Navigating agency: adolescents’ challenging dating violence towards gender equitable relationships in a South African township

Overview and purpose of the SSP gender empowerment programme

Grassroots Soccer ² is a social development project aimed at providing sport and life skills and access to soccer to township youth – both male and female – via public schools. SKILLZ Street is its evidence-based intervention for adolescent girls, combining soccer with HIV prevention, counselling and testing, sexual and reproductive health and life skills, and access to community services. SKILLZ Street developed in response to overwhelming research that shows that participation in sport among adolescent females leads to a range of health benefits, and that HIV is disproportionately concentrated among women and girls in South Africa, linked to extremely high levels of gender-based violence (GBV). It is funded by The United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, in the case of South Africa, adolescent girls who are most at risk.

Its SSP programme originated in Soweto in Gauteng in 2006 and has since expanded to the townships of Khayelitsha near Cape Town and Alexandra, also in Gauteng. SSP’s female soccer coaches deliver its curriculum and mentors and support adolescent girls while facilitating soccer-based activities for them. As a large-scale, multi-sectoral gender empowerment programme, SSP uniquely, at present, includes behavioural, structural, and biomedical components in its design. It thus aims to positively influence sexual development among adolescent girls towards gender equality. ³ SSP aims to challenge patriarchal norms, especially those portraying men as sole decision-makers and dominant partners in heteronormative relationships.

SSP’s curriculum of 14 session cover behavioural (e.g., self and relationships with others in terms of sexuality, sex, self-confidence and self-esteem decision-making, goal setting), structural (e.g., poverty, economic, and social access) and biomedical (e.g., care of the body and negotiating safe sex practices to prevent pregnancies, STIs, HIV, and AIDS) aspects. The sessions presented are (1) Welcome and Contracting, (2) Be A Strong Decision-Maker, (3) Sex and Gender, (4) Women in the Media, (5) I am Special, (6) Our Changing Bodies, (7) Relationships, (8) Say No, (9) Avoid Risks, (10) Guest Speaker (from response services for sexual violence), (11) My Supporters, (12) Health Services Day, (13) Reach your Goals, and (14) Make your Move.

Adolescence, gendered norms, empowerment, and agency: a conceptual framework

Empowerment and agency are central in feminist discourse as forms of resistance to imposed gendered and sexual norms that result in the many forms of GBV – verbal, emotional, structural, physical, economic, and sexual. To challenge this patriarchal context, women’s empowerment programmes are designed to facilitate healing, liberation, and solidarity. In the South African context of high rates of GBV, including IPV, such empowerment programmes are fundamental in helping women create strong bonds through social solidarities and avenues to challenge heteronormative power, advocate for change, and amplify their voices against the ongoing violence and discrimination they experience despite constitutional and legal gender equality imperatives (Wagaman, 2011).

Zimmerman (as cited in Peterson, 2010) identifies three vital sub-components of psychological empowerment – intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioural. According to Zimmerman (as cited in Peterson, 2010):

Intrapersonal components include perceived control, motivation to control, and perceived competence and mastery. In the case of sexual empowerment, this might correspond to feelings of sexual self-efficacy, desire, and pleasure. Interactional components include awareness of options, the resources needed to achieve desired goals, and decision-making and problem-solving skills (Zimmerman, 1995). In relation to adolescent girls’ sexuality, this dimension of empowerment might correspond to girls’ knowledge about how to experience sexual pleasure, clarity about their sexual wants and desires, and an understanding about how to communicate their sexual needs and desires to their partner. The behavioural component of empowerment involves actions taken to directly influence outcomes. In the case of sexual empowerment, this might correspond to girls taking action in the service of their sexual values and desires, including asking for what they want sexually, refusing unwanted sexual experiences, and generally exploring their emerging sexuality (alone or with a partner) in ways that feel positive and healthy. (p. 310)

Zimmerman highlights these as necessary to fully understand empowerment as a continuum of positive psychological factors involved in developing healthy sexual values and behaviours that enhance a strong sense of self. In the SSP project, empowerment in accordance with this framework for the girl participants is aimed at, and, as discussed later, measured via such indicators as saying ‘no’, exiting violent relationships and delinking from abusive partners.

The concept of agency, often referred to in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) research as sexual agency, comprises two components – sexual efficacy and sexual assertiveness. Curtin et al. (2011) define sexual agency thus:

Sexual self-efficacy encompasses women’s belief in their ability to engage in behaviors aimed at preventing unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including using contraception, or requiring their partners to do so (Rostosky, Dekhtyar, Cupp, & Anderman, 2008). Sexual assertiveness is the ability to refuse unwanted sex and to communicate with one’s partner about what pleases one sexually.

Sexual agency is central for making choices and setting boundaries in sexual debut, as well as for pursuing desire and pleasure. SRH tends to focus agency in women and adolescent girls on making decisions about sex, personal safety, and health, with SRH studies focused on the concept’s use for various behaviours shaping such autonomy. Sexual decision-making is vital for adolescent girls to develop sexual autonomy, as their ability to act on their intuition and own knowledge is pivotal for their navigating their sexual experiences away from harm.

Sexual agency and sexual empowerment are processes involved in developing adolescent girl’s confidence to define their sexual needs (desire and pleasure) and sexual boundaries (sexual choices and decision-making). However, Lamb and Peterson (2012, p. 705) argue that empowerment is often partial and, at times, contradictory, and that while empowerment develops as a process, adolescent girls are ‘likely to experience sexual empowerment on some levels and disempowerment on other levels at any given time’. However, this ambivalence is ‘normal’ as adolescents are at that life stage of experimenting with different values and identities, which involves conflicting beliefs, emotions and behaviours.

Maxwell and Aggleton (2010, p. 339) argue that agency is undertaken following emotional experience, for example, ‘agency in action after an emotional response to an experience in which [adolescent girls] felt someone else had power over them, or was attempting to control them’. Hence, agency is also the will for and action taken to be free from domination. This meaning of sexual agency is employed in this study, because it is in the context of pressure relating to sex in a relationship that the adolescent girl participants are gauged in terms of their agency. Interactional and behavioural empowerment is also central for investigating their decision-making in sexual behaviour.

Method

Two data collection components inform this study: a baseline and endline quantitative survey conducted with 200 Grade 8 adolescent girls (median age 13.61) in three intermediate schools and one secondary school in Soweto, Gauteng in 2014–2016 who were also Grassroots Soccer’s SSP programme. The purpose of both was to better understand the practices, attitudes, knowledge, and experience of girls related to gender, intimate/romantic relationships, and violence. The quantitative findings indicate that 18% of the adolescent girl participants show significant ability to choose a gender equitable relationship, that 42% had experienced or were experiencing some form of IPV, and that of the latter, only 60% had disclosed this to their parents. Of that, 58% had disclosed to their mothers while only 2% to their fathers. Furthermore, 31% of the girls had reported their experience of IPV to the police, and 36% had reported non-partner violence to the police.

Study context

The study participants were drawn from Soweto, an urban Black township in Gauteng province, one of South Africa’s biggest and oldest townships. Soweto is the most populated Black urban area in the city of Johannesburg, comprising 43% of Johannesburg’s total population. Adolescents in Soweto are impacted by a number of social challenges, often interlinked – poverty, unemployment, violence, substance abuse (alcohol and drugs), and early pregnancy (Dunkle et al., 2004). Violence is considered a direct and strong predictor of sexual debut (Mathews et al., 2009). Many adolescents in Soweto engage in early sexual experiences, with a high prevalence of coerced sex; sexual violence (SV) among children and adolescents is noted as escalating in recent years (Richter et al., 2018).

Participants

Study participants were selected using a stratified random sampling strategy from the 200 adolescent girls attending the SSP programme during 2014–2016. Further, in-depth, semi-structured interviews, approximately 1-hr long, were conducted with 11 of the participating adolescent girls, the range for which is presented in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Adolescent girls individually interviewed.

No.	School	Name (pseudonym)	Age (years)
1	Diepdale	Mandisa	16
2	Diepdale	Lebogang	15
3	Diepdale	Thandiswa	16
4	Diepdale	Lesego	16
5	Musi High School	Thembeka	16
6	Musi High School	Nandipha	16
7	Musi High School	Bonang	18
8	Musi High School	Pumla	16
9	Musi High School	Zola	14
10	Musi High School	Akhona	15
11	Musi High School	Phindile	17

Individual interviews were also held with coaches and other organizational members to elicit information about programme delivery and effectiveness. As well, gender separate focus group discussions were held, respectively, with the coaches and the female soccer players. These group discussions were facilitated by a trained fieldworker fluent in isiZulu, the dominant language spoken in Soweto, and guided by a semi-structured interview guide. Three group discussion sessions, of approximately 1 hr and comprising approximately six to eight participants, were held.

Instruments

A semi-structured interview schedule of 30 questions and prompts for the individual interviews was designed, building on the findings of the quantitative study. Some of the questions and prompts were as follows: What is the difference between a relationship and something casual? What do you want in a partner? Tell me a story about a really great/bad relationship. Can girls your age tell their boyfriends if you don’t want to have sex? (Why? Why not? Stories?) Does your boyfriend ever shout at/hit you? (When? Where? For what reason?) Do you guys use community services if you have been hit or for HIV testing? (Why? Why not?) A guide for the focus group discussions was also developed (see Appendix 1).

Procedure

For the purposes of this article, the rapid ethnographies, observation notes, and focus group discussions with coaches, undertaken for the full scope evaluation study, do not form part of the analysis. Only the data collected directly from the adolescent girls are included, stemming from the focus group discussions and individual interviews held with them.

Ethical considerations

Information, assent forms (for minors), and consent forms (for parents to sign) were provided to participants. To build trust and rapport, the researchers spent a few days in the organization, meeting with management, coaches, and the adolescent soccer players from among whom the study participants were drawn. To reduce emotional and psychological risk relating to sex and IPV views and experiences in interviews, only female researchers interviewed the adolescent girl participants. They explained the purpose of the research, emphasizing that participation was voluntary and information shared would be kept confidential; the researchers also explained the limits of confidentiality in the group setting of a focus group discussion. The research was approved the by Human Sciences Research Council Ethics Committee, and permission to conduct it was obtained from the Gauteng Department of Education. Pseudonyms are used for the participants in presenting the study.

Data analysis

Braun and Clarke’s (2012) thematic flexible and analytical coding approach was used to analyse the data, which initially produced a descriptive account of the findings. The data were next interpreted using gender-specific theoretical and analytical concepts and frameworks. Braun and Clarke’s (2012) six-phase thematic analysis approach helped identify commonalities in the data in relation to the research purposes: (1) familiarization with data; (2) generation of initial codes; (3) generating themes; (4) reviewing potential themes; (5) defining and naming themes; and (6) presenting themes (writing up the study).

Findings

The results indicate that adolescent girls make attempts and employ various strategies to navigate violent dating relationships, particularly relationships with potential for or with sexually coercive practices. However, they still grapple with contradictory gender practices with regard to making sense of violence in relationships in relation to responsibility or blame. Two themes emerged from the data: (1) decision-making to exit violent or possibly harmful dating relationships and (2) taking responsibility for violence. The first theme highlights the adolescent girls’ agency to make decisions to exit sexually violent and abusive relationships; the second shows their, oftentimes, unsuccessful grappling with the complexity of processing and executing agency.

Theme 1: decision-making to exit potentially violent or violent dating relationships

The findings show that adolescent girls are more likely to show agency in decision-making for gender equitable relationships, including making choices about sex, love, and violence. The findings also suggest that forced initiation into sex is commonly experienced in heteronormative adolescent relationships. Some adolescent girls shared having left relationships because of their boyfriends’ sexual desires and demands, as indicated in the interview excerpt below with a 16-year-old girl from Musi High School:

Nandipha avoided a potentially abusive relationship by leaving because she did not feel ready to engage in sexual intercourse. This illustrates her proactive agency and foresight, for, as mentioned previously, sexual coercion is regularly associated with physical violence.

Other participants show intolerance of infidelity and autocratic decision-making by male partners, as indicated in the interview excerpt with a 16-year-old from Diepdale High School.

Mandisa’s partner threatened to stop talking about sex with her because of her lack of sexual experience and decision not to have sex because she was not ready. Mandisa suggests that her boyfriend, like many young men, was not faithful; she is seen to understand that a more nurturing relationship is based on honesty and joint decision-making, and perceived that her relationship lacked gender equality. She was thus able to terminate the relationship and move on to find an equitable partner.

Some adolescent girls indicated seeking support from others over their relationship challenges, demonstrating another important form of agency, as indicated in this interview excerpt with a 16-year-old from Musi High School.

Thandiswa sought help from her brother to deal with her partner’s violence, which he helped stop albeit by himself initiating violence against the perpetrator, which is not ideal.

Some adolescent girls shared trying to deal with a partner’s violent conduct by avoiding him, as indicated in the interview excerpt with a 16-year-old from Diepdale High School.

Lesego’s dealing with her abusive boyfriend by avoiding him and not attending school, although not a sustainable solution, still indicates her awareness that her boyfriend’s behaviour is unacceptable. She is seen to have acted with agency, and tried to stop further violence by keeping him out of her space even though it impacted her schooling via absenteeism.

Theme 2: victim-blaming and allocating responsibility for violence

The results indicate that pursuing gender equitable relationships for adolescent girls entails contradictions and nuances; not only must they avoid violence but also challenge normative gendered practices that position women as always monogamous, with men holding disciplinary authority over them. Some of the adolescent girl participants attributed blame to peers who ‘cheat’ on their boyfriends and thus hold them responsible for provoking violence in adolescent boys, as indicated in the interview excerpt with three 14–16-year-olds from Diepdale High School.

All three girls, it is seen, buy into the norm that women must be monogamous and loyal to men, and that violence by men towards a transgressive woman merits understanding. Such negative perceptions are informed by social norms that prescribe respectable femininities for girls and women.

Discussion

Adolescence presents a vital life stage opportunity to promote attitudes and behaviours towards prevention of IPV and SV over the individual’s entire life course as this is when gender role differentiation intensifies. Moreover, adolescents experiment with intimate relationships, including new ways of thinking and behaving which may differ from previous exposure to gender relationships, for example, encountered in the family and community. The findings in this study reveal that gendered social norms are challenged by adolescent girls navigating intimate relationships, especially regarding preventing possible violence by exiting dating relationships in which their own needs to have autonomy over their sexuality is not respected by their partners as well as by making attempts to exit relationships in which they experience IPV. Their experiences of the possible threat of violence compel them to make real choices for their safety at the physical, sexual, emotional, and psychological levels. These findings corroborate Richter et al.’s (2015) observation that sexual debut during adolescence is often experienced as sexual coercion. Moreover, in a (hetero) patriarchal sexualized culture, experimentation with sex, sexual practices, and sexual identities is insidiously linked to rape, as discussed previously, enabling and fostering aggressive sexual behaviour against women, which adolescent girls also experience. Empowerment and agency thus primarily become a matter of safety to avoid harm in intimate relationships during this life stage, and developing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour for safety throughout their entire life span.

Adolescent girls also experience contradictions in their sexual social development relating to gender equitable beliefs, attitudes, and relationships. The findings indicate still a fair amount of their investment in hetero-patriarchal norms that position women as sexually and emotionally monogamous vis-a-vis men who hold disciplinary authority over women. The adolescent girls in the SSP programme demonstrate having understood the meaning of ‘saying no’ to abusive relationships, in which their need for care and respect is not validated by male partners; yet they struggle to understand the gendered complexity that produces hierarchical relationships of subservience and domination regarding femininities and masculinities, respectively. Some are still not able to allocate responsibility for IPV solely to the male perpetrator, noticeable in the view that an unfaithful woman possibly merits blame for IPV. This clearly indicates a limited understanding of gender equitable relationships and the impact of patriarchy on sexual identities, behaviour, and empowering attitudes to enable their agency in intimate relationships. Victim-blaming is central to hetero-patriarchal discourse, involving the control of and shaming and blaming of women. Hetero-patriarchal discourse is underpinned by normative, prescriptive femininities, and masculinities that still require substantial challenging.

It should be noted that this study was undertaken with a limited number of participants, and hence the results are not generalizable. However, the findings still contribute to understanding that interventions such as SSP against IPV and GBV should continue to develop their life skills curricula for township adolescent girls to effectively grasp the full meaning of gender equitable relationships that they can aspire towards and achieve.

Conclusion

Adolescent experimentation with gendered and sexual norms is an ambivalent process. Adolescent girls are more likely to challenge gendered norms because they are literally more likely to be harmed in intimate relationships, as demonstrated in this study. It is evident from the findings that more programmatic interventions are required that focus on developing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours that inform gender equitable relationships for both adolescent girls and boys. In addition, such programmes should occur over an extended period in this life stage to continually engage adolescents about the underlying gendered and sexual norms and assumptions that inform their prior knowledge as well as the range and contexts in which IPV occurs.