The African Journal of Gender and Religion Vol. 26 No 2 (December 2020)
Sustaining Feminist Hope in Covid-19 Times of Despair and Anxiety Selina Palm1 1
SHORT BIO Selina Palm is a feminist scholaractivist based at the interdisciplinary Unit for Religion and Development Research at Stellenbosch University. She consults for organisations around the world to disrupt violence against women, children, and queer bodies. INSTITUTIONAL AFFILIATION Stellenbosch University; spalm@sun.ac.za ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7511-0170
ABSTRACT Covid-19 is a gendered pandemic. In South Africa it has exacerbated existing risks in the lives of many women and girls to gender-based discrimination and violence. This article explores how resilient habits and practices of hoping can nevertheless be nurtured by women within these times of anxiety and despair. It takes place in conversation with feminist theologian, Flora Keshgegian’s five contours of hope. Hope is imagined as a choral act where the individual stories of women’s lives can form acts of resistance, reform, and reimagining alongside God who is seen as an improvisational life-giving spirit, present in all our hopeful acts, no matter how small they may seem. This does not nurture an elite hope for the few, but an inclusive resurrection hope situated with those on the margins of society that can engage authentically with the tragedies of life. It offers ways to inhabit time, with all its risks and limits, whilst still remaining open to the positive possibilities with which all reality is laden. KEYWORDS Gender-based violence; South Africa; feminist theology; Covid-19; hope
Introduction
Feminist theologian, Sharon Welch asks, “What does it mean to work for social transformation in the face of seemingly insurmountable suffering and evil? How can we sustain energy and hope?”1 This question of sustaining hope is one that we can reflect on as different women from many walks of life in the light of two pandemics that South Africa faced in 2020 – the coronavirus (Covid-19) and gender-based violence (GBV). It intersects in troubling ways that leave us with feelings of loss, despair, and uncertainty. Together, it highlights increased dangers of stigma, silence, and isolation, and the rise of fear, trauma, and bereavement. It also confronts many women with a loss of hope. While Covid-19 affects all of us, it does not affect us all in the same way. As feminist scholars have highlighted,2 Covid-19 is a gendered pandemic. Covid-19, and our social responses to it in the South African context, come with particular risks for women. As Circle of Concerned 1 2
Sharon Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1990), 1. Selina Palm, “Homes of Bondage or Households of Freedom? The Role of Faith in Underlying Harmful Social Norms.” Webinar for Healthy Households Covid-19 series, 7 July 2020.
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