Female adolescent sexuality in a coloured community

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Little is known about women's sexuality and even less about female adolescent sexuality. Sex researchers have neglected women, young women and specifically youngwomen of colour and of lower socio-economic status. These gaps in sex research haveto be addressed for at least two important reasons. In the first place an understanding offemale adolescent sexuality will enhance our understanding of female development ingeneral. More specifically, the prevalence of reproductive health problems like sexuallytransmitted diseases (STDs) and unplanned pregnancies among female adolescentswarrant urgent attention.This study attempted to address the need for data on female sexuality by focusing oncoloured female adolescents in the Stellenbosch district. This target group has beenchosen because of the extent of adolescent reproductive health problems, specificallythe prevalence of teenage pregnancy, in the low-income coloured community. Theobjective of the study was to gain an understanding of adolescent female sexuality in aspecific community. This goal was reached by collecting quantitative and qualitative dataabout sexuality from a group of high school learners from a historically colouredcommunity in the Stellenbosch district. Structured questionnaires were used to elicit thequantitative data. The quantitative data were analysed to determine the following (i) therange of sexual behaviours, and (ii) the prevalence of high-risk behaviours that therespondents engaged in. The quantitative results indicate that the research respondentsdid not represent a sexually high-risk community. Sexual intercourse was limited to arelatively small number of respondents. The sexual behaviour of these respondents, ingeneral, did not differ meaningfully from the sexual behaviour reported in otheradolescent communities. Open-ended interviews were used to generate the qualitativedata. Twenty-five sexually active girls were interviewed. The grounded theory methodwas used to analyse the qualitative data and to explore the respondents' constructions ofsexuality. Lack of sexual agency and need for connection were identified as the corecategories in the interview data. The interview data indicated that the respondents hadlimited sexual agency and the researcher argued that mothers and boyfriends, as agentsof the community, were prominent contributors to sexual disempowerment. Theuse of the term coloured is controversial. It is viewed by some as derogatory, whilst others argue theimportance of a 'coloured' identity. Here and throughout the term coloured will be used descriptively. The researcher concluded that a new discourse of sexual agency for young women must bedeveloped.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University