4: Thank You, But i Got This: Gender Dynamics Between Researchers and The Black Middle Class

As illustrated in the previous chapters, studies on the Black middle class have been on the increase since 1994. What is evident in most of the South African scholarship on the Black middle class is the paucity of gender analysis. For example in many of these studies, including Alexander, Ceruti, Motseke, Phadi, and Wale (2013) and Phadi and Ceruti (2011), the multiple meanings of class position, issues of affordability, unemployment and social location are detailed without providing a gender analysis of those experiences.

In earlier literature on class from elsewhere in the world (Bendix & Lipset, 1953), it has been illustrated that to understand class it is not only important to address questions of class structure and class mobility, but also to focus on power differentials in stratified societies. Feminist scholars clearly indicate how experiences of the world are gendered and further show that gender, as an experience, is located within cultural systems and therefore its history and articulations must be critically charted along with other aspects of social systems (Collins, 2000; hooks, 2000; Oyewumi, 1997). It is therefore a serious limitation to engage in class analysis without providing a gender lens.