The Everyday Feminist

1What Is an Everyday Feminist and Why Do They Matter for Social Impact?

A mother‐daughter duo came into the legal clinic in Zwelihle township, close to Hermanus in the Western Cape of South Africa, a community of more than 100,000 people. Both were stunningly gorgeous. The 11‐year‐old daughter, Nomani, wore a school uniform, and her mother donned a hot pink head wrap that accentuated her strong facial features. As we sat in the legal clinic, housed among the rows of aluminum shacks with the beautiful Indian Ocean in the distance, Nomani told me her story.

The previous year, she'd been caught for the second, maybe third, time having a cigarette with her friends on her school campus. They were all reprimanded and punished with four to eight flogs with a paddle or type of whip. After arguing unsuccessfully for a different “sentence,” Nomani received her whipping with courage and trepidation. She had been through this before and tried to be strong. However, it was painful and, as she turned in the middle of her head teacher's flogging, she was hit on other parts of her body, including her face. A year later, the scar on her left cheek was a reminder of the violence she'd endured in a school setting.

I'd arrived in South Africa three months earlier in 1994 to do a legal externship with the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), an organization that aspires toward a fully democratic, equal society. The negotiations to end apartheid were in full swing as the country prepared for its first ...