Browsing by Author "Meyer, Tamlynne"

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    Reaching for partnership: An intersectional study of occupational closure among women attorneys in South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-12) Meyer, Tamlynne; Fakier, Khayaat; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This research contributes to an understanding of the ways in which women attorneys experience social closure in the South African legal profession. The relevance for further research and debate is illustrated through the observed discrepancy between women’s representation during legal education and training, and their representation in the profession itself, especially at the partnership level. This study interrogates and uncovers how and why women continue to be marginalised, despite the removal of formal barriers and the enactment of legislation and policies to spearhead transformation, both in the country and profession. Through this, the thesis situates South Africa within the broader global debates on the sociology of professions which lacks a Southern African perspective. The investigation is approached from a mixed-method research design and a comprehensive and complex sociological framing, underpinned by feminist, Bourdieusan and organisational culture theoretical constructs. This provides a novel, but also an appropriate approach to the study, given the literature trends and the particular social, cultural and historical context of South Africa. The thesis presents the informal, invisible and hidden ways that produce and reproduce social closure in a specific context. These are often presented in nuanced, complex, contradictory, and ambiguous ways, which intersect with gender, race and class positions. The key elements I use to analyse social closure include intersectionality, voice, field (space), habitus, culture, and capital. I argue that all of these converge and are central to women’s experiences and material realities.