Silencing youth sexuality in Senegal: intersections of medicine and morality

ABSTRACT

This article reports on recent research funded by international development actors which explored how Senegalese youth acted as ‘active citizens’ and claimed their education and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) rights. Our analysis is framed by a review of contemporary international development discourses that seem to offer fertile possibilities for more plural understandings of sexuality. After describing the research methodology and methods, we draw on post-structural theory to analyse the discourses youth deployed to talk about sex and their sexualities. Rather than a source of pleasure, youth’s talk of sex and sexuality was dominated by discourses of morality and medicine, in ways that sustained a heteronormative gender regime permeated by entrenched hegemonic masculinities. We conclude that rather than the fertile possibilities identified in our opening review, the SRH lens re-inscribed a negative framing of sexuality which was compounded by both family and religious norms.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-structural theory
• citizenship
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• heteronormativity
• youth culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Barbara Crossouard is a Senior Lecturer in Education who researches within the Gender, Identities and Citizenship theme at the Centre for International Education (CIE), University of Sussex, UK. Her research interests and publications are focused on the power relations of education and the production of educational and social inequalities, which she interrogates mainly through feminist, post-structural and postcolonial theories. Her most recent research has explored the production of youth identities in different contexts of sub-Saharan Africa, in particular focusing on the construction of youth citizenship identities through narratives of nation, gender and religion. In her work, she draws principally on qualitative, participatory and mixed methods approaches.

Máiréad Dunne is Professor of Sociology of Education and former Director of the Centre for International Education (CIE) at the University of Sussex, UK. Her research interests are in social and educational inequalities and the workings of power in global, national, regional, local and domestic relations. Máiréad uses theories from sociology, cultural studies, geography and education to explore the implications of dominant power positions and norms for identities (gender, sexuality, ethnicity, socio-economic status), place and space (global, national, institutional) and the production of knowledge (research, policy, practice). Her publications include the book Gender Sexuality and Development: Education and Society in Sub-Saharan Africa (Sense Publishers, 2008) and the co-authored book Troubling Youth Identities: Nation, Religion, Gender (Palgrave, 2017).

Dr Naureen Durrani is a Senior Lecturer in Education and International Development in the Centre for International Education (CIE), University of Sussex, UK. Her research interests are in the area of identity construction and education, and the social relations this produces, whether social cohesion or conflict. Theoretically, Naureen approaches her research by focusing on identity and difference, taking this up to explore the intersections of gender, religion (Islam), ethnicity and age (youth) in the production of identities. Given her broad interest in the role of education in the construction of individuals, groups and societies, her research has also spanned education policy and curriculum texts, teachers and their education. Her research draws on qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Oxfam Novib (G0968).