Media Advisory – Constructions of Femininity in Alexandra Township

Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)

Press Release

Women’s Month 2026: HSRC Press spotlights Constructions of Femininity in Alexandra Township by Tumi Mampane

Pretoria, Friday 7 August 2026 – In commemoration of Women’s Month 2026, the HSRC Press is celebrating women by highlighting women authors and their publications on issues affecting women. This week we focus on Pentecostal Charismatic Women: Constructions of Femininity in Alexandra Township, now available free of charge on the HSRC Press Open Access portal.

Pentecostal Charismatic Women: Constructions of Femininity in Alexandra Township is a Black feminist autoethnographic study written from the perspective of an insider in both the Pentecostal community and Alexandra township.

The book uncovers the daily lives of women in an African Pentecostal community and relates them to Black/African feminist and womanist theory. It reveals how Pentecostal Charismatic women in Alexandra build strong bonds with one another despite their differences, and how they contest controlling images of femininity even as they sometimes reproduce problematic heteronormative constructions of social life.

Through an examination of Pentecostal Charismatic discourses, the book traces how the gender identities of women congregants are shaped. It also observes and records women churchgoers to offer insight into their personal perceptions, embodiments, and performances of power and agency within the church and in wider societal spaces.

Positioned as an intervention into both anthropological scholarship and work on the internalised oppression of women, the book moves beyond the confines of “agency versus oppression” debates. Instead, it offers feminist imaginaries that expose the complexities and contestations present in sermons and in the intimate relations women have with each other.

The book is written by Tumi Mampane, an African feminist who was a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Johannesburg at the time of writing. She is affiliated to the National Research Fund (NRF) South African Research Chairs Initiative (SARCHi) Chair in African Feminist Imagination at Nelson Mandela University. Tumi is also a lecturer in the Department of Communication Science at the University of the Free State.

Her research interests include cultural and media studies, township femininities, popular culture, African Pentecostalism, discourse analysis, narrative analysis, ethnography, and feminist theory.

Pentecostal Charismatic Women: Constructions of Femininity in Alexandra Township is available free of charge on the HSRC Press Open Access portal as part of our commitment to ensuring scholarship travels across disciplines, borders, and payment gateways.

HSRC Press has made more than 300 titles freely available online. The Open Access catalogue reflects the full breadth of human sciences research on Africa and the Global South.

ENDS.

For media enquiries, please contact Adziliwi Nematandani: Cell: +27 82 765 9191 Email: anematandani@hsrc.ac.za

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Notes to the editor

HSRC Press Open Access

HSRC Press has made more than 300+ titles freely available online, and our open access catalogue reflects the full breadth of human sciences research on Africa and the Global South.

Education and skills development form the largest strand of the collection, with titles exploring everything from early childhood learning to higher education reform, teacher training, and vocational pathways. Health and wellbeing are equally prominent, with research on HIV/AIDS, disability, orphaned and vulnerable children, and public health policy spanning South Africa and the wider continent.

Democracy, governance, and society is another prominent thread works examining service delivery, social cohesion, inequality, and the unfolding of South Africa’s democratic project sit alongside titles on gender, land, migration, and the fourth industrial revolution.

The collection also reaches across the continent through our AISA titles, covering African politics, development, and international relations, as well as the environment, energy, and climate change.

From biography and history to economics, media, and culture, the range is deliberately wide. HSRC Press believes that scholarship should travel, across disciplines, across borders, and beyond institutional payment gateways. Every title in this catalogue is available free of charge on the website.

About the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)

Established in 1968, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) is South Africa’s statutory research agency and the largest dedicated social science and humanities research institute on the African continent. The HSRC generates evidence and insights that inform public policy, support development and improve lives. Through high-quality research, strategic partnerships and research capacity development, the Council contributes to evidence-informed decision-making in South Africa, Africa and globally.

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