After more than three decades of work targeting violence against women and children and a raft of globally recognised research in the field, Professor Shanaaz Mathews said one question keeps her awake at night: Have I done enough?<\/strong><\/p>\n Professor Mathews\u2019 inaugural lecture on 4\u00a0August surely answered that, marking her rise to full professorship. Mathews is the director of the University of Cape Town\u2019s (UCT) Children\u2019s Institute in the Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Health, Faculty of Health Sciences\u00a0(FHS).<\/p>\n She dedicated her inaugural address, \u201cPreventing violence against children and violence against women: Mapping intersections and finding solutions in the Global South\u201d, to the women and children who have lost their lives to violence.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cMy research has been possible only because I\u2019ve researched them as subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cMy research has been possible only because I\u2019ve researched them as subjects,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n It was an uncomfortable but unavoidable topic at the start of Women\u2019s Month and a reminder in the faculty\u2019s 110th year of how much remains to be done, said the dean of the FHS, Associate Professor Lionel Green-Thompson, in his welcome.<\/p>\n Proud record<\/strong><\/p>\n Mathews\u2019 academic reach saw her appointment to the Lancet Commission on GBV and Child Maltreatment<\/a>, set-up by the prestigious medical journal\u00a0The Lancet<\/i>\u00a0with the aim of providing recommendations that change health policy or improve practice. She is also an International Advisory Board member for the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund\u00a0(UNICEF) Innocenti Research Office\u2019s Multi Country Study on the Drivers of Violence.<\/p>\n Her\u00a0career<\/a> is marked by many firsts and other milestones.<\/p>\n She was co-principal investigator on the national study on Femicide in South Africa (1999 and 2009), which flagged the country\u2019s shameful intimate femicide rates. The study was influential, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe used intimate femicide gun data from 1999 in submissions to influence the Firearms Control Amendment Act of 2006.\u201d<\/p>\n This study highlighted that South Africa has the highest reported rate of intimate femicide globally.<\/p>\n Ban on corporal punishment<\/strong><\/p>\n Her work resulted in changes in the laws governing corporal punishment.<\/p>\n \u201cFor more than a decade we advocated to end corporal punishment in the home,\u201d Mathews explained.<\/p>\n That campaign came to a head when she presented the expert affidavit for the South Gauteng High Court in June 2017. Although the court judgement outlawing corporal punishment in the home was appealed by Freedom of Religion in South Africa, the Constitutional Court later ruled that the \u201ccommon law defence of reasonable and moderate parental chastisement of children\u201d is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n Mathews led the first national study on child homicide that provided the first estimates of fatal child abuse and showed weaknesses in the criminal justice system with cases falling through the cracks and perpetrators not being held accountable.<\/p>\n This led to a pilot and evaluation of the effectiveness of Child Death Review teams at two sites in South Africa. The project was later expanded across the Western Cape Province to bolster health and child protection services and has become a routine practice.<\/p>\n Through the child death reviews, Mathews is working with postgraduate students on various aspects of child deaths. One project aims to understand the risk factors associated with sudden unexpected deaths among infants as the critical point to reduce under-five mortality in South Africa.<\/p>\n Realms of possibilities<\/strong><\/p>\n Mathews had never imagined this trajectory. Her beginnings at UCT mirrored the restrictions of the apartheid era. In 1982 when she matriculated from Harold Cressy, black students needed a permit to study social work at UCT. Becoming a professor was not in the 17-year-old\u2019s realm of possibilities.<\/p>\n \u201cI see myself as an accidental academic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cI was thrown in the deep end, but it made me understand the power of evidence to shift legislation and policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She learnt early how to define a space for herself as a practitioner, activist and researcher. As an activist in the early 1990s, Mathews saw the power of \u201ccollaboration and the collective\u201d of civil society in changing the lives of women and children.<\/p>\n From the onset, she learnt the importance of credible data. In 2000 at the Special Session of the General Assembly on \u201cWomen and Gender Equality\u201d (Beijing +5) at the United Nations in New York as a young researcher she presented her data on the national budget allocations for implementation of the Domestic Violence Act of 1998.<\/p>\n \u201cI was thrown in the deep end, but it made me understand the power of evidence to shift legislation and policy. It was an opportunity to show the importance of our work in the Global South.\u201d<\/p>\n Pathways to violence<\/strong><\/p>\n Mathews has tackled tough issues, and interviewing men in prison convicted for killing \u00a0their partners was a means to deepen her understanding of the causes of men\u2019s pathways to violent behaviour, she said.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cLegislation is not enough to shift women\u2019s experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cWomen need to be at the centre to bring about change, but we must take men along on that journey. Legislation is not enough to shift women\u2019s experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n The evidence shows multiple pathways: gender inequities and patriarchy in South Africa combined with the prevailing socio-cultural context \u201cprovides the space for men to be violent\u201d towards women. Guns, alcohol and drugs are also drivers.<\/p>\n The stories were familiar; childhoods that were \u201crough\u201d and \u201chard\u201d. Men got little positive attention from their mothers, while fathers were absent or emotionally uninvolved, which profoundly affected the way men viewed themselves. Without other role models, many sought affirmation outside the family \u2013 in gangs or criminal activity.<\/p>\n Lifelong implications<\/strong><\/p>\n Violence makes children especially vulnerable in their homes, schools and communities. The Childhood Longitudinal Study that had tracked 2\u00a0000 children born in Soweto in 1990, showed that 99% of the cohort had experienced or were exposed to violence, Mathews said.<\/p>\n \u201cImmediate long-term and cumulative effects of violence on children extends through early childhood, primary school, adolescence, adulthood and to their own parenting. It impairs cognitive development, and produces poor school outcomes, delinquent behaviour, risky sexual behaviour, substance abuse, mental health problems, and increased aggression.<\/p>\n \u201cThis intergenerational cycle is deadly. These pathways must be disrupted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cThis means that it\u2019s not just an academic response but an intersectoral feminist approach with women and children at the centre that can be adapted by individual communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Beyond legislation, transformative community partnerships are needed too.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.news.uct.ac.za\/images\/userfiles\/images\/news\/2022\/2022-08-12_Professor-Mathews.jpg\")
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