Social representations of adolescents on sexual relations and the use of condoms

Abstract

The objective of this investigation was to identify how adolescents structure the social representations of sexual intercourse and use of condoms. Exploratory and descriptive research was conducted with a convenience sample consisting of 234 students of a public secondary school in Fortaleza-CE, Brazil, between July 2009 and April 2010. Data were collected using a questionnaire with variables on socioeconomic status and sexual behaviour, and Free Association test with three terms: 'sex', 'unprotected sex' and 'sex with a condom'. Sexual intercourse was represented by love and affection among the women, while men associated sex to pleasure, desire and attraction toward the female body. The condom was considered important by both groups, but men represented condoms as being something bad that restricts pleasure. Health professionals are granted the opportunity to identify vulnerabilities of this population to DST/HIV/AIDS and work with these vulnerabilities in the most appropriate way.

O olhar de alunas de escola pública sobre o preservativo feminino

“…The first periphery groups together terms with high frequency that did not stand out as much. In this study, the terms "prevents pregnancy" (34) and "STD" (15) give support to the idea of a female condom as a technology of protection/prevention. However, an analysis of the terms and of the frequency with which they were mentioned corroborates the studies according to which young women are more worried about unwanted pregnancies than with acquiring STIs, which leads them to, eventually, abandon the use of the condom and start using hormonal contraceptives (16) .…”

“…Historically and culturally, women have been charged with the task to prevent future pregnancies, since the responsibility for natality control falls on females. After a pregnancy starts, several biological, psychological and social changes affect the lives of women (15) . When the women in this study mentioned the terms prevention/protection, regarding the female condom, they also referred to it as a device to prevent STIs.…”

“…The participants reflect about the female condom and immediately access terms that are associated to ideas of "autonomy" concerning the issue of avoiding pregnancy. The IUD term highlights the responsibility that society charges women with and they adopt by preventing pregnancy in their sexual intercourses (15) . The configuration of the nucleus also exposes the terms "health and care", which, despite being less frequent than the others, also show that there is a connection between female condoms and the awareness regarding their importance.…”

“…The terms "uncomfortable" (27) and "strange" (15), also in the first periphery, indicate some of the difficulty women face when using the condom. To use this device, intimate areas need to be manipulated, and it is necessary to know these areas.…”

Avaliação de impacto do Programa Saúde nas Escolas

“…É fundamental que os educadores estejam preparados para resistir a discursos normativos sobre corpo, gênero e sexualidade (Dinis & Asinelli-Luz, 2007;Dias & Amorim, 2015). A importân-cia de tratar tal temática no ambiente escolar é suportada por dados como o que indica que, no Brasil, 62,4% das pessoas com Síndrome da Imunodeficiência Adquirida -Aids -têm escolaridade até o Ensino Médio (Vieira, Rocha, Head, & Casimiro, 2014;Bezerra, Pereira, Chaves, & Monteiro, 2015).…”