALSU NEWS: Siviwe Mhlana (Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit/ NALSU) recently published "Precarious Work and the Gendered Individualisation of Risk in the South African Manufacturing Sector, 2002–2017" in the "Global Labour Journal." Against the backdrop of mass unemployment, Siviwe examines changes in labour-intensive production and the gendered individualisation of risk associated with informal / precarious employment under neo-liberalism. She moves the discussion from a narrow focus on skills, towards understanding the structural determinants of labour market vulnerabilities. The article argues that the gender composition of the post-apartheid labour market has significant implications for addressing persistent racialised and gendered inequalities in the South African economy.
The article is free, open access: https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/5098
Siviwe Mhlana, a NALSU member and a research associate at Rhodes University, was the recipient of a NALSU masters bursary, completing her degree cum laude. She has worked as a consultant for organisations such as Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising, is a researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a PhD candidate in Economics at SOAS, the University of London.
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