‘He enjoyed it more than I did’!: young British Sikh women negotiating safe sex in heterosexual encounters

ABSTRACT

Sex education and relationship strategy of the U.K. allows parents to withdraw their children from sex education, which has left many young people especially those from Black Minority and Ethnic communities with low or no sex education. Similarly, the government's policy environment enables faith schools to teach these subjects under the tenets of their faith. This empirical research was carried out in South-West London using 12 qualitative interviews with women and men (ages 18–20 years) discusses young women's experiences of their first sexual encounter who navigate their reputations, relationships as well as negotiate safe sex in the absence of appropriate relationships and sex education. Sex education not only brings into focus sensitivities around gender but also tensions around religion in the U.K. Evidence from the study suggests that despite the importance placed by the Indian community on maintaining virginity, young women asserted that religion and culture did not prohibit them from exploring their sexuality. In this study, the priority is to present young women's voices and experience of sexual encounters.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• religion
• race
• identity
• relationship and sex education

Acknowledgements

The authors of the paper would like to thank Canterbury Christ Church for providing the ethical approval to carry out this research, and anonymous reviewers of this paper. Also, we would like to thank all the research participants for giving us their valuable time and sharing their stories. This paper is part of Ritu Mahendru's PhD thesis and Professor Shane Blackman was her PhD. Supervisor.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.