Reproductive justice in context: South African and Zimbabwean women’s narratives of their abortion decision

Abstract

The abortion decision-making process is embedded within overlapping power relations. Using a post-colonial feminist framework, we analyse South African and Zimbabwean women’s narratives regarding their abortion decision. As neighbouring countries, South Africa and Zimbabwe provide a useful counterpoint as they have common and differing social histories and very different abortion legislation. In our analysis, we unpick transversal commonalities and divergences in the discursive resources deployed by the women in their narratives in the two sites. Commonalities included the women feeling compelled to justify their abortion decision in the interactive interview space, an absence of a reproductive rights discourse, and the deployment of relationship embedded discourses in the justificatory work performed by the women. The “conjugalisation of reproduction”, “imperative of good mothering”, and “unstable partner relationships” discourses featured across both sites but the manner in which these were deployed differed. These discursive resources allowed the women to position themselves as making responsible decisions. The Zimbabwean women spoke of shame and hiding, a discursive resource that was explicitly absent in the South African women’s accounts. We conclude by arguing that our post-colonial feminist approach allows for a contextualised reproductive justice stance to abortion decision-making that identifies both transnational and context-specific power relations.

Keywords

abortion decision-making termination of pregnancy reproductive justice discourse narrative South Africa Zimbabwe

Research on abortion decision-making has tended to investigate factors or influences (such as economic, marital, or educational status) that are seen to affect the decision to terminate a pregnancy (Coast, Norris, Moore, & Freeman, 2014; Harvey-Knowles, 2012; Mdleleni-Bookholane, 2007). Relatively little research has been conducted on the complex interweaving social dynamics involved in abortion decision-making (Lie, Robson, & May, 2008). The role that gendered and other power relations play in abortion decision-making is often under-theorised.

In this article, we report on research conducted in South Africa and Zimbabwe in which women were asked to narrate the process of deciding to terminate their pregnancy. We focus in this paper on how the women engaged in significant justificatory labour in these interviews, despite not being asked for their reasons for choosing an abortion. We outline the similarities and differences in the discursive resources drawn on by women in SA and Zimbabwe when engaging in this justificatory labour.

We used a post-colonial feminist lens underpinned by Foucauldian (1977, 1978) conceptualisations of power relations, discourse, and knowledge to illuminate the social discourses in the women’s narratives. When constructing a narrative, individuals draw upon socially situated discursive resources. These discursive resources, conceptualised as accumulated ideas, images, and associations that speakers draw from the wider social and cultural contexts (Taylor & Littleton, 2006), enable the telling of particular narratives, and prevent others.

We follow Mohanty (1999, p. 363), who refers to “chains of equivalence”, which is described as “words that work together to evoke a particular set of meanings”. In our study we highlight cross-cutting or transversal commonalities across the two sites (as well as differences in the deployment of discourses) in the discursive resources drawn on by the women in narrating their decision to terminate their pregnancy. Our post-colonial feminist position acknowledges the multiplicity of positions women occupy with specific attention being paid to specificities and commonalities of women’s experiences in the context of global and local (neo)colonial power relations (Mama, 2005; Njambi, 2004). This post-colonial feminist approach problematises the norms (see our later discussion on the reproductive rights discourse) against which the experiences of women in the “developing world” are evaluated (Mohanty, 1988).

We argue that this kind of post-colonial feminist approach of commonalities and differences in women’s use of discursive resources across contexts enhances a reproductive justice stance in considering abortion decision-making. Feminist researchers have increasingly adopted a reproductive justice approach to abortion. As Chrisler (2013) and Katz (2017) explain, reproductive justice goes beyond recognition of reproductive health rights, deploying ideas of social justice, and extending understandings of abortion to the social circumstances that hinder or enable women to continue with, or to terminate, a pregnancy.

We compare the discursive resources that women in two southern African countries drew on in performing justificatory work concerning their abortion decision. These countries, South Africa and Zimbabwe, have much in common, but also differ on a number of political fronts (see later discussion). Important to this paper, they have diverging abortion legislation. Through conducting this qualitative comparison, we are able to highlight common hetero-patriarchal power relations across the sites as well as contextually specific gendered understandings.

Abortion decision-making

The literature on abortion decision-making has, for the most part, associated decision-making with internal cognitive processes where a woman uses her thought processes in selecting a logical choice from the available options (Harvey-Knowles, 2012). Cognitive models of decision-making, which focus attention on the individual woman, home in on past experience (Juliusson, Karlsson, & Gärling, 2005), cognitive biases (Stanovich & West, 2008), age and individual differences (De Bruin, Parker, & Fischoff, 2007), and belief in personal relevance (Acevedo & Krueger, 2004). These various factors/influences are believed to aid or hinder the woman choosing the best available option.

Recently, Coast et al. (2014) used data from different countries to produce a framework of various factors affecting abortion decision-making. Macro-level influences include the (il)legality of abortion, the punishment of those who violate the law, the role of abortion activism in civil society, religious understandings of abortion, the provision and availability of safe abortion procedures, available information about abortion services, and social and cultural norms concerning abortion, including stigma, and gender relations (e.g. in countries such as India and China sex-selective abortion is premised on gendered social dynamics as well as population concerns (Eklund & Purewal, 2017). At an individual level, knowledge and beliefs, relationships, and resources are all seen as contributing factors.

Research along these lines conducted in South Africa has found the following factors to be associated with the abortion decision: intendedness of the pregnancy, willingness or ability on the part of the woman to make the adjustments necessary to include a child in her future life, awareness of the availability of abortion (Mdleleni-Bookholane, 2007), knowledge of abortion policy and public health facilities, abortion perception and experiences, and a positive HIV status (Orner, De Bruyn, & Cooper, 2011). In Zimbabwe, the decision to terminate a pregnancy has been associated with the breakdown of traditional cultural values in the wake of rural–urban migration, increased need to limit family size, delay in the age of marriage owing to increased educational opportunities for women, unavailability of contraceptives for women under 18 years of age, women not wanting fatherless children, physical or medical problems, and relationship difficulties (Maternowska, Mashu, Moyo, Withers, & Chipato, 2014).

Although most research views decision-making in relation to factors or influences, some studies have located decision-making within gendered social narratives and discourses. In the United States, Jones, Frohwirth, and Moore (2008) found that women’s reasons for abortion centre on a concern/consideration for others, and that prevailing discourses around motherhood played an important role in the decision-making process. Greene (2006) argues that young working-class British women’s decisions about pregnancy outcomes are embedded in discourses of responsibility, while Hoggart (2017) found that young British women deployed various narratives to construct their abortion decision as morally sound. Izugbara, Ochako, and Izugbara’s (2011) research with urban Kenyan women found that narratives of the unwanted nature of pregnancy centred on a socially sanctioned motherhood, proper context for procreation, and cultural understandings of appropriate sexuality.

Contextualising abortion in South Africa and Zimbabwe

South Africa and Zimbabwe provide interesting counterpoints in terms of abortion decision-making. The countries share a border, have strong regional affiliation and cultural and economic ties, were both British colonies, were closely associated during the liberation wars, and were colonised by Britain at various stages of their histories. There are also significant differences, such as the history of apartheid in South Africa, Zimbabwe’s economic crisis in the last decade, and the control of the Zimbabwean government by Robert Mugabe, who has been president of the country for 37 years (at the time of writing this, Jacob Zuma is the fourth South African president after the transition to democracy in 1994).

Importantly, in terms of this paper, current abortion laws differ significantly. The South African Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (Act No. 92 of 1996) is the most liberal piece of abortion legislation in Africa and one of the most liberal in the world. The Act legalises abortion on request until 12 weeks of gestation, including for minors, and thereafter under specified, relatively liberal, conditions. The CTOP Act employs a reproductive rights approach and positions women as reproductive citizens endowed with the “choice” to terminate pregnancies.

While the introduction of the CTOP Act has led to a reduction of the cases of abortion-related morbidity and mortality in South Africa (Jewkes, Brown, Dickson-Tetteh, Levin, & Rees, 2002), women still continue to seek abortions outside of designated facilities owing to a lack of knowledge of the CTOP Act and of abortion services, as well as a fear of abuse by nursing staff (e.g. expectations of being insulted or looked down upon) or breaches of confidentiality (Jewkes et al., 2005). In addition, there are many structural problems that effectively deny women access to termination of pregnancy services (Mendes, Basu, & Basu, 2010). Public discourses tend to be negative, centring on morality, foetal rights and personhood, culture and the family (Macleod & Hansjee, 2013; Macleod, Sigcau, & Luwaca, 2011).

In contrast to South Africa, Zimbabwean legislation on abortion is restrictive. The new constitution (approved in 2013) has largely kept the status quo in that abortion is only allowed in certain situations, which are still to be determined through legislative processes. The law that is currently still in effect, the Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1977, allows abortion when the continuation of the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman or poses a serious threat of permanent impairment to her physical health, and in cases where the foetus was conceived as a result of unlawful intercourse, including rape, incest, or intercourse with a “mentally handicapped” woman. Obtaining a legal abortion is a long and fraught process (Chiweshe, 2015).

There are no reliable figures that are readily available on the prevalence of abortion in Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, the government has expressed concern about the high level of induced abortion (Maternowska et al., 2014). According to a civil society shadow report presented at the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women in 2012, mortality as a result of illegal abortions is high (Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association, 2013). In line with the restrictive nature of legislation and practice in Zimbabwe, women frequently do not seek post-abortion care for fear of legal and social repercussions (Maternowska et al., 2014). Abortion is socially, culturally, and religiously stigmatised (Chigudu, 2007; Chikovore, Lindmark, Nystrom, Mbizvo, & Ahlberg, 2002).

Our study

Research questions

The research reported on in this paper was driven by the following questions: What social/cultural discursive resources are drawn on in the narratives that women who have elected to have an abortion tell concerning the processes by which they came to the decision to terminate the pregnancy? What power relations underpin the deployment of these resources? What commonalities and differences are evident in the resources deployed across the two country locations (South Africa and Zimbabwe)? In this paper, we explore the discursive resources drawn on by the women in the interview context as they engaged in justificatory labour regarding their decision to terminate their pregnancies. In addition, we argue that the post-colonial feminist approach that we use helps to deepen understandings of reproductive justice in context.

Data sites

The data for our study were collected in South Africa and Zimbabwe between 2013 and 2015. In South Africa, participants were women who had requested an abortion at one of three designated termination of pregnancy clinics. Clinic 1 is run by a non-governmental abortion provider in an urban environment. Clinics 2 and 3 are both government hospitals. The former is located in a small town situated in a predominantly rural area and services clinics in a former homeland¹ area. The latter is situated in a township² area within another city and is in close proximity to both rural and urban environments. In Zimbabwe, data were collected from three sites in the capital city, Harare; interviews were conducted with women who had already terminated their pregnancies. Site A is a government hospital servicing an urban population; women presenting for post-abortion care were interviewed at this site. Site B is a working class suburb in Harare; women were accessed through a nurse who offers post-abortion follow-up services and were interviewed in their homes or at the nurse’s house. Site C is a very low income suburb located just outside Harare; an existing University of Zimbabwe health programme was used to access women who had terminated pregnancies and interviews were conducted at the house of a village health care worker.

The rationale for having three sites in the two contexts was to allow for some diversity as the sites differ in location and, to some extent, socio-economic status. In South Africa, for example, Clinic 1 charges for services and is thus mostly (although not exclusively) used by women with some access to resources. Services at Clinics 2 and 3 are free of charge, thus attracting women whose decisions are often made in the context of economic/financial struggle. Furthermore, in South Africa such women are also more likely to be black African women, who comprised most of the sample.

Participants

In both contexts purposive sampling was used owing to the requirement of a particular type of participant. In both countries, women were included in the study if they were 18 years or older (for reasons related to the ability to give consent to participate in the research) and were willing to narrate the decision-making process in a research interview. In South Africa, the women had decided on an abortion and had undergone pre-abortion counselling prior to participating in the research interview, but had not yet had the termination of pregnancy. In Zimbabwe participants were women who had terminated a pregnancy in the past year. The reason for this difference was that in Zimbabwe, unlike South Africa, there are no facilities where women who have decided, or are in the process of deciding, to have an abortion can be accessed due to restrictive laws. The women in Zimbabwe, thus, were a hard-to-reach population. All the participating Zimbabwean women had terminated their pregnancies illegally and in secret.

We acknowledge that this means that we generated the data not only in different legal and locational contexts but also at different stages in the process of terminating a pregnancy. Clearly, women who have already terminated pregnancies might think/feel/recall things differently than women who have decided on an abortion but have not yet undergone the procedure. While this may be seen as a limitation in terms of the comparability of the data, discursive theorists remind us that there are limited culturally available discursive resources that people may draw on in constructing narratives about particular events (Taylor & Littleton, 2006). Our interest was in understanding the commonalities and differences in the discursive resources deployed across the two sites, taking into consideration the different legal frameworks, the different possibilities in terms of procuring an abortion, and the different stages at which our data were generated.

Twenty-five participants were recruited in South Africa at the above-mentioned clinics: 23 black African women and two “Coloured”³ women. With regard to employment status, 13 of the women were unemployed, seven were students, three were employed, and two did not disclose their status. Two women were divorced and one had separated from her husband. The rest were not married; these women were either in a relationship at the time of the study or had a relationship that had ended because of the pregnancy. Eight of the women had no children at the time of the study, and 17 had one or more children. The average age for the women was 25.8 years. The women’s ages ranged from 19 to 39 years.

Eighteen black African women were recruited in Zimbabwe through contacts that the first author has with community health workers, service providers at the hospital and a pregnancy crisis clinic, as well as through snowball sampling. Ten of the women were unemployed, two were students, two worked as domestic workers, one as a sex worker, one as a church counsellor, and one as a vendor. Relationship status at the time of data collection varied: 10 of the women were single, six were married, one was divorced, and one was separated. Nine women had no children at the time of the abortion, and nine had one or more children. The average age was 26.7 years. The women’s ages ranged from 19 to 43 years.

In both countries, data were collected using a version of narrative interviewing. The narrative interview attempts to limit the influence of the researcher (although the researcher’s influence can never be “removed”) through a style and method of interviewing that enables the participant to narrate her story in her own way, using the discursive resources that are culturally and socially available to her (Jovchelovitch & Bauer, 2000). The narrative inducing question was, “Please tell me the story of your decision to have an abortion, all the events and experiences that have been important to you personally; begin wherever you like, I won’t interrupt, and I’ll just take some notes for afterwards”. Follow-up interviews which were held between 15 and 30 minutes after the initial interviews were based on themes brought up by the women in their narratives. Interviews were conducted in the language of choice of the women by the first author and a co-researcher in Zimbabwe and by the second author and co-researcher in South Africa. Interviews lasted between 10 minutes and an hour, with most being around 45 minutes long.

Data were transcribed and translated into English where necessary, with back translation⁴ being used to check linguistic and conceptual equivalence. Minimal transcription conventions were used owing to the translations (pauses: (.); interruption: = ; researcher interlude: / /). During transcription, pseudonyms, which appear here in the extracts, were used.

Ethical approval was granted by the Rhodes University Ethics Standards Committee as well as the Zimbabwe Medical Research Council. In both settings, the potential for women to experience distress while participating in the interviews was considered. Interestingly, almost all women expressed gratitude and relief at having their stories witnessed by supportive interviewers. Nevertheless, to counter any potential distress, one co-interviewer in South Africa and both interviewers in Zimbabwe are experienced counsellors with expertise in containing distress and referral. The interview was stopped for one participant in South Africa and the co-interviewer worked to contain her emotions. One participant in Zimbabwe was referred to a clinical psychologist for counselling.

Both sets of data were analysed using elements of Taylor and Littleton’s (2006) narrative-discursive method. A narrative-discursive approach is based on the social constructionist premise that talk is constitutive of social reality. In narrating their stories about their abortion decision-making, women used discursive resources (what we refer to specifically as discourses in our data): accumulated ideas, images, and associations that are drawn from the wider social and cultural contexts of people’s lives and are available to speakers when they narrate stories (Taylor, 2007). We present here the results of Taylor and Littleton’s (2006) first analytical task which entails looking for common elements that occur across several interviews as well as at different times within one interview and which point to particular discursive resources. Data from each site were initially analysed separately by Malvern and Catriona, and Jabulile and Catriona, respectively. Thereafter, the analyses were compared and further comparative analyses conducted. In line with our post-colonial feminist approach, we sought to highlight transversal commonalities in the data across the two sites, as well as contextual differences. In this paper, we focus on the discursive resources drawn upon by the women from the two contexts in performing justificatory labour in their narratives of the abortion decision. Extracts are presented that exemplify the discourses we found across the data set.

Analysis

Three things struck us in our first reading of the narratives. First, we noticed how the women in both South Africa and Zimbabwe spent significant time justifying their abortion decision, despite the fact that our narrative-inducing question did not probe their reasons for choosing an abortion. While we anticipated this in Zimbabwe, given the legal and social status of abortion, we were interested to note that the women in South Africa likewise felt compelled to account for their decision, despite the supposed state sanction of such a decision (through abortion being legal and the state providing free abortion services).

Second, in performing justificatory labour about their decision in the interactive context of the interview, we noted that neither the Zimbabwean nor the South African women drew on a discourse of reproductive rights. In South Africa, the CTOP Act and most health and education legislation passed post-apartheid is strongly framed within a rights discourse; research shows that this discourse has been taken up in everyday talk on abortion (Macleod & Hansjee, 2013). When negotiations for the adoption of a new constitution for Zimbabwe began, advocates for the legalisation of abortion used arguments concerning women’s reproductive health and rights (Hub, 2015). Yet, despite the public deployment of rights discourses (more strongly in South Africa than Zimbabwe), not one woman spoke of her right to decide on an abortion to lay claim to abortion as a reasonable option.

The absence of the rights discourse in these women’s narratives is significant given the weight accorded to rights and “choice” discourses in abortion activism, specifically in Western contexts. This absence represents a transversal commonality across the two data sets. We discuss the significance of this absence in the concluding sections.

Third, the women drew on common discursive resources in performing the labour of justifying their decision to terminate their pregnancies despite the differences in location, the legal status of abortion, how the abortion was going to be or had been performed, and the timing of our interviews. However, the manner in which these were deployed differed across the contexts. In the following, we outline these common discursive resources and the differences in how these discourses were deployed. We highlight one discourse (“shame and hiding”) that was deployed by Zimbabwean women only: while the occurrence of stigma may be inferred from the talk of the South African women, it was only the Zimbabwean women who referred explicitly to shame and hiding in justifying their abortion decision. Within these narratives, shame refers to both the pregnancy and the abortion and leads to the hiding of both.

The extracts presented in the analysis below exemplify patterns that emerged in the data. The pairing of South African and Zimbabwean extracts is necessitated to make visible the commonalities and differences in the use of discursive resources which illustrate larger patterns in the data. This pairing is not meant to imply that the women’s responses are exclusive to their geographical/socio-cultural locations.

Conjugalisation of reproduction

Women in both contexts drew on a “conjugalisation of reproduction” discourse. Within this discourse, as outlined by Macleod (2003), childbearing is legitimated only when it occurs within the marital alliance. Marriage is necessarily associated with, and should preferably come before, reproduction, as seen in extracts 1 and 2:

Extract 1

Abongile [South Africa]: At home mos⁵ what will they say if again I have a second child? And I have not even gotten married /oh ok/ok/ yes, so then I prefer to do an abortion.

Extract 2

Bell [Zimbabwe]: I think I was justified and I think God forgives me. My options were to marry someone who had forced me to sleep with him and he did not have a great future [ahead of him].

While participants in both countries implicitly acknowledged the injunction for marriage and reproduction to coincide and agreed with it, the pregnancy itself was evidence of a transgression of this expectation. Thus, for participants, abortion became a means to make “right”. This discourse was drawn upon by both women who did not have any children and those who already had existing children at the time of the interviews. Women who already had children committed themselves to waiting until they got married before having any more children.

Despite the common deployment of a “conjugalisation of reproduction” discourse across the two contexts, differences emerged in how the discourse was used. In South Africa, women spoke of the responsibilities of single parenthood, while in Zimbabwe women referred repeatedly to the cultural difficulties of having a fatherless child:

Extract 3

Zukiswa [South Africa]: He is making conversations about marriage /mm/ but he’s not ready yet /oh/ and so now um I also I didn’t want to make, to put myself on the spot /mm/ … because the children at the end of the day they’re going to remain with me because they’re mine /yes/ what if he decides to marry another person /(inaudible)/= and then I’m left with the responsibility of three children.

Extract 4

Eli [Zimbabwe]: But I did not want to have a child (.) without a father. It would also influence my finding another husband. … What do you do with a baby without a father? The child will be (.) there forever. You cannot hide the child and until you die, it will be a reminder that you had a child without a father.

Zukiswa argues that having a third child and hoping that marriage would follow would be risky, potentially leaving her with the responsibility (and burden) of raising the children. Marriage is constructed here not only as the appropriate context for heterosexual reproduction, but also as a form of security that guards against the instability of male partner relations (to be discussed below). In contrast, Eli suggests that fatherless children are not only “shameful” in the here and now (you cannot hide the child) but also in affecting her chances of future marriage (possibly because of the reluctance of a man to “care” for another man’s children or because the child is evidence of extramarital sex). When Eli asks the question, “What do you do with a baby without a father?”, she is implying that fathers are fundamental to child-rearing and how children are presented to the world. This is reflected in extract 2 when Bell refers to the protection and providence that men potentially offer in marriage when she suggests that marrying a person who forcibly had sex with her might be tolerable if he had good prospects.

In both South Africa and Zimbabwe, participants referred to social regulation in which marriage as the appropriate space for reproduction is reinforced. Bell’s reference to God in extract 1 and Abongile’s reference to home in extract 2 points to the rhetorical work performed by these speakers in taking into consideration the implied audience (God and family) who would enforce the “conjugalisation of reproduction”. Rhetorical work refers to the argumentative strategies that speakers employ to negotiate their accounts. This includes “‘talking against’ established ideas” (Taylor & Littleton, 2006, p. 24) and the assumed or stated positions of conversational partners in order to present contrasting opinions whilst maintaining a preferred subject position. This rhetorical labour serves to reinforce the narrative that the decision to terminate the pregnancy was not made lightly. The social regulation of the “conjugalisation of reproduction” is also seen in the extracts below.

Extract 5

Louise [South Africa]: Because uh (.) they [parents] wouldn’t approve because we’re not married for one.

Extract 6

Anelisa [South Africa]: I am still young and (1) /ok/mm/ ok I am still young (.) my age does not allow me [to have a child] […] and then now another thing is (.) I am being raised by a single parent ne⁶? =/oh/ my parents are (.) separated […] then now since I was raised by separated parents I do not want to also raise my child in that relationship (.) so at least marriage (1) before a child /mm/ ye::s so yes

Extract 7

Tina [Zimbabwe]: No, telling people would have made (.) them laugh at me. I had done (.) shameful things … sleeping with someone’s husband.

For Louise and Abongile (extract 1), the expectation that marriage must precede reproduction was associated with parental figures. Participants explained that the decision to have an abortion stemmed from their worry over their parents’ reaction of disapproval. In extract 6, Anelisa explains that her youth means that childbearing is not socially permissible (“does not allow”) as she has not managed to reach marriageable age. By using her childhood experiences as proof, she demonstrates the “truth” that acceptable reproduction occurs within a particular family formation: a conjugalised family headed by the heterosexual parenting dyad. As a consequence, single parenting as a practice and type of family formation is deemed inadequate. In extract 7, Tina speaks about social disapproval attached to non-conjugalised pregnancy. The assumed reaction of her community to finding out that she had a pregnancy outside marriage, and that she had done so through undermining an existing marital bond, meant an abortion was justified to hide all these shameful circumstances (see later discussion of shame and hiding).

The imperative of good mothering

In both sites, a discourse of “the imperative of good mothering” was a powerful and useful resource for justifying the abortion. As seen in the extracts below, the women’s failure to live up to a sacrosanct standard of “good mothering” made continuing the pregnancy untenable. Fulfilling the tenets of “good mothering” was seen as essential to having children, thereby rendering the decision to terminate the pregnancy a responsible one. However, how “good mothering” was viewed differed across the contexts.

South African women foregrounded their role as a mother to existing children or stated their intention to one day be a hands-on mother. Within these participants’ narratives, a particular kind of motherhood emerged. Mothering, in their renditions, requires intense levels of engagement with (young) children regarding attention and care. This intensive kind of mothering is child focused and thus invokes the image of the “selfless mother” who constantly considers her children’s well-being. In this way, the “imperative of good mothering” discourse is inextricably tied to a “child-centred” discourse.

Extract 8

Zukiswa [South Africa]: I cannot say I will have this child and then take care /yes/ of it the child because he won’t grew up the same way as the two children /mm/ and it’s going to be unfair to /mm/=mm/ this third child (.) it will be like I am choosing [him or her]⁷ or I do not love [him or her] enough /mm/ so at least if we wait ok (.) until we have a stable house (.) stable home for them (.)

A “child-centred” discourse proved to be a significant resource that was drawn upon both by women who had children and those who did not. Within this discourse, women assigned personhood to the foetus by referring to the foetus using terms such as “child” (the most often used) and “baby”, thus constructing the foetus as a subject. In extract 8 (above), Zukiswa not only expresses the notion that children need a certain level of attention and care in order to develop fully and in a healthy way, but also that children need to be treated equally and thus fairly. Hence, her concern is that, owing to the circumstances into which her third child would be born, her potential child would not have the same (good) childhood experiences as his/her siblings.

Women in Zimbabwe also spoke to the “imperative of good mothering” but, unlike South African women, drew on a discourse of culture to do so. The depiction of a “good mother” was heavily linked to cultural ideas of what a responsible mother does. In some cases the women in Zimbabwe drew from both cultural practices and the practicalities of raising children. This is epitomised in the following:

Extract 9

Tina [Zimbabwe]: I had a baby who was still young, who needed to be cared for and now I was pregnant again. I (.) thought again about the Shona culture which says that children should not drink breast milk from the same breast at the same time as this will affect their development. I also did not have any work so money was going to be tight and I could not take care of both children.

Zimbabwean women repeatedly referred to the cultural injunction against children sharing breast milk. While Tina gives a “rational reason” for this cultural injunction (it will affect development), most women simply referred to it as a culturally accepted practice. For Tina, buying into this cultural injunction provides the justification for terminating a pregnancy in order to protect the already-born child from stunted development. She also had practical concerns around taking care of her children. To avoid censure for being irresponsible (in other societal members’ eyes), Tina sees an abortion as the solution. By following injunctions against the sharing of breast milk and ensuring financial security, Tina is fulfilling the definitions of responsible motherhood in this particular setting. She reinforces what Zukiswa emphasised in the above extract, that is the idea of a “selfless mother” who protects her children.

Both Tina and Zukiswa constructed the foetus as a “child”. As demonstrated in research on the ways in which women and men make sense of abortion, constructions of the foetus as a “child” tend to be followed by constructions of abortion as an act of killing, with the woman being positioned as guilty of this act (Hanjsee, 2011). Among South African participants, however, “abortion as killing” was only used as a discursive resource by one participant who drew on a religious discourse. In sharp contrast, most women in the Zimbabwean context drew on a discourse of “abortion as killing”. Paradoxically, South African and Zimbabwean women were able to positively position themselves as “responsible”, “caring”, “selfless”, “good mothers” or as “motherly”, a reflexive positioning which could only be achieved by utilising a discourse of “the imperative of good mothering”. Here abortion is not a selfish act but is done to protect those already born and those who will be born.

Unstable partner relationship

Across both sites, an “unstable partner relationship” discourse was used to construct a narrative that justified the abortion decision. Many of the women in South Africa and Zimbabwe spoke of their heterosexual, romantic, non-marital relationships as unstable/transient. Many told stories of abandonment.

Extract 10

Andiswa [South Africa]: Well I can see with this reaction (.) you cannot block someone from WhatsApp⁸ (1) not wanting to (.) ignoring your calls I think he has blacklisted me /mm/ meaning that he does not want anything to do with me when I speak about the child and things.

Extract 11

Lucy [Zimbabwe]: My boyfriend ran away and went (.) to the rural areas. When I went to ask at his house they said they did not know where he was (.) but he is used to (.) disappearing like this. I told them about my pregnancy and they said they could not accept it if the person responsible (.) was not there and there was no way of verifying that it was his. I left their house in (.) tears.

In these extracts Andiswa and Lucy relate experiences of their partner refusing contact with them. In this, the partners sidestep responsibility for both the pregnancy and the potential child. In Lucy’s case the question of paternity is raised. The women in both sites regarded abandonment by their non-marital male partner as highly probable, if not inevitable. As such, women indicate that abandonment is a reality that not only needs to be taken into account when deciding how to resolve a pregnancy, but that also complicates a pregnancy, rendering it an unsupported one.

Notably, among South African women who utilised this discourse, these unstable relationships, which act to gender the responsibilities of child-rearing, were also constructed as unjust.

Extract 12

Andiswa [South Africa]: What I meant by he will make me struggle is that he refused to listen in the beginning (2) I said when I told him I was pregnant (.) he did not give me any interest because he said (2) what am I supposed to do with the fact that you’re pregnant? Then I asked how can you ask me what to do? I mean even when he talks he does not want anything to do with the child and even on the phone (.) he no longer answers my calls /mhm/ (.) you see?

Andiswa’s anger at her partner’s treatment of her is evident in this extract. The phrases “he will make me struggle”, “he refused to listen”, “I mean”, and “you see” emphasise to the interviewer the unfairness of her situation. She also relays how this anger was expressed to her partner: “How can you ask me what to do?” In addition, the South African women, in talking about taking steps to avoid sole responsibility for child-rearing, imply that gender relations in which the women would have to raise the existing children and/or the potential child themselves are indicative of an unfair and unjust state of affairs that must not be accepted, as seen in Zukiswa’s narrative in extract 3 before.

Unlike the talk around the “unfairness” of these gendered expectations in the South African context, there was relative silence on this in the Zimbabwean context. Despite women in both settings pointing out that men are unreliable and abandonment is to be expected, it was only South African women who voiced the unfairness of these gender relations. One explanation for this might be the fact that religious and cultural discourses were commonly deployed in Zimbabwe. When justifying an abortion decision in such settings, there is little room to manoeuvre, for to question the fairness of these gender relations would be to question the “culture” that reinforces these gendered relations and to position oneself, in a socially undesirable way, as outside of desirable “cultural” practices.

When speaking about unstable partner relationships, Zimbabwean women often drew from a “masculine provider” discourse where men’s denial of responsibility for the pregnancy meant that the pregnancy could no longer be supported. Men were expected to be providers and were thus counted on to do so. Consequently, the denial of this responsibility meant that there was no one to provide for the pregnancy. This is described below:

Extract 13

Rose [Zimbabwe]: That boyfriend then said we should have a child together. I agreed because I thought I had found someone who could take care of me. I had the pregnancy and when it was 2 months I told the boyfriend that what, I am pregnant. He just said “ok” but he destroyed his phone line (.) you can’t get hold of boyfriend [hand signals]. He stopped coming and he was not buying me any food anymore. He was not coming, he could not be found.

Rose, in Extract 13, draws from the “masculine provider” discourse when she talks of the expectation of men to be providers. Being pregnant without a solid, reliable heterosexual partner means gendered expectations of the roles of men and women have not been met and this problematises the pregnancy. Rose points to the man “taking care” of her and this might include both financial and emotional support under the socially sanctioned institution of marriage. The masculine provider discourse is closely linked to the idea of fathers being inherently good in children’s lives. This underscores the potential tenuousness of the economic circumstances in which single mothers might find themselves and emphasises the importance of the protection and sustenance that men may offer in such circumstances. From the above extract, a masculine provider can be described as a man who: (i) does not deny responsibility or abandon the woman when there is a pregnancy, (ii) can take care of the child and woman financially, (iii) can make decisions in the household, and (iv) is truthful and honest.

Shame and hiding

The Zimbabwean women deployed a discourse of “shame and hiding” concerning an unacceptable pregnancy to justify the abortion. Although the social operation of stigma could be inferred in South African women’s accounts, it was the Zimbabwean women who spoke explicitly of “shame” and the need to hide either the pregnancy or the abortion or both. Despite abortion being seen as a shameful and stigmatised act, these women spoke about how an abortion also assisted them in hiding the shame brought about by the circumstances of the pregnancy.

Extract 14

Rose [Zimbabwe]: The first thing was that I had lost my husband and I was ashamed that people would see me pregnant and I also had a baby who was not yet walking. Then I have another pregnancy and the pregnancy belongs to a boyfriend who is nowhere to be found, people would laugh at me.

Extract 15

Tina [Zimbabwe]: In Shona culture I had done three things that are (.) shameful. I was so shy I did not want anyone to know what I was planning. So I decided that the best thing was to terminate the pregnancy without anyone knowing. I did not know how to terminate (.) so I asked the prostitutes. I knew I could trust them and that is why I asked them.

Extract 16

Fiona [Zimbabwe]: Since, culturally I should have kids, my husband is troubling me saying he wants a child and we are always fighting in the house. I did not tell him that I terminated pregnancy because I was afraid that he would leave me because what I did was shameful [the abortion]. I am regretting why I did it.

Rose feels ashamed (i.e. the internalised sense of having done wrong) by being pregnant too soon after a previous birth (thereby fracturing the “imperative of good mothering”) and outside of a conjugal relationship (thereby fracturing the “conjugalisation of reproduction”). Her shame is compounded by the stigma that she might face (being laughed at). Using a “cultural” discourse, Tina talks to the necessity of hiding her shame as well as the actual abortion. She obtains her information from “prostitutes” who, as members of society who, according to the women, occupy a position of shame, will not judge her, or increase her shame. Fiona, who was struggling to conceive and who blames the abortion for this, speaks of the shame of terminating a pregnancy and how this means that she hides this action from her husband, despite the fighting that takes place in the house.

As indicated, while stigma was implicit in some of the talk of the South African women (e.g. around non-marital reproduction), they did not draw directly on a discourse of “shame and hiding” to justify their abortion decision. The fact that Zimbabwean women named shame directly may be related to the common use of cultural and religious metaphors within the Zimbabwean women’s talk, which was essentially absent in the South African data.

Discussion: Justifying abortion decisions

As the data extracts presented in this article suggest, when women narrate the decision-making process regarding abortion, it is difficult for them to do so without having to defend themselves. The construction of justificatory narratives in both countries within this loosely structured interview setting is particularly notable given the different politico-legal contexts of the two countries. That abortion is largely illegal in Zimbabwe accounts, in part, for Zimbabwean women’s adherence to the injunction to defend themselves for having terminated a pregnancy. However, that justificatory narratives were similarly constructed among South African women is striking given the legalisation of abortion and the strong public deployment of health rights discourses. This injunction for women to justify themselves should then, we argue, be read in light of the common discursive and gendered power relations of both contexts.

As indicated above, the women in the two contexts narrated their stories under very different circumstances. Despite this, there were remarkable similarities in the discursive resources drawn on by the women in justifying their abortion decisions. The absence of a discourse of human rights and the deployment of gendered discourses centring on marriage, mothering, and unstable heterosexual relationships meant that there were significant transversal commonalities in how the women accounted for their abortion decisions.

When justifying their reasons for abortion, women drew on a “conjugalisation of reproduction” discourse which normalises reproduction within marriage and the family. In doing so, women in the two countries problematised their pregnancy which occurred outside of marriage or outside of the heterosexual dyad, thus removing continuation of the pregnancy from the field of possibilities. That the women saw themselves as responsible for ensuring that pregnancy occurs within marriage underscores the gendered power relations at play. In addition to women ensuring that reproduction occurs within marriage, fathers were seen as inherently good in children’s lives and males were seen as providers. These gendered understandings of male and female roles point to the subtle function of patriarchal power relations which provide limited possibilities for men and women, but especially women who step outside of accepted practices (e.g. being pregnant outside of marriage).

Consequently, women subscribed to the “imperative of good mothering” discourse that is situated within marriage or, at the very least, within a heterosexual parenting dyad. Although women in both sites relied on constructions of womanhood that normalise “good mothering” practices, in South Africa women described these practices as intensive and fair care, while in Zimbabwe women spoke of “responsible” motherhood in the adherence to cultural practices (specifically children not sharing breast milk) and in response to proper economic arrangements being in place. Women across both sites drew on an “unstable partner relationship” discourse in which it was almost a foregone conclusion that the non-marital male partner would abandon them or refuse responsibility. South African women were able to describe these arrangements as unfair, while women in Zimbabwe tended to avoid this ascription.

The deployment of these common discursive resources points to the clear operation of gendered hetero-patriarchal power relations across the two sites. Gendered arrangements around marriage, childcare, financial provision, and responsibility framed both South African and Zimbabwean women’s relationships with their pregnancy and their decisions to terminate the pregnancy.

While there were some differences in the manner in which the common discursive resources were deployed, one discourse stood out in terms of being deployed only in one context. Women in Zimbabwe deployed a discourse of “shame and hiding”, which speaks to an internalised sense of having done wrong and a need to conceal the indiscretion. This discourse was used to describe the situation within which the pregnancy took place, the pregnancy itself as well as the abortion. This discursive resource was not drawn upon in the South African data set.

The power inherent in the first three discourses is demonstrated by the fact that women were able to position themselves as responsible in terminating the pregnancy: by putting the needs of their potential and existing children first, and by ending a pregnancy that has occurred outside of marriage and/or the heterosexual family. Thus, the picture that emerged was one in which abortion was the only reasonable and responsible course of action as a means to correct a transgression (such as reproduction outside of marriage or the absence of rational planning that allowed for responsible mothering) or to avoid a future transgression (children sharing of breast milk or giving unequal care and attention to one’s children). As a result of the unreliability of male partners with regard to providing support during the pregnancy and with regard to sharing child-rearing responsibilities, for some women carrying the pregnancy to term was not an option as they would struggle on their own, financially and in other ways, without this support. This uptake of the responsible subject position by women contradicts suggestions that they are irresponsible in relation to, first, the duty to take up motherhood, and second, the injunction to plan pregnancies.

While the first three discourses allow the women to position themselves as being responsible in their decision-making, the discourse of “shame and hiding” merely allows for the women to avoid being othered. The fact that this discourse only emerged explicitly in the Zimbabwean context may be related to the legal status of abortion and the use of cultural and religious discourses in the women’s talk.

The commonalities and differences in discursive resources deployed by these women need to also be seen in the light that the participants shared some commonalities across the two sites: the majority were unemployed and not in a permanent heterosexual relationship. Whether wealthier women in permanent heterosexual relationships would draw on similar discursive resources in narrating the decision to terminate a pregnancy would require further research.

The implications for a reproductive justice approach

If reproductive justice is about locating reproduction within the social power relations of a particular context, what can the post-colonial feminist approach that we have taken here contribute? We argue, first, that an analysis of the discursive resources available in different contexts enables an understanding of the gendered power relations inherent in reproductive issues such as abortion. Our approach allows for an analysis of the complexity of socially situated power relations in the process of deciding on an abortion. As we saw, the women in our study felt compelled to justify their abortion decisions through a mixture of gendered, heteronormative, religious, and cultural discourses. Second, the simultaneous unravelling of transversal commonalities and diversities across different contexts allows for the explication of cross-cutting gendered dynamics (e.g. the conjugalisation of reproduction) as well as situation-specific practices (e.g. the Shona cultural injunction against children sharing breast milk), each of which requires attention in terms of transnational feminist endeavours in the area of abortion.

It is important to note that a discourse of reproductive health rights that is strongly advocated in Western contexts was not used in either site when women justified the decision to have an abortion. This occurred despite the fact that this discourse has been used in the public domain in both countries. This absence is striking and indicates that such a discourse is unlikely to have much traction in abortion activism in these two contexts. Indeed, the framing of the CTOP Act within a “choice” and reproductive rights approach has proven woefully inadequate in furthering gender and reproductive justice in South Africa. Our data and the failure of Zimbabwean gender activists to impact on how abortion is viewed in the new constitution suggests that this approach is unlikely to have much success in advocacy to legalise abortion in Zimbabwe.

Framing abortion using a reproductive rights framework alone is problematic as this ignores the social relationships that permeate women’s lives. It is noteworthy that all of the discursive resources drawn on by the women to justify their decision involved speaking to relationships (lack of marital relationship, the mothering relationship, relationships with a man co-responsible for the pregnancy, social relationships), a finding that replicates discursive work conducted in other settings (see earlier review). We argue that speaking to reproductive justice in these two contexts means utilising language that has resonance with these kinds of discursive resources. For reproductive justice to be served in either contexts, feminists need to understand the (neo)colonial nature of a reproductive rights discourse and to replace it with a contextually nuanced reproductive justice stance, in particular one that undermines gendered power relations and that promotes caring and egalitarian relationships. Within this, feminists need to identify those power relations that are cross-cutting and transnational and that can be tackled on a broad front, and those power relations that are context specific and that require localised dialogues.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank the women who participated in this research, the service providers in both South Africa and Zimbabwe who facilitated our access to these women, and the co-interviewers who worked with us in both countries. Thank you to the CSSR members for input on our work, and Eva Magnusson and the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of previous drafts of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work is based on research supported by the South African Research Chairs initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation of South Africa (grant no. 87582) and the Andrew W Mellon (grant no. 11100695).

Notes

Author Biographies

Malvern Chiweshe is Post-doctoral Fellow at the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University. He holds a PhD in Psychology and a MA in Clinical Psychology from Rhodes University. His current work is on abortion, policy responses to marginalised youths in the Global South, and rape culture. He has presented at international conferences in Belfast, Pretoria, State College, and Grahamstown, and published work in Journal of Health Psychology.

Jabulile Mavuso is a PhD student in the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University. The topic for her Master’s and now her PhD work focuses on the area of abortion. She has published work in Journal of Health Psychology and presented at international conferences in Belfast, Pretoria, and Grahamstown.

Catriona Macleod is Professor of Psychology and SARChI chair of the Critical Studies in Sexualities and Reproduction research programme at Rhodes University. Her major scholastic contributions have been in two main areas: sexual and reproductive health, and feminist theory in psychology. She has written extensively in national and international journals in relation to teenage pregnancy, abortion, sex education, feminist psychology, and post-colonialism. She is author of the multi-award winning book ‘Adolescence’, pregnancy and abortion: Constructing a threat of degeneration (Routledge, 2011) and co-author (with Tracy Morison) of the book Men’s pathways to parenthood: Silence and heterosexual gendered norms (HSRC Press, 2015). She is editor-in-chief of the journal Feminism & Psychology.

References

Acevedo, M., & Krueger, J. I. (2004). Two egocentric sources of the decision to vote: The voter’s illusion and the belief in personal relevance. Political Psychology, 25, 115–134.

Chigudu

(2007) Deepening our understanding of community-based participatory research: Lessons from work around reproductive rights in Zimbabwe. Gender and Development 15: 259–270.

Chikovore

Lindmark

Nystrom

Mbizvo

M. T.

Ahlberg

B. M.

(2002) The hide and-seek game: Men’s perspectives on abortion and contraceptive use within marriage in a rural community in Zimbabwe. Journal of Biosocial Science 34: 317–332.

Chiweshe, M. (2015). A narrative-discursive analysis of abortion decision-making in Zimbabwe (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act No. 92 of 1996. Cape Town: South African Government Gazette, 377(17602).

Chrisler

J. C.

(2013) Introduction: A global approach to reproductive justice- psychosocial and legal aspects and implications. William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law 20: 1–24.

Coast, E., Norris, A., Moore, A., & Freeman, E. (2014). Trajectories to abortion and abortion-related care: A conceptual framework. Retrieved from http://paa2015.princeton.edu/uploads/150461.

De Bruin, W. B., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 938–956.

Eklund

Purewal

(2017) The bio-politics of population control and sex selective abortion in China and India. Feminism & Psychology 27: 34–55.

10.

Foucault

(1977) Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, London, UK: Penguin.

11.

Foucault

(1978) The history of sexuality Vol.1. London, UK: Penguin.

12.

Greene

(2006) Becoming responsible: Young mothers’ decision making regarding motherhood and abortion. Journal of Progressive Human Services 17: 25–43.

13.

Hansjee, J. (2011). Abortion as disruption: Discourses surrounding abortion in the talk of men (Unpublished master’s thesis). Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

14.

Harvey-Knowles

(2012) An examination of women’s decision-making processes during unplanned pregnancy. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication 13: 80–87.

15.

Hoggart

(2017) Internalised abortion stigma: Young women’s strategies of resistance and rejection. Feminism & Psychology 27. 186–202

16.

Hub, L. (2015, September 17). The law on abortion in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean. Retrieved from http://www.thezimbabwean.co/2015/09/the-law-on-abortion-in-zimbabwe.

17.

Izugbara

C. O.

Ochako

Izugbara

(2011) Gender scripts and unwanted pregnancy among urban Kenyan women. Culture, Health and Sexuality 13: 1031–1045.

18.

Jewkes

Brown

Dickson-Tetteh

Levin

Rees

(2002) Prevalence of morbidity associated with abortion before and after legislation in South Africa. British Medical Journal 324: 1252–1253.

19.

Jewkes

Gumede

Westaway

Dickson

Brown

Rees

(2005) Why are women still aborting outside designated facilities in metropolitan South Africa? International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology 1: 36–42.

20.

Jones

R. J.

Frohwirth

L. F.

Moore

A. M.

(2008) “I would want to give my child, like, everything in the world”: How issues of motherhood influence women who have abortions. Journal of Family Issues 29: 79–99.

21.

Jovchelovitch

Bauer

M. W.

(2000) Narrative interviewing. In: Bauer

M. W.

Gaskell

(eds) Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: A practical handbook, London, UK: Sage Publications, pp. 57–74.

22.

Juliusson, E. A., Karlsson, N., & Garling, T. (2005). Weighing the past and the future in decision-making. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 17, 561–575.

23.

Katz

(2017) Advocacy above the fray? Limitations of the pro-voice approach to supporting abortion patients. Feminism & Psychology 27, 243–250

24.

Lie

M. L. S.

Robson

S. C.

May

C. R.

(2008) Experiences of abortion: A narrative review of qualitative studies. BMC Health Services Research 8: 150–159.

25.

Macleod

(2003) The conjugalisation of reproduction in South African teenage pregnancy literature. Psychology in Society 29: 23–37.

26.

Macleod

Hansjee

(2013) Men and talk about legal abortion in South Africa: Equality, support and rights discourses undermining reproductive “choice”. Culture, Health and Sexuality 15: 997–1010.

27.

Macleod

Sigcau

Luwaca

(2011) Culture as a discursive resource opposing legal abortion. Critical Public Health 21: 237–245.

28.

Mama

(2005) Women mobilized. Feminist Africa 4: 1–9.

29.

Maternowska

M. C.

Mashu

Moyo

Withers

Chipato

(2014) Perceptions of misoprostol among providers and women seeking post-abortion care in Zimbabwe. Reproductive Health Matters 44: 16–25.

30.

Mdleleni-Bookholane

(2007) Factors related to and the consequences of the termination of pregnancy at the Umtata General Hospital, Eastern Cape. South African Journal of Psychology 37: 245–259.

31.

Mendes

J. F.

Basu

J. K.

(2010) Addressing the demand for termination of pregnancy services in district health facilities in Johannesburg. South African Medical Journal 100: 614.

32.

Mohanty

C. T.

(1988) Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review 30: 61–88.

33.

Mohanty

C. T.

(1999) Women workers and capitalist scripts: Ideologies of domination, common interests and the politics of solidarity. In: Hesse-Biber

Gilmartin

Lydenberg

(eds) Feminist approaches to theory and methodology: An interdisciplinary reader, New York, NY and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 362–387.

34.

Njambi

W. N.

(2004) Dualisms and female bodies in representations of African female circumcision: A feminist critique. Feminist Theory 5: 281–303.

35.

Orner

De Bruyn

Cooper

(2011) ‘It hurts, but I don’t have a choice, I’m not working and I’m sick’: Decisions and experiences regarding abortion of women living with HIV. Culture, Health and Sexuality 13: 781–795.

36.

Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2008). On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 672–695.

37.

Taylor

(2007) Narrative as construction and discursive resource. In: Bamberg

(ed.) Narrative – State of the art, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 113–122.

38.

Taylor

Littleton

(2006) Biographies in talk: A narrative-discursive research approach. Qualitative Sociology Review 2: 22–38.

39.

Zimbabwean Women Lawyers Association. (2013). Reflections on the tortuous tale of Mildred Mapingure. Retrieved from http://www.zwla.co.zw/index.php/component/k2/item/9-reflections.