‘I could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in Life Orientation in South African schools
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Date
2015
Authors
Kruger, Lou-Marie
Shefer, Tamara
Oakes, Antoinette
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Education, University of the Free State
Abstract
Progressive policies protecting women’s rights to make reproductive decisions and
the recent increase in literature exploring female sexual agency do not appear to
have impacted on more equitable sexual relations in all contexts. In South Africa,
gender power inequalities, intersecting with other forms of inequality in society,
pose a challenge for young women’s control over their sexual and reproductive
health. The article focuses on a group of young Coloured South African women’s
understandings of their sexual agency, in an attempt to explore how it is explicitly
and implicitly shaped by school Life Orientation (LO) sexuality programmes. We found
young women constructed their agency as simultaneously enabled and constrained
in complex ways: on the one hand, the explicit communication was that they should
have agency and take responsibility for themselves sexually, whereas the implicit
communication seemed to convey that what they really thought and felt about sex
and sexuality was not important. In addition, heteronormative gender roles, in which
men are assumed to take the lead in sexual matters, appear to be reproduced in LO
sexuality education messages and further complicate young women’s constructions
of their sexual agency. The implications of these findings for LO sexuality programmes
are discussed.
Description
Keywords
Female sexual agency, Young women, Sexuality education, Life Orientation
Citation
Kruger, L. M., Shefer, T., & Oakes, A. (2015). 'I could have done everything and why not?': Young women's complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in Life Orientation in South African schools. Perspectives in Education: Life Orientation sexuality education in South Africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation, 33(2), 30-48.