Chriscy Blouws

Profile

I am a social justice, gender activist, and human rights lawyer who obtained my LLB from the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town South Africa.
I completed my law articles at the Legal Resources Centre, where after I moved to the Northern Cape to head the Lawyers for Human Rights law clinic which focused on land and housing, specifically tenure security for farmworkers and farm dwellers. I moved back to Cape Town to focus on urban land issues and spatial justice at Ndifuna Ukwazi for two years before joining the Women’s Legal Centre in 2018.

I am currently employed at the Women’s Legal Centre as an attorney working on women’s rights to favourable and just working conditions with a specific focus on the lived reality of marginalised workers who live and work in precarious conditions. My work focuses on substantive equality and creating feminist jurisprudence which recognises women’s rights to be safe and free from violence in their workplace and in society.

I also work on women’s rights to be free from violence, in particular, the right of women to publicly name their perpetrators and this area of work seeks to recognise the systemic failures, lived reality and South African context which contributes to why women choose to speak publicly against violence. Overall, I recognise how women experience compounded discrimination based on their intersecting identities and acknowledges how women who live and work in poverty struggle to access adequate and basic services.

I am a member of the DAWN alumni network (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era). DAWN is a transnational feminist network of scholars, researchers, and activists from the global South, and I continue to contribute to substantive equality for women through this network.

I serve as the Deputy Chairperson on the Board of Trustees of the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children. SBCWC is a holistic centre that provides legal and education services and shelter support to survivors of abuse.

I have also completed training with the Digital Society of Africa which offers direct support to human rights organizations in need of improving their digital security across Africa and I am a member of DSA and continue to pursue the achievement of human rights protections through the use of digital and security tools.