Reflections on the Sexual Agency of Young Women in a Low-Income Rural South African Community

Abstract

Reproductive health issues are pertinent in the mental health development of young women in South Africa, especially young women in low-income communities. The prevalence of problems such as HIV/AIDS and unplanned or unwanted pregnancies among South African female adolescents specifically warrants urgent attention. It is argued that inadequate theoretical frameworks and inadequate data on sexuality in different South African communities hamper effective preventative interventions in the female reproductive health arena. This article reports and discusses some of the findings of a larger study exploring female adolescent sexuality in one specific low-income South African community. Twenty-five adolescent women from low-income, ‘coloured’1 households in the Western Cape were interviewed about their first experiences of sexual intercourse. It was found that the participants demonstrated limited sexual agency in their first experiences of sexual intercourse. The authors conclude that a new discourse of female sexual agency may be needed.

Narratives of transactional sex on a university campus

“…For women in particular this binarism appears to overlap with the whore-madonna trope that has been highlighted as salient in the South African context, as it has internationally, and reframed by notions of 'clean' and 'unclean' women in discourses on (un)safe sex (for example, Shefer and Foster 2009;Waldby, Kippax, and Crawford 1993;Wood and Foster 1995). Missing from this discourse is any substantive positive narrative on female sexuality and desire, and this has also been identified as a challenge in the broader context of heterosexuality studies (Holland et al 1991;Lesch and Kruger 2004;Shefer and Foster 2009). In other words, in emerging out of particular social, historical and cultural contexts in which female sexuality in general (and female transactional sex in particular) is constructed negatively, these students are (not unexpectedly) reinscribing dominant discourses around heterosexuality and gender that deny the possibility of any transactional relationship being equitable or non-exploitative.…”

Positively pregnant: Teenage women's experiences of negotiating pregnancy with their families

“…Adolescent girls have also been reported to show limited sexual agency in their sexual experiences (Lesch & Kruger, 2004), and this has been attributed to numerous factors within their social contexts. Some of these include the social constructions of masculinities and femininities (see Varga, 2003;Shefer & Foster, 2009), which tend to subscribe to a passive female sexuality and male agency, and where double standards which punish young women for being assertive in sexuality while rewarding young men for their sexual prowess are still dominant.…”

“…In such instances, teenagers are somehow expected to act within the framework of what is socially accepted sexual behaviour. In most cases they fail to acknowledge their sexuality as something they could own and act upon, and researchers have highlighted the lack of a positive discourse on female sexuality and desire which may facilitate their ability to negotiate a safe and equal sexual relationship (Lesch & Kruger, 2004).…”

“…It seems that the dominant picture of young women's sexuality as generally reflecting a lack of negotiation, as unwanted and undesired, also carries over into perspectives on teenage pregnancy and motherhood which, as argued previously, are mostly constructed as a problem for both the teenage mother and broader society. Lesch and Kruger (2004) argue that sexual agency involves choosing and acting on certain options that seem to be appropriate within a particular circumstance. Such a notion of agency may also have import in the framework of teenage pregnancy and parenting, where it is generally assumed that young women 'fall' into pregnancy and motherhood without exercising any choice or taking any control in their situation, somehow assumed to be victims at all levels.…”

“…A more complex picture of the subjective experience of pregnant young women is seldom represented in either the media or academic work. Representation of young women as agents who are able to make responsible and selfaffirming decisions on their pregnancy is present in only a handful of studies (Lesch & Kruger, 2004;Welles, 2005).…”