Justice and Women (JAW)

CONTACT PERSON: Jenny Bell PHYSICAL ADDRESS: Room 35, Tembaletu Centre 206 Burger Street Pietermaritzburg South Africa, 3201 POSTAL ADDRESS: P O Box 2748 Pietermaritzburg South Africa, 3200 TELEPHONE: +27 33 394 9949 FAX: +27 33 394 9566 E-MAIL:jaw@futurenet.co.zaJAW is a non profit organization that was founded in 1996 through a consultative process with women and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. JAW started as a court-based service helping women access family law rights including Domestic Violence Protection Orders and Maintenance. JAW has always worked on the premise that women remained trapped in violent relationships when they are impoverished and economically dependant, and so has always sought to achieve gender-justice with a specific focus on women’s property and socio-economic rights. JAW also believes that GBV must be addressed systemically, by challenging and transforming the gendered cultural attitudes, beliefs and practices that give rise to power inequities and make women in particular vulnerable to abuse. JAW moved out of the Court in 2006 and has since expanded its to include work with rural communities on gender issues in Zululand. Kwa Zulu Natal. JAW currently operates from an office in Pietermaritzburg and from one in Melmoth, Zululand

ObjectivesJAW’s overall goal is to enable the empowerment of women by mobilizing them to become active agents in their own socio-economic development. A central aim is also to empower women to challenge and transform institutional policies, practises and procedures within the provisions of Family Law that impede the effective realization of their rights.

Areas of WorkIn general, JAW works to meet its objectives through providing legal and administrative support to women, as well as facilitating community-based training and programs. In particular, JAW supports the following types of interventions: a court-based legal literacy program (i.e., empowering women with tools and knowledge to access their rights); internships (i.e., helping women acquire confidence through working within a state system to more assertively demand their rights through that system); mediation (i.e., building an alternative resource to help community capacity to more speedily resolve family disputes); lobbying and advocacy (i.e., enabling women to hold state and community structures more accountable for addressing women’s concerns); maintenance case monitoring; lobbying at regional and national levels; and, the establishment of a rural and community-based program to support women and children in crisis as a result of GBV and HIV/AIDS (working through and with traditional leaders and service providers).

Capacity on Women’s Rights and Gender EqualityJAW has been involved in the Gender at Work Action Learning process and a result has been refocusing its work and organizational structures. As a women’s organization, JAW is conscious that it cannot empower women by replicating unequal power relationships within its own organization, and as a result has shifted its strategy from a role of simply ‘helping’ women access their legal rights, to engaging women who think critically, engage politically, and speak for themselves. As a result, JAW seeks to provide women with discussion and critical reflection spaces in order to deepen their understanding of the gendered power dynamics of the issues they are dealing with, and to begin to develop advocacy strategies for issues which are seen to have strategic value for women.