Policy commitments vs. lived realities of young pregnant women and mothers in school, Western Cape, South Africa

Ngabaza, Sisa; Shefer, Tamara

doi:10.1016/s0968-8080(13)41683-x

Cited by 23 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 6 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…The disciplinary response to young people's sexualities, including its strongly gendered nature, is similarly illustrated in research on responses to teenage pregnancy and parenting at schools, as evident in recent literature which foregrounds continued discom-fort with, resistance to, and stigmatisation of sexually active young women in particular, and resistance to human rights discourses and policies which promote the rights of young people to education (Bhana, Morrell, Shefer, & Ngabaza, 2010;Ngabaza & Shefer, 2013;Nkani & Bhana, 2010). At the core of this response are a range of prescriptions about young sexualities, shaped by heteronormative and moralistic discourses on parenting and families.…”

Section: Commentmentioning

confidence: 97%

Resisting the binarism of victim and agent: Critical reflections on 20 years of scholarship on young women and heterosexual practices in South African contexts

Shefer

2015

Global Public Health

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The last 20 years have seen a proliferation of research, spurred by the imperatives of the HIV epidemic and reportedly high rates of gender-based violence, on heterosexual practices in the South African context. Research has focused on how poverty, age and gender within specific cultural contexts shape sexual agency and provide a context for unequal, coercive and violent practices for young women. This paper takes stock of what we currently 'know' about heterosex and critically reflects on the political and ideological effects of such research, specifically in the light of young women's agency. A primary concern is that efforts to address gender inequality and the normative gender practices that shape inequitable heterosexual practices may have functioned to reproduce the very discourses that underpin such inequalities. The paper 'troubles' the victim-agency binarism as it has been played out in South African research on heterosex, raising concerns about how the research may reproduce gendered, classed and raced othering practices and discourses and bolstered regulatory and disciplinary responses to young women's sexualities. The paper argues for critical, feminist self-reflexivity that should extend to re-thinking methodologies entrenched in frameworks of authority and surveillance.

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Section: Commentmentioning

confidence: 97%

Resisting the binarism of victim and agent: Critical reflections on 20 years of scholarship on young women and heterosexual practices in South African contexts

Shefer

2015

Global Public Health

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“…Available data suggests that gender gaps in STEM vary considerably across regions [5], and chief barriers to women in STEM or best approaches to remove those barriers are likely to differ substantially between SSA and other regions as well as within SSA. Influential commentaries and reviews [2,3] stress the urgency of closing Africa's gender gaps in STEM, and there is an emerging rigorous qualitative literature, e.g., [12,[18][19][20][21]. However, we know of only two quantitative studies on women's participation in STEM in SSA [14,22]; both are descriptive rather than inferential.…”

Section: Plos Onementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A complex interaction of many factors explains women's underrepresentation in science and technology fields, with the STEM pipeline "leaking" girls and women at various stages from secondary school through undergraduate and graduate studies and as they transition to a career in STEM [4,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. The present study focuses on the PhD portion of the STEM pipeline and examines whether there are gender-based differences in PhD performance (e.g., number of publications) and completion for students in SSA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making it to the PhD: Gender and student performance in sub-Saharan Africa

et al. 2020

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Women’s underrepresentation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) impedes progress in solving Africa’s complex development problems. As in other regions, women’s participation in STEM drops progressively moving up the education and career ladder, with women currently constituting 30% of Africa’s STEM researchers. This study elucidates gender-based differences in PhD performance using new survey data from 227 alumni of STEM PhD programs in 17 African countries. We find that, compared to their male counterparts, sampled women had about one less paper accepted for publication during their doctoral studies and took about half a year longer to finish their PhD training. Negative binomial regression models provide insights on the observed differences in women’s and men’s PhD performance. Results indicate that the correlates of publication productivity and time to PhD completion are very similar for women and men, but some gender-based differences are observed. For publication output, we find that good supervision had a stronger impact for men than women; and getting married during the PhD reduced women’s publication productivity but increased that of men. Becoming a parent during the PhD training was a key reason that women took longer to complete the PhD, according to our results. Findings suggest that having a female supervisor, attending an institution with gender policies in place, and pursuing the PhD in a department where sexual harassment by faculty was perceived as uncommon were enabling factors for women’s timely completion of their doctoral studies. Two priority interventions emerge from this study: (1) family-friendly policies and facilities that are supportive of women’s roles as wives and mothers and (2) fostering broader linkages and networks for women in STEM, including ensuring mentoring and supervisory support that is tailored to their specific needs and circumstances.

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“…The 1996 South African Schools Acts states that schooling must be available for pregnant learners and mothers cannot be excluded from mainstream schooling (Ngabaza and Shefer, 2013). However, the legislation has been inconsistently implemented and young mothers may face stigma and a lack of support upon their return to school and have reduced odds of completing school (Timaeus and Moultrie, 2015).…”

Section: Conclusion and Policy Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work and family transitions and the self-rated health of young women in South Africa

Bennett

Waterhouse

2018

Social Science & Medicine

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Understanding the transition to adulthood has important implications for supporting young adults and understanding the roots of diversity in wellbeing later in life. In South Africa, the end of Apartheid means today's youth are experiencing their transition to adulthood in a changed social and political context which offers opportunities compared to the past but also threats. This paper presents the first national level analysis of the patterning of key transitions (completion of education, entry into the labour force, motherhood and marriage or cohabitation), and the association between the different pathways and health amongst young women. With the use of longitudinal data from the South African National Income Dynamics Study (2008-2015), this paper employs sequence analysis to identify common pathways to adulthood amongst women aged 15-17 years at baseline (n = 429) and logistic regression modelling to examine the association between these pathways and self-rated health. The sequence analysis identified five pathways: 1. 'Non-activity commonly followed by motherhood', 2. 'Pathway from school, motherhood then work', 3. 'Motherhood combined with schooling', 4. 'Motherhood after schooling', and 5. 'Schooling to non-activity'. After controlling for baseline socio-economic and demographic characteristics and health, the regression results show young women who followed pathways characterised by early motherhood and economic inactivity (1, 3 and 4) had poorer self-rated health compared to women whose pathways were characterised by combining motherhood and economic activity (2) and young women who were yet to become economically active or mothers (5). Therefore, policies should seek to prevent adolescent childbearing, support young mothers to continue their educational careers and enable mothers in work and seeking work to balance their work and care responsibilities. Further, the findings highlight the value of taking a holistic approach to health and provide further evidence for the need to consider work-family balance in the development agenda.

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Policy commitments vs. lived realities of young pregnant women and mothers in school, Western Cape, South Africa

Cited by 23 publications

References 6 publications

Resisting the binarism of victim and agent: Critical reflections on 20 years of scholarship on young women and heterosexual practices in South African contexts

Resisting the binarism of victim and agent: Critical reflections on 20 years of scholarship on young women and heterosexual practices in South African contexts

Making it to the PhD: Gender and student performance in sub-Saharan Africa

Work and family transitions and the self-rated health of young women in South Africa

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