‘Due to all this fear, we’re getting less freedom’: young people’s understandings of gender and sexual violence in New Delhi, India

ABSTRACT

This paper explores young people’s understandings of gender and sexual violence in New Delhi, India, based on multi-method research conducted with young people (aged 15–17) in three co-educational secondary schools. Fieldwork took place shortly after the 2012 Delhi gang rape that sparked widespread debates about violence against women in India, and so sexual violence became an important frame for students’ discussions around gender and sexuality. Young people’s understandings are considered within gender narratives – of ‘can-do’ and ‘vulnerable’ girlhood, and of ‘hero’ and ‘good boy’ masculinities – which already shaped their day-to-day experiences of schooling. Findings suggest that tensions arising from these often contradictory narratives led to frustrations among girls, while the dominance of conversations about sexual violence led to confusions in both girls’ and boys’ understandings of sexuality. Reflections are offered on ways schools can better support young people as they learn about gender and sexuality from diverse and contradictory sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• sexual violence
• girlhood
• masculinities
• secondary schools
• India

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my PhD supervisors Professor Janet Boddy, Professor Maya Unnithan and Professor Rachel Thomson, who provided extensive feedback on earlier versions of this work in my thesis; Rukmini Iyer, who reviewed a draft version of this paper; and the reviewers for their useful suggestions for improvements to the paper during peer review. Most importantly, I would like to thank all the students, teachers and principals in Delhi involved in the study, for being so generous with their time and participation in the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Padmini Iyer is currently an Education Research Officer at Young Lives, a longitudinal study of child poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. She completed a PhD in International Education at the University of Sussex in 2016. Padmini's research interests include gender and adolescence, sexuality education, equitable access to quality learning, and using mixed-methods approaches which combine quantitative, qualitative and ethnographic methods.

Notes

1. By comparison, the prestigious Delhi Public School system charges approximately Rs 191,000 (£2,331) per year. All conversions from www.xe.com, 02.03.17.

2. One hundred and sixteen valid responses to Q24 were coded using NVivo. Sixty-two per cent of girls (n = 31) responded explaining why they did not feel safe while travelling; Seventy-seven per cent of boys (n = 51) responded explaining why they did feel safe.

3. Data translated into English from the original Hindi are presented in italics, and significant Hindi words are included in brackets. Translation occurred subsequent to data collection; a translator listened to audio recordings of focus groups and interviews, transcribed these files into Hindi, and then translated the data into English.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council [grant number 1093380] and the University of Sussex.