Biosketch

Prof Amanda Gouws

Amanda Gouws is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and holds a PhD from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in the USA. She currently holds a SARChI Chair in Gender Politics.

Her fields of specialisation are South African Politics, Gender Politics and Political Behavior. Her co-authored book with James Gibson from Washington University St Louis, Overcoming Intolerance in South Africa: Experiments in Democratic Persuasion (Cambridge University Press, 2003) was awarded the Alexander George Book Award for best book in Political Psychology in 2003. In 2004 she received the Rector's Award for Excellence in Research. She is the editor of (Un)Thinking Citizenship: Feminist Debates in Contemporary South Africa. (UK: Ashgate and Cape Town: Juta, 2005). This book was selected as "Book of the Month" in February 2007 by Constitution Hill, the seat of the Constitutional Court.

In 2012 she received an award in the category Distinguished Women in Science from the Department of Science and Technology. In 2012 she received the Wilma Rule Award for the best paper in the category "Women and Politics" from the International Political Science Association (IPSA) at their conference in Madrid, Spain, with a paper titled: “Multiculturalism in South Africa: Dislodging the Binary between Universal Human Rights and Culture/Tradition". Her edited manuscript with Daiva Stasiulis, titled Gender and Multiculturalism: North/South Perspectives appeared with Routledge in 2014. An edited collection with Joy Watson on the global impact of Donald Trump, Nasty Women Talk Back, appeared with Imbali Press in 2018.

She has published widely on issues in South African Politics and Gender Politics. Her areas of specialization is women and citizenship, women's representation in government, women's movements, national gender machineries and gender based violence.

She is a member of the Association of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAF). She was a Commissioner with the South African Commission for Gender Equality from 2012 to 2014. In 2018, she received the Rector's Award for Excellence in Media Reporting. She writes and op-ed piece in a newspaper every second week.

Current Research Projects

· The first gender base line study on attitudes toward gender equality and culture is being analysed and written up in a co-authored book.

· The women's movement in post-apartheid South Africa

· Determining the obstacles for women members of parliament to contribute to substantive representation