Learning about HIV/AIDS and gender stereotypes in schools in southern Africa

Most young people learn about sexuality and HIV/AIDS in school. Giving teenage pupils space to explore, debate and ask questions is just as important as checking that they know how HIV is transmitted and avoided. Can teachers help in the fight against AIDS and gender stereotypes?

A chapter in a book from Oxfam GB analyses two HIV programmes in schools in South Africa and Mozambique. The author argues that using the classroom to encourage young people to consider issues of sexuality and gender requires techniques that go beyond the training generally given to teachers.

African schools are difficult places in which to talk of gender equity. Women teachers are generally given nurturing responsibilities while power in the school structure is given to men. Male teachers believe that it is a girl's responsibility to avoid pregnancy. According to female students some teachers regularly have sex with young girls.

Dramaide, a South African non-governmental organisation (NGO), has been working with young teenagers in schools in the city of Durban. Children are not merely given information and told what to do. They are given opportunities to explore the issues raised by the HIV epidemic for themselves in order to develop sufficiently deep understanding to affect their behaviour.

Juventude Alerta is based in Beira, Mozambique. University studies were trained to use participatory techniques and activities and then sent to run workshops in rural and urban secondary school and to get teenage students to discuss issues related to HIV.

In both contexts, initial discussions about gender identities revealed strong adolescent assumptions about femininity and masculinity:

• Many boys said that it was desirable to have several sexual partners.
• Young men expect to be told in detail about their girlfriends' movements, but were very secretive about their own affairs.
• Boys regard violence as appropriate `punishment' for the `bad behaviour' of their girlfriends, an attitude that many girls have accepted.
• ‘Real’ men do not use condoms and girls who ask for them may be thought to be prostitutes.
• Girls who talk about sex and show they have some knowledge are morally inferior.

However, skilled facilitators able to create an equal gender balance in discussion groups can change attitudes. Girl pupils learn that women can make their own decisions about sex. Teenage boys realise that it is possible to be an `African man' without the need for `flesh to flesh' sex or multiple partners.

The projects have shown that:

• Training must highlight the importance of helping young people to move from knowing to changing behaviour, and to challenge the gender relations in society that encourage the spread of the virus.
• Drama and role-play – using tools developed by the Brazilian drama practitioner, Augusto Boal – enable students to explore alternative behaviours by ‘rehearsing for life’.
• Interventions should be structured over periods of at least a month, to allow those who may have been silent initially to develop confidence.
• Trainee facilitators and teachers should be encouraged to reflect on how their own perspectives change.

Source(s):
‘Learning about HIV/AIDS in schools: does a gender-equality approach make a difference?’ by Mark Thorpe, chapter ten, ‘Beyond access: transforming policy and practice for gender equality in education’, Oxfam GB, edited by Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter, pp 199-211, 2005 Full document.
‘Beyond access: transforming policy and practice for gender equality in education’, Oxfam GB, edited by Sheila Aikman and Elaine Unterhalter, 2005 Full document.

Funded by: British Council and Voluntary Service Overseas

id21 Research Highlight: 3 March 2006

Further Information:
Mark Thorpe
71 Falkland Road,
London, N80NS
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 208 4825661
Contact the contributor: markthorpe@mac.com

Sheila Aikman
Oxfam GB
Oxfam House
John Smith Drive
Cowley, Oxford OX4 2JY, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1865 472173
Fax: +44 (0)1865 472993
Contact the contributor: saikman@oxfam.org.uk

Oxfam GB

Other related links:
'Gender bias in education: here to stay?'

'Candid camera: putting men in the picture?'

'Reproducing stereotypes? Involving men in reproductive healthcare programmes'

'Communication barrier? The female condom gets couples talking about sex'

'Making the difference: how schools influence gender identity'

'Girls, HIV/AIDS and Education' from UNICEF