Women’s Month Profile: Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
Phillippa is an award-winning SA writer and performance artist who performs her work nationally and internationally. She teaches Creative Writing at Wits University and is passionate about inspiring women to reach their full potential.
Pledge for Parity
The International Women’s Day (IWD) theme for 2016 is Pledge for Parity. Worldwide, women continue to contribute to social, economic, cultural and political achievement. But progress towards gender parity has slowed in many places.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) predicted in 2014 that it would take until 2095 to achieve global gender parity. Then one year later in 2015, they estimated that a slowdown in the already glacial pace of progress meant the gender gap wouldn’t close entirely until 2133.
Biography: Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
Phillippa is a poet, writing and performing in English. She teaches Creative Writing at Wits University. She has been asked to guest edit a special edition of a US-based poetry journal called The Atlanta Review.
Q & A
What are your thoughts regarding the IWD theme? What does it mean for you personally?
Yes, we should have parity – but I believe that such struggles can’t be waged successfully in isolation. Inequality is a product of power relations that exist – too often this becomes a bourgeois or middle class concern. So my support of the principle has to be seen within the context that as long as the poorest woman is unfree – we are all limited. I am a poet, writing and performing in English, but that is another area where there is no equality – a poet performing in isiXhosa or xiTsonga won’t get access to the same platforms as I do – as a multilingual country, we are biased towards colonial languages, and away from indigenous ones. I don’t want to see things in isolation. Yes women should be seen as equally valuable, but so should the speakers of other languages too.
According to the WEF gender parity will only be achieved by 2133. What is your response to this statement and how do you contribute to the struggle for gender equality?
Well, with those goals that were set at the Millennium, I don’t hold my breath for those kinds of projections. Do you know that sometimes we are our own oppressors? With our habits and conditioning, the wish to please beyond our own desires? I’m into balance – I want to give and I want to receive. Remember being five and watching someone eating a sweet, and wishing you could have one too? I believe in productive jealousy – just that idea of wanting more because you see your friends have. You don’t want theirs but you want your own. I want to be free – I want my life to have no limitations – so this is mostly what I’m about.
If I try as much as I can to make myself free, I will also inspire others to change, to reach for that ‘unreachable’, to expect more from life, to allow themselves to even say it out loud.
As a Creative Writing lecturer at Wits University, I try to amplify and release women’s voices. I teach women’s poetry, I validate their experience; I celebrate their craft and the contribution they make to literature. I have been asked to guest edit a special edition of a US-based poetry journal called The Atlanta Review. It’s focussed on South African Women Poets – and I am proud to put forward the names of 30 women whose poetry will now be read in the USA.
What are the major obstacles that women face?
Patriarchy, patriarchy, patriarchy. And patriarchal thinking in ourselves. Patriarchy is a system, which implies that it’s systematic, universal, but there are many gaps that women are successfully exploiting. My adoptive mother was a great example. A university professor, she was always financially independent (in fact she was the main provider in the house where I grew up), she took care of herself, followed her dreams. This is a huge privilege that I have received from her example. Little girls are more verbal so we have a natural advantage when it comes to poetry. Poetry platforms have in the past been very male dominated, but more women have entered the audience and have changed the space by making it safe for others. I believe in solidarity. I believe that we are supposed to free ourselves and to free each other. Men are also chained by patriarchy.
What were the challenges and obstacles that you personally had to overcome to become the woman that you are today?
Feelings of abandonment and worthlessness caused by adoption, racism, self-hatred and the endless desire to please others before pleasing myself.
What advice do you have for young women today?
Love yourself. Be your best friend. Privately, you don’t need to be going on Facebook to tell everyone. Really listen to yourself. Make your own money. Don’t expect the world to make you feel like you’re worth it.
