Blaming girls: A peek at gender analysis of sexuality

In the study to evaluate health services provided to young people, the researchers asked parents what they thought about the challenges youth face, for instance, unwanted pregnancies and HIV/AIDS. Check out what the parents said (these are quotes from the evaluation report).

Let us start with the views of male parents in Kasungu:

[Sexual] problems arise from girls who put on miniskirts with the aim of seducing boys to have sex with them with this resulting in transmission of HIV/STIs. Government should introduce punishments for these girls and they should be jailed for one week.

Those were the men. Let us now see the view of the female parents also in Kasungu:

Today, girls go on their own to their boyfriends’ houses. There are some old men who have sexual relationships with them and when they become pregnant the men abandon them. This is seen as a big problem because children’s rights are being abused.

Okay, let us head to Lilongwe, and find out the opinions of the female parents:

The youth of today are not scared of having relationships with old people—they sleep around with older men with the result that you have 13- or 14-year-olds having unwanted pregnancies.

The parents in Lilongwe used the term 'youth', but they were talking about girls. It is the girl youth that gets pregnant.

Interesting quotes these are. Why do we perceive girls so negatively? It is as if this country hates girls. But, when you look closely, these parents are concerned about the sexuality of girls. Their perspective reveals that sexuality is gendered.

The perspective of the parents quoted above is not out of the ordinary at all. This is how most of us think about the sexuality of girls and sometimes, we are not even conscious of our twisted gendered perspectives. Let me give you an example of an actual event that a student shared with me about what happened at her secondary school. She said there was a girl who liked a boy, and she made her interest clear to him. She wanted him to be his friend. But the boy did not want her. She persisted. The boy decided to report to the school administration, that she was harassing him.

Now, hear how the administration responded. The issue was addressed at the school assembly, where the girl was reprimanded in front of all the students of the school.

Really? Did the administration have to react like that, to shame her in front of the whole school? But if you throw gender in the analysis, it makes sense. The school administration perceived her behaviour through a gendered lens. She was punished because she was a girl. Her behavior was unlike that expected of girls. Boys pursue, pester and even ‘harass’ girls all the time at this same school. But then, for boys, it is their nature, so the administration will overlook or ignore the same conduct that the girl showed. For this girl, the school used her to teach a lesson to everyone else about gender: Girls do not pursue boys.

If we want to progress on some of these developmental issues we are always discussing, we need to change our attitude about sexuality.