The Gendering and sexualization of young women through sex educational practices and discourses in Southern Africa

Abstract

The article explores how and what young people (mainly women) learn about identity through sexuality and gender through forms of sex education in Southern Africa and how they are constructed as gendered and sexual beings. The article focuses on sexuality education in the form of “cultural” or “traditional” sexual practices and as it is taught in schools in Southern Africa both historically and in contemporary times. It examines how forms of sexuality education produce specific discourses which influence and constrain the ways girls and boys learn, think about, and experience sexual identities as well as gender. In critically reviewing this literature, the article draws mainly on research informed by the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and other poststructuralist feminists, which explores how specific kinds of discourses (produced in and through cultural and educational practices) produce certain kinds of age and gender subjectivities in relation to sexuality. Influenced by poststructuralist feminism, the article argues for ways of conceptualizing sexuality not as a biological given which itself produces predictable urges or desires which are then addressed through forms of sexuality education.