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6 tips to help you get your New Year’s Resolutions back on track
The beginning of the year is the most opportune time to start something new. Consequently, many start off their year with a list of resolutions; from exercising more to drinking less alcohol. Many even spend tons of money investing in exercise equipment, training gear, and other tools needed to make the year a successful one. Unfortunately, only 66% of those who set new year’s resolutions at the beginning of January would have stuck to them 2 weeks into January, 55% by the end of January, and only 43% after 3 months of setting their goals. Luckily, the month of February presents an opportunity to start afresh. Added to this, it’s…
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Planning For Success: Strategies for Early Career Graduate Students
Does it feel like you fluctuate between the two extremes of the students you saw sitting on the lawn reading an economics textbook or casually hunched over a microscope in a white coat in your university prospectus and the meme of the lady in a business suit frantically working against time while pulling out her hair? If your answer is yes, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Oh, and…welcome to graduate school! But, do not fear, you do not need to feel like you are constantly in a hamster wheel, but you do need to be aware that as a graduate student, the bulk of your time will be unstructured. This…
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Pandemic underscores burden women carry doing paid and unpaid reproductive labour
Debates about women’s unpaid reproductive labour have been going on since the first woman received cash for her services. Reproductive labour includes cooking, cleaning, and caring for the elderly, the sick and children. It’s important to make the distinction between paid and unpaid reproductive labour. Paid reproductive labour is performed in exchange for money or a wage. Unpaid reproductive labour is done for free, and usually for the household in which the individual lives. This reproductive work has traditionally been undervalued by both formal and informal institutions in societies, whether paid or unpaid. As paid reproductive workers, women often find themselves in occupations that are highly feminised. These are jobs…
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To say a whole damned mouth full
During the last few decades a lot of awareness has been created in South Africa surrounding the education of what non-verbal and physical sexual harassment is. The number of sexual offences that have been reported has increased from 64 512 during the 2001/2012 period to more than 66 000 sexual offences reported during the 2012/2013 period. This clearly indicates that people are feeling more empowered to report sexual offences or that sexual offences are on the increase. Either way, though it may not be all of them, sexual offences are being reported nonetheless. Now, I must make it clear that being a woman, I am writing on behalf of other…
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A SONA with too many plans?
The President delivered his State Of the Nation Address (SONA) on the 20th of June; the second one this year. As the South African tradition goes, the state of the nation is dismal. People are living in poverty, they don’t have jobs, inequality does not seem to be letting up, and the economy is just not providing the type of growth which is needed to address these social ills. Though there was some repetition from what was presented in the February SONA earlier this year, the President added some additional goals. Goals which can only be described as severely modest. Though I will not go into all of them here,…
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The Handmaid’s fictional (but arguably realistic) Tale
I recently finished a few seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale (based on the novel by Margaret Atwood), and found the story quite fascinating. What I liked most about it was (though it was an extreme example) its depiction of how quickly freedoms can be removed, but also the demonstration of how social institutions work in reality. For those who don’t know the story, it essentially plays out in a society where fertility has dropped significantly and a regime had been adopted where fertile women are forced to have children for elite couples who are unable to conceive. In this society, fertility is viewed as a moral obligation to ensure the…
