Women's ethic of caring for others and the environment has interested Dr Khayaat Fakier's since her student days and is today also her research topic in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University.

As part of South Africa's Women's Month celebrations, she tells us more about her work in this field.

Tell us more about your research?

My main research interest is the feminist ethic of care − how and why women care for other people and for the environment. I am especially concerned with how much effort and energy women with limited or no resources put into making their physical and social environments safer and more supportive for those more vulnerable than them. Often, women do so under conditions of great deprivation, and with little recognition or reward for the tremendous effort they put into securing the future of the vulnerable and of society.

I have been appointed as incumbent of the Prince Claus Chair in Equity and Development at the International Institute for Social Studies in The Hague from September 2021 until August 2023. My research in this capacity will elaborate on this interest in women caring for others and the environment, and will involve building links between international women movements and the women's movements and organisations I have been working with in South Africa.

Why or how did you become interested in this specific research area?

Even as an undergraduate student, my research focused on gender and class. At the end of my first degree, in 2006, I co-wrote an article about the impact that outsourced employment relationships have on the economic and care relations of women who are poorly paid. This engagement with the paid and unpaid labour of black women continued into my graduate research as I started exploring the role of reproductive work in sustaining apartheid and post-apartheid economies. This evolving understanding was elaborated upon in my PhD, which I completed in 2010. While my PhD tackled the topic of internal migration – the exploitative labour system on which apartheid capitalism had been built – it was the distorted relations of care that captured my attention and characterised my post-PhD work.

Since 2010, my research has focused on predominantly black, underprivileged women involved in the public employment programmes of the post-apartheid state, and illustrates how state and corporate responsibility to care for the vulnerable and for the environment is outsourced and externalised to women (and sometimes also to children, as my PhD shows). What is also evident from my work is that women are committed to preserving the natural environment, and to fighting back against its destruction. This connectedness is not because of an intrinsic link to nature, but stems from the conditions under which they care for others. So, my research also involves the perspectives of women who live on mine dumps or close to mining activities, on farms where they are often unable to secure healthy nutrition for themselves, and in townships where public provision of safe areas, clean energy, etc. is lacking.

I have led research projects and written and co-edited research publications across multinational contexts, such as Brazil, Argentina, India, Mozambique, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, which enabled me to explore how the position of women intersect with class, race, nationality and sexuality.

Why do you think this is such an important research area for women/young girls in South Africa (or globally)?

The need for care, in a context where there is little support for children and adults from poor households, the elderly and the disabled, can be a space of enjoyment, creativity and love, but is also characterised by sacrifice and obligation. Yet our care for others and the environment also provides us with a motivation to develop bonds of solidarity and community (in social movements and community-based organisations), which could be a counterforce to loneliness, neglect and despair for the future.

The pandemic has changed the way we work and live. What keeps you motivated during these times?

The pandemic has heightened the need to look at how care can be conducted with limited resources, as well as how this affects caregivers. What keeps me motivated is the creative ways in which my postgraduate students have conducted research in this period, using technologies such as WhatsApp calls, MS Teams and Photovoice. All of their research shows that an ethic of care is not only a topic to be studied and researched, but also something to practise.

What would your message be to the next generation of women researchers?

Stay committed to your political ideals about the kind of society you want for yourselves, for others and for the future. Different forces in society will make you want to change your views or your path. But stick to what you want. It is worth your while. ​