Gender and Culture Shock at University

Abstract

The chapter seeks to embark on a qualitative study with first-year male students from a public university in South Africa to understand their adjustment and adapting to university life due to challenges with gender and sexuality matters that they face. The authors is mostly interested in male students as they are the usual perpetrators of gender and sexuality offences in universities. With this chapter, the author wants to understand the experiences of these students as they transition from one world (their hometowns) to another (university campuses). Of interest in this study is that some of the students at this university come from previously disadvantaged backgrounds: villages, townships, and farmsteads. Some of them have gone through traditional rites of passage such as initiation schools; others come from patriarchal backgrounds and heteronormative backgrounds.