Sex, Gender, Becoming - PULP

Agency amidst adversity: poverty and women’s reproductive lives 113
from a classic fertility transition’. This new regime which South Africa
is producing is likely to impact significantly on population dynamics,
particularly in poverty-stricken areas such as Winterveld. Thus,
Lesthaeghe’s argument that fertility could decline owing to the
effects of a series of hardships, entrenched over a sustained period of
time, does have relevance for this particular case study. Arguably, it
will become all the more significant as the HIV/AIDS pandemic begins
to affect (in more ruthless ways) relationships, sexual behaviour and
levels of mortality.
6. Conclusion
The women’s stories in Winterveld suggest gendered responses to
poverty that are having an impact on fertility and gender relations.
Masculine responses to economic hardship and domestic strife have
included desertion and violence against women. In circumstances
where women are not abandoned they often complain about their
partner’s inability to earn a living and to the enormous demands on
them to maintain their children and see to the needs of a household.
Stress within households is generally aggravated by abusive acts and
accusations of infidelity. Households without the daily presence of
men are common and the general experience of poverty keeps
familial bonds fragile and subject to the constant threat of
dissolution. The life histories of both older and younger women
indicate that while family life has always been subject to various
kinds of domestic and economic pressure, the structure of households
and support networks have been severely challenged by Winterveld’s
endurance of increasing marginalisation and neglect in recent years.
In these circumstances it has been common for women to bear
children in more than one union, to avoid pregnancy when it does not
serve material interests, and to seek to have as small a number of
children as is commonly associated with well-educated women in
developed countries.
Increasingly, studies argue that more needs to be understood about
how reproductive decisions are made, 63 whether these ‘decisions’ can
be seen to be stable fertility goals 64 and the extent to which they
reflect power differentials in the domestic domain. 65 However, it is
largely within the framework of formal marriage structures that
negotiations and decision-making are explored. It is rarely the case
that marriage or the weakening of conjugal and social bonds becomes
the focus of in-depth scrutiny in the predominantly large scale studies
of fertility. Nor is it common for demographers to explore and re-
63 Eg AK Blanc et al Negotiating reproductive outcomes in Uganda (1996).
64 C Bledsoe et al ‘Reproductive mishaps and Western contraception: An African
challenge to fertility theory’ (1998) 24 Population and Development Review 15.
65 Kabeer (n 6 above).