ABSTRACT
How does one study happiness among women within a postcolonial, post-apartheid context, where they occupy different positionalities across race and class? This chapter draws on a larger study on gender equality and happiness among South African women. The study is grounded within a feminist epistemological and methodological framework employing qualitative and survey methodologies. Qualitative individual interviews and focus group conversations were organized, and data from the World Values Survey (2014) were used for the quantitative component of the study. The aim of this chapter is threefold. First, the author looks at how women in South Africa speak about happiness in their everyday lives. Second, she considers the intersections of race and class in relation to women’s happiness. Third, she reflects upon the methodologies and methods employed in the study, and the value that these methods hold for contemporary feminist research across transnational contexts as well as in furtherance of the discipline of happiness studies.
