Negotiating femininities on campus: Sexuality,gender and risk in an HIV environment

Campus life and sexual freedoms

Our findings point to the ambiguities and tensions in the expression of power where aspects of university campus life can both enable the expression of sexuality and ‘sexual freedom’ while caught up in the network of materiality, gender inequality, violence and fear with negative consequences for sexual health and well-being. In this section, we expand upon campus life as an arena for the production of heterosexual femininities. Unlike high schools, campus life is not supervised. Other than academic enrichment, for some students, campus life offers a space for the expression of sexuality. The majority of the students in this study also experiment, enjoy and exhibit sexuality in a context where there is less sexual surveillance. In a group discussion, Thembi and Thandeka discuss the freedom that campus life offers to engage in sexual relationships:

For many young women, female sexual agency was enabled by living in the campus residence. Sexual choices and freedom were supported by an environment outside of the restrictive environment of the home. In the home, sex and relationship dynamics, as Scott and Jackson (2010) illustrated, remain hidden, silenced or invisible. Breier (2010) also found that female students at the University of Western Cape in South Africa used sexuality as an important resource in which to establish freedom, in stark contrast to the limited opportunities at home, which often involved negotiating sexuality in secret. In KwaZulu-Natal, Harrison et al.’s (2012) study of young people found that when sexual activity is prohibited and considered taboo, sexual relationships are often hidden, which increases sexual risk and coercion. Women and girls will not, for instance, seek to engage with sexual health services when they are not expected to be in relationship. Neither can they report on intimate partner violence if the relationships are secret. In contrast to the hidden context of relationships at home and in the absence of family policing, sexuality was constructed as ‘freedom’ and enjoyment. In an individual interview conducted with Hlengiwe (24 years old), the unregulated context of university life is reinforced:

They [students] just want to enjoy themselves … when they come here to university they need freedom, so they want to date. Most [students] couldn’t have boyfriends back at home. Here [university] you can drink, you can party and you can have boyfriends because you are free to do whatever you want. Here you can do things your parents don’t approve of. No one cares about what you do … (Hlengiwe)

Campus life provides vastly different ‘opportunity structures’ (Hirsch and Wardlow, 2006) for young women to redefine sexuality outside of the domain of secrecy. This includes the opportunity and the freedom to ‘date’, to consume alcohol and party under no parental supervision where peer influences support the extension of agency in this regard. Hegemonic femininity, as Schippers (2007) suggests, is invested in heterosexuality. Hlengiwe confirms how heterosexuality and the excitement associated with dating cultures underline female students’ notions of freedom on campus. Furthermore, as Hlengiwe suggests, sexuality is complexly intertwined with partying and the use of alcohol. As Mulwo et al. (2009) notes, campuses create ‘physical proximity devoid of systematic supervision [for] a large number of young adults at their pinnacle years of sexual experimentation’ (p. 311). This finding is consistent with other studies undertaken by Masvawure (2010) in Zimbabwe and Shefer (2016) in South Africa where the enactment of sexual agency is complexly intertwined with and aggravated by alcohol and drugs.

The materiality of sex: love, risky femininities and gender inequalities

Experiencing and expressing sexuality was of paramount importance to the female participants in this study. Asking participants why female students may have intimate relationships elicited the following responses:

Beyond the simple construction of male power, Zama further stated that women ‘also like sex’ to which Promise added that women want ‘a nice good looking guy’ to impress their friends, suggesting the significance of peers and peer regulation in the construction of heterosexuality. Relationship dynamics are linked to pleasure, but this is highly ambiguous. Hegemonic femininity is often curtailed by broader discourses of gender, love, romance and sexuality. Pleasure and love are deeply romanticised with patriarchal notions of power and heterosexuality. For female students, pleasure and affective dimensions of sexual life include falling ‘hard in love’, and these affective dimensions surround the articulation of relationship dynamics. However, as feminists have long argued, romantic love must be considered not just for its affective value but also how it is deeply gendered and shaped by material structures of power (Shefer, 2016). Relationships are thus far more complex, and embroiled in the jockeying for power among female students, and the need to impress friends, without consideration of health-related risks.

Young women in this study preferred to date men outside of campus. Students typically characterised these as ‘sugar daddies’ – older men who liked to date female students. As in Masvawure’s (2010) study of female students in Zimbabwe, sugar daddies are referred to as an ‘outside man’ or any man who was not a university student, who was older, and had employment and money. The third- and fourth-year students in the focus group discussions noted that the first-year female students engaged in relationships with men far older than themselves for reasons such as those discussed below:

When the girls are dating an older guy, the things that an older guy can give them cannot be compared to younger guys because they are rich and have security … he (older man) will give you ten times more things than a guy your age. He is mature, so he will treat you like a woman, so I think these girls like to be treated like a woman, rather than a girl. These students also want to impress their friends with the status they get from dating older men, and also because of peer pressure. Some of these first year girls have these relationships because they also like the older men and the attention they get from them. You know black older men just love young girls that they call ‘fresh’ and they do anything the girls want. (Thembi)

University life offers freedom to explore and experience sexual life, but these freedoms as participants illustrate are marked by age and the gender hierarchy through which male sexual power is asserted, especially in relation to first-year students. Sexual risk and poor health outcomes are thus entwined with age, race, gender, class and sexuality. The social construction of femininities is contradictory, tied to economic conditions in the local setting, the pursuit of heterosexual desire and gender norms. Young women’s ideas and desire to be part of the middle-class culture shape their decisions in relation to sugar daddies. The ideas of having a ‘good life at university’ structured by materiality and desire for luxuries are then associated with sexual risk, vulnerability to unwanted pregnancy and disease including risk to HIV (Jewkes et al., 2012). Hlengiwe discusses younger female students’ relationships with older men, especially in the context of sugar daddy relationships:

… sometimes you find most of the students here on Friday night they go out and come back on Saturday morning. What I realised is that they have those men for clothes and food. They sometimes like to drink and smoke and because they don’t have enough money, they need the ‘sugar daddy’. They know when they go out they (sugar daddy) will buy them the ‘Chicken Licken and Kentucky’ and give them money to buy drinks. (Hlengiwe)

Local dynamics surrounding the construction of femininities are rooted in the materiality of everyday life. Female students live in contexts that are economically unstable. They also exhibit a desire for and orientation towards middle-class social status. Their engagement with older men is based on access to cash, drinking, smoking and fast food. Like Masvawure (2010), older men with money provide young women with access to resources in order to improve their social status among their peers via access to middle-class resources. Materiality especially in the context of profound economic inequalities is an important factor in understanding sexual risk. In individual interviews, love, misplaced trust and lack of consequences were given as reasons why women had unprotected sex. The operation of power is particularly evident as hegemonic femininities are hierarchically positioned in relation to boyfriends and operate alongside the heterosexual imperative:

In the interview extract below, Boniswa points to careless, risky femininities that lead to unprotected sex. Becoming pregnant and taking care of the child was not an issue as Boniswa refers to the normative pattern of child-rearing in South Africa, whereby older women, especially grandmothers, are expected to take on the responsibility to care for children:

… we get bursaries here, and so when some of them [girls] fall pregnant, they say they don’t care. They (students) can leave the baby with grandmother or mother to look after the baby and continue studying here … it’s not like school where you have to drop out and come back after the baby is born. Here you can continue studying and it’s not the end of the world … (Boniswa)

Research on teenage pregnancy highlights the stigma attached to being pregnant, the lack of support and the inability of young women to navigate the demands of schooling and having a child, which often results in a high dropout level (Mkhwanazi, 2010). Unlike the stigmatising environment at school, participants such as Boniswa suggest that the campus climate offers a context in which pregnancy is not frowned upon and where family support enables pregnancy without major concerns about childcare. Moreover, a bursary provides financial support for the child. Thus, when safe sex is not practised, the consequences of pregnancy for a university student are not as severe as they are for schoolgoing learners, who face stigma and lack access to alternate financial support. In a context where female students have access to the bursary and guaranteed childcare support from grandmothers, the need to protect against pregnancy may not be a major consideration.

However, female students do reflect upon the consequences of risky femininities, including the likelihood of unwanted pregnancy and HIV. Participants reveal their ability to negotiate sex with their partner in ways that challenge women’s subordination in sexual relations. Boniswa, for example, stated that she was not ‘ready for babies and stuff’ so she would use protection. Thembi agreed, saying, ‘Yes, I would for use protection because I want to go to bed peacefully at night, without fear of unplanned pregnancy and diseases’. Others added support for Thembi’s view in rejecting risky femininity and the normative stereotype of women as powerless within sexual relations. Participants such as Nxolo and Happiness challenge these norms and practices that put women in vulnerable positions:

However, there are contradictions among participants who, despite asserting sexual agency, may allow themselves to take sexual risks:

Relationship dynamics are intimately tied up with contraceptive/condom use, and while some participants may carry a condom in the interest of sexual health, others like Thandeka frown upon them as lacking pleasure. In contrast to the dominant perspective that men coerce women into unprotected sex, Thandeka demonstrates her own complicity via her endorsement of a hegemonic femininity based on love, trust and sexual pleasure with little consideration of risk. When trust has been established, women often fail to use or use contraceptives inconsistently (Shefer, 2016), especially if their relationship involves violence and dominance. Moreover, as Reddy and Dunne (2007) explain, women may put themselves at risk when love is equated with trust compromising a woman’s sexual well-being.

Campus after dark: fear of men and violence

Female students’ experiences of violence on campus underline gender power inequalities. In this section, male use of violence and the fear of men are intertwined with the construction of femininity. Hegemonic femininity is heterosexualised and operates alongside male power and domination. Female students while expressing agency also discussed the fear of men and their vulnerability to violence both in intimate partner relations and on campus. In an individual interview, Boniswa refers to verbal assault, power imbalances and female regulation within dating relationships:

Working to produce a femininity which is ‘quiet’ must be read as part of cultural norms in which respectability is based on being virtuous. Hegemonic femininity hinges on respectability, and boyfriends demand and regulate female sexuality in insidious ways. Hunter (2010) has referred to hlonipha (respect) as a long-standing part of Zulu cultural heritage, whereby respectable women are highly valued and are submissive to male power. The restrictions placed on women are thus part of broader cultural and gendered norms through which male power was exercised to regulate and police respectable femininity. Similarly, within this culture, male domination in intimate partner relations is based on an excessive need for control over women, whereby a woman’s assertiveness is regarded as hostile to the man (Jewkes et al., 2012). Going against these norms, in many instances, produces violent gender relationships. Femininity is thus constructed actively through adherence to dominant gender and sexual norms.

Participants in this study discussed instances of physical violence inflicted by men on female students. Zama asserted, ‘I know of a girl who was scared to go home after campus because her boyfriend (off-campus) is violent’, but she says, ‘this man really loves me’. Here, Zama illustrates the complex relationship between hegemonic femininity, heterosexuality and affective relations, whereby love and violence are entangled in intimate partner violence. Gender relations of power are closely tied to romance. Gupta et al. (2011) claim that it is less likely that women will leave a relationship that they understand to be risky or violent because they fear abandonment:

Here, Thembi provides evidence of female students’ acceptance of and complicity in condoning violence in men. She does this because of the powerful ways in which heterosexuality compels relationship expectations based on subservience to male norms and tolerance of violence. She continues, ‘they stay’ because ‘… some girls come from homes where abuse was allowed’ and ‘so they think it’s normal’. Intimate partner violence is normalised through several social institutions, including families. The fear of male violence shifts from relationships to vulnerability to violence on campus when Thembi states, ‘at night after six this place is so dark and scary’. Female participants’ vulnerability is further reinforced by the lack of monitoring and supervision by campus security. Thandeka states that the lack of effective security on campus compromises their safety on the campus residence:

The security is not tight … some students allow others [non-residents] in at night and … you can meet someone in the passage you don’t know … if they [male non-residents] are drunk they can do something harmful to you. Recently a girl was raped at our residence and no one had anything to say about it. They tried to blame unplanned security. The security have no guns or anything and certain doors do not lock. Anyone can just push my door open which is not safe. Without strong locks, anyone can just push it open and come in while I am asleep. (Thandeka)

A climate of fear combined with women’s vulnerability in residences points to patterns of male violence and coercion. Universities are complex spaces offering both sexual exploration and freedom, as well as restricted forms of sexual and intimate partner agency. They are also places in which female students feel unsafe or fear being alone at night. Male violence against women is widespread in South Africa (Jewkes et al., 2012), and the threat and fear of sexual violence are evident in the mention of rape on campus. Complex factors linked to power inequalities, lack of attention to the gendered nature of violence on campus residences and lack of security which permits illegal access to residences at night produce an overall climate in which women’s vulnerability to sexual risk and sexual assault is increased.