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Sex
and health - BUWA! Issue 3
Open
Society Institute for Southern Africa (OSISA)
October 22, 2012
http://www.osisa.org/buwa/womens-rights/regional/sex-and-health
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In the last three decades
that the African continent has been battling the impacts of HIV
and AIDS, a number of positives have been realised. One has been
the subject of sex and sexuality finding a somewhat more comfortable
place in development discourses on the continent. Sex and sexuality
have largely been regarded as issues fit for the private sphere,
and in some cases even treated as taboos that are only to be spoken
of in hushed tones. The HIV and AIDS movements as well as feminist
movements on the continent - and elsewhere - have challenged
the notion of sex as a private matter, and brought it into discourses
on health, economics, politics and power, thus firmly establishing
it as a rights issue.
Two recent global platforms
have been quite telling in this regard. The 12th AWID International
Forum in Istanbul in April 2012, under the theme Transforming Economic
Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice had a significant
number of sessions focusing on sex, sexuality, sex work, pleasure
and their intersections with economics and money as well as politics
and power. Meanwhile, in May, the Open Society Africa Foundations
convened the OpenForum - an equally diverse platform whose
theme focused on money, power and sex. What was most striking for
me at both events was the significant space given to sex and sexuality
on their programmes; and I thought to myself, the continent has
indeed come far!
This Issue of BUWA! carries
African voices and stories, unpacking and sharing experiences in
sex and health, and highlighting trends, realities, opportunities
and challenges. Although sex has arguably firmly taken root in health
and rights discourses, this has not been without challenges. Dr
Vicci Tallis and Laura Washington illuminate some of these challenges
and contentions in a piece that locates the sexual and reproductive
health rights discourse in the broader feminist struggle for women's
sexuality rights and emancipation.
Given the tendency -
dictated by culture and tradition - to confine sex and sexuality
to the private sphere, HIV and AIDS discourses have managed to break
that artificial wall, bringing issues of sex and sexuality into
the public sphere, albeit as health and reproductive health and
rights issues. Thus, it has been largely HIV and AIDS movements
that have led the southern Africa region in pushing an agenda for
sexual and reproductive health rights. A number of significant gains
have been recorded on this front - key among them being finding
space for sex, sexuality and reproductive health rights on public
agendas and dialogues. It is precisely because of this important
step forward that global forums discussing so-called hard issues
of economic transformation, money and power could legitimately and
confidently engage with issues of sex and sexuality. However, most
sex and health rights movements in the region are still struggling
- like women's movements generally - and the challenge
remains to continue strengthening these movements to ensure that
these critical issues remain in the public domain and are not relegated
once again to the private sphere.
Another gain has been
on the steady traction towards gaining autonomy over women's
bodies. During the decades spent fighting HIV and AIDS on the continent,
it has become clear how women's vulnerabilities are increased
by a lack of real choice in relation to protection, treatment and
care. Practices such as lobola, as discussed by Takunda Chabata,
have become a key part of the debate with lobola being viewed as
giving men the right to decide how and when married women can have
sex. A woman's right to choose even in issues of contraception
becomes compromised in this regard.
As such, married women
tend to be more vulnerable, and have less control over their bodies,
than their unmarried counterparts. The space to negotiate safe and
enjoyable sex in a marriage context tends to be more limited. This
is even more pronounced in countries where there are many different
marriage regimes, creating challenges for women. For instance, customary
law marriages allow men to have more than one spouse, increasing
women's vulnerability to HIV and AIDS. Some of the challenges
are articulated by Sibusisiwe Ndlovu-Bhebe, who argues that there
is a need to harmonise Zimbabwe's marriage laws to make it
easier for women. Emmah Machokoto's poem aptly summarises
how marriage increases women's vulnerability.
A review of policy and
legislative frameworks in southern Africa in relation to women's
bodily integrity paints a picture of a region that offers half measures;
where laws and policies do not fully guarantee women choices regarding
their bodies. Issues of abortion, sex work and sterilisation are
cases in point. Namuchana Mushabati highlights some of the shortfalls
in her analysis of policy trends in Zambia. These gaps often result
in backstreet abortions, which have taken the lives of many women,
as illustrated by Karina Dulobo and Mazuba Haanyama in their analysis
of the role that the family unit has played in denying women, particularly
young women, their right to bodily integrity.
However, it is not only
the family that has helped men to maintain their control over women's
bodies, but also health care institutions. In southern Africa, especially
in Namibia, South Africa and Botswana, there have been reports of
the forced sterilisation of HIV positive women by medical doctors.
In Namibia, a few cases have been brought before the courts but
these are - almost certainly - just the tip of the iceberg
in what is suspected to be a systematic and widespread practice
that violates women's reproductive health rights. There is
suspicion that this practice might also be happening in other countries
in the region, and there is need for research and provision of safe
spaces that allow for women to open up and share their experiences.
The education system
has also not been sensitive to school-going girls' sexuality
and reproductive health rights as Stella Jerop Chebii illustrates
in her case study of how a lack of access to sanitary towels had
been a barrier to adolescent girls accessing education in urban
slums in Kenya.
On the African continent
women are not encouraged to enjoy sex, and the reasons for this
are often rooted in culture, tradition and religion. Some religions
have been manipulated to deny women the right to enjoyable sex as
Grace Chirenje and Brian Nachipo demonstrate based on their observations
of how some Christian Scriptures are cited out of context to control
women's access to contraception and good, safe and enjoyable
sex. Sex, in their observation, is interpreted as primarily for
procreation, and not for enjoyment, and pleasure is regarded as
the preserve of men. This is not just in the context of religion,
but also in the context of culture and tradition, as Tinashe Mema
and Rudo Chigudu argue.
The notion of sex being
for men's pleasure also manifests in Africa in the form of
female genital mutilation (FGM). A number of cultures promote various
forms of FGM, which in some cases has serious consequences on the
reproductive health of the women. A number of research initiatives
and documentation of the dangers and injustices of such practices
have been done on the continent, and one such book by Marie-Helene
Mottin-Sylla and Joelle Palmieri is discussed in this Issue by Mazuba
Haanyama, who questions, among other things, the notion of labelling
such practices as 'mutilation'.
Sian Maseko contends
that because sex and pleasure are often defined in the context of
hetero-normativity, the tendency is to adopt a moralistic attitude
towards sex outside of marriage. In particular, same sex relationships
are criminalised in most countries in the region.
Another way in which
women's bodies have been controlled is through rape. Although
rape is recognised as a crime in southern Africa, certain types
of rape are often ignored, as Gemma Hancox argues in her piece,
which decries the prevalence of marital rape in South Africa in
spite of laws and policies that are designed to protect women. Similarly,
rape targeted at lesbians and transgender people purportedly to
'correct' them is also becoming prevalent in the region,
as shown by Tiffani Wesley, who makes a case for such rape to be
classified as a hate crime.
Control of the woman's
body is also linked to who defines beauty - and how it is
defined. Societal standards of beauty have created an industry that
controls women's hair, skin, size, shape and looks; all driven
by a capitalist ethos, which is the bedrock of patriarchy. Davina
Jogi highlights this in her powerful photo-essay from Zimbabwe.
However, there are some
positive moves towards giving women more control over their bodies.
In particular, strides have been made in research towards preventive
tools with regards to HIV and AIDS. Groundbreaking microbicide trials
are a case in point. Pauline Irungu sheds light on how the African
continent is at the brink of delivering on the 20-year-old dream
of providing women with access to vaginal microbicides, a form of
protection they hopefully will be able to control. But even with
such breakthroughs, there is still the need to develop a culture
of respect for the sexual and reproductive health rights of women
- and it is necessary to start fostering this culture at lower
levels of the education system, as exemplified by Lerissa Thaver
and Astrid Leao in their case study of South African secondary schools.
For decades, women have
been organising, coalescing and building movements to resist all
forms of oppression - including denial of their sexuality
and reproductive health rights. These efforts need to be captured
and documented, as in the case of the publication African Women
Writing Resistance: Contemporary Voices (Edited by Jennifer Browdy
de Hernandez, Pauline Dongala, Omotayo Jolaosho and Anne Sarafin),
which is reviewed Dr Hleziphi Naomie Nyanungo.
We hope this Issue of
BUWA! challenges African women and men to continue loosening the
lid that has been kept tightly shut for decades to prevent issues
of sex and sexuality from being openly discussed - and in
the process making women and girls more vulnerable and putting their
lives at risk.
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