RSVP: UCT Inaugural Lecture of Professor Ameeta Jaga

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The University of Cape Town invites you to an inaugural lecture by Professor Ameeta Jaga

Topic: Balancing acts: Mothering, womanhood and employment

As an organisational psychologist navigating her own life as an Indian woman, mother, wife, and academic, Ameeta has spent the past 15 years exploring the importance of context in shaping the work-life balance equation. For many, this balancing act is challenging, but especially for single, low-income mothers. Amongst the obstacles are a lack of supportive policies and their implementation, serious infrastructural shortcomings, and limited resources (in the family, community, and the state). The fact that academically, theories and prescriptions from the global North do not offer adequate help in understanding the problems means that suggestions built from them to improve the work-life interface are ineffectual. Northern, industrial, capitalist, and masculine norms influence the organisation of work despite often being inappropriate in settings in the global South.

Initially, her work challenged the inadequacy of work-life balance frameworks in representing and conceptualising diverse women’s lives. For her, the #RhodesMustFall movement further highlighted epistemic injustices, exposing the invisibility of low-income women in work-family research. She has since engaged in various collaborative projects on mothering, women, and work. Her earlier efforts focused on improving workplace awareness and policies for pregnant and lactating women’s bodies in the workplace, through partnerships with trade unions and government. Currently, under the concept "the Motherload", she is collaborating with a transdisciplinary academic team, women’s rights organisations, government, and low-income mothers themselves to co-create sustainable pathways to enhance their economic security, safety, and wellbeing. In her inaugural lecture, she shares personal reflections and research insights on balancing mothering, womanhood, and employment, advocating for a more inclusive and caring society.

Date: Thursday, 29 August 2024

Time: 17:00 SAST

Venue: Lecture Theatre LC2A, Level 2, Leslie Commerce Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town

About our speaker

Ameeta Jaga (PhD) is a Professor of Organisational Psychology in the School of Management Studies in the Faculty of Commerce and a non-resident fellow at Harvard University's Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research. Her research adopts a Southern and decolonial approach to address the geopolitics of knowledge production, focusing on gendered and social class analyses of work-family concerns, particularly among low-income mothers. Using feminist methodologies like photovoice, her participatory action research aims for epistemic justice, influencing workplace breastfeeding supports and policy improvements on care work by recognising and reducing the Motherload.