ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief history of South African women's movements and describes their struggle for substantive gendered citizenship. It argues that the significant gendered gains made are due to the women's movements' contribution to the national struggle against apartheid, and to the ongoing struggle for the realization of gender rights in the post-apartheid era. The gender concerns in the post-apartheid era have been determined by the extent to which each administration's development agenda was gender sensitive, as well as the public response to the quotidian implications of women's and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities' rights. The chapter explores the character of the South African women's movement, the nature of local feminism, women's gendered victories and challenges understood in the context of the anti-apartheid struggle and the battle to realize constitutional gender rights in the post-apartheid democratic era. Feminist moments in the anti-apartheid struggle were characterized by women's claims for citizenship that were recognized as democratic demands.
