It is fitting that we release this remarkable Big Ideas Talk just before International Women’s Day on March 8th. It’s about South Africa—a country with one of the most progressive constitutions in the world in addressing racial and gender injustices from the past.

Yet, as Ameeta Jaga makes clear, legal protections and policies meant to promote gender equality do not always translate into meaningful change for all women — especially low-income women who are mothers. Despite laws prohibiting discrimination and safeguarding women’s rights, there are disconnects between policy intentions and lived experiences.

Watch this Big Ideas Talk with Ameeta Jaga to learn about a powerful research project with low-income mothers who becomes co-researchers, and who, as experts of their lived realities, share their compelling stories and poignant photographs on “Why Policies Must Recognize Care Realities: Insights From The Motherload.”

About Ameeta Jaga

Ameeta Jaga (Ph.D.) is Professor of Organisational Psychology at the University of Cape Town and a non-resident fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Centre for African and African American Research. She applies a Southern and decolonial approach to address the geopolitics of knowledge production, focusing on gender and social class analyses of work-family concerns, particularly among low-income mothers. Employing feminist methodologies like photovoice, her research aims for epistemic justice, impacting workplace breastfeeding support and policy enhancements for care work. Ameeta’s work is published in Gender, Work and Organisation, International Journal of Human Resource Management, and Journal of Applied Psychology.