The democratic transition in South Africa after 1994 heralded the introduction of gender-sensitive policies that have brought many bene-fits, including legislative reforms to address violence against women and to ensure women’s rights to safe termination of pregnancy. Formal equality coincided with a rapid increase in women’s employment in the labor market. This article draws on interviews to illustrate the lived realities of two working women employed in the rapidly informalizing labor markets of the fish-processing and construction sectors. The women have entered casualized short-term contracts because this is the only form of employment available. The article focuses on what life his-tories tell us about both the impact of structural economic change on women in post-apartheid South Africa and the ways that the women’s productive and reproductive lives are understood by themselves.
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