A narrative-discursive analysis of abortion decision-making in Zimbabwe
- Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern Tatenda
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/496 , vital:19964
- Description: Most research on abortion decision-making has looked at the factors or influences that are seen to affect abortion decision-making and thus take a health determinants approach. However, this approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and it is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpins the process of abortion decision-making. Research on abortion decision-making has rarely examined how women who undergo a termination of pregnancy (TOP) construct micro-narratives of the decision to terminate the pregnancy and also how these women are positioned by the service providers who interact with them. Using a Foucauldian postcolonial feminist approach and narrative-discursive analysis, this study explores abortion decision-making narratives in a Zimbabwean context where abortion laws are restrictive. In this study I elicited the narratives of women who had undergone an abortion about how they came to make the decision and proceeded to terminate the pregnancy. I highlight the discourses employed in constructing these narratives and how women position themselves in these narratives and discourses. These are then compared to the subject positions enabled in health service providers’ narratives on the same topic. These narratives are then linked to the social discourses and power relations that work to enable or constrain reproductive justice. The data were collected from three sites in Harare, Zimbabwe. The three sites were Harare Hospital, Epworth and Mufakose. An adapted version of Wengraf’s (2001) narrative interview was used to elicit narratives from 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers (two nurses at Harare Hospital, two village health workers in Epworth and two nurses in Mufakose). All the service providers interviewed have experience working with women who have terminated pregnancies. In narrating their stories about their abortions, the women employed discursive resources around shame, stigma, religion, health and culture. These discursive resources were drawn upon in the construction of the women’s micro-narratives. The women spoke in a socially sanctioned manner where stories were enabled and constrained by particular religious, cultural and gendered discursive resources. In these stories, cultural constructions, gendered understandings of motherhood and femininity constrained reproductive justice for women who have terminated pregnancies. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the existence of social discourses and power relations that work to constrain reproductive justice. While the women saw themselves as having ‘unsupportable pregnancies’, the service providers positioned them as being evil, selfish and irresponsible. The negative positions deployed by the service providers point to the vilification and blaming of women who have undergone a termination of pregnancy. In these positions, the woman is at fault and there is silence on the role of men in abortion decision-making. In the women’s narratives and the health service providers positioning of the women a ‘reproductive rights’ discourse was absent. This was significant as much of the activism around abortion has centred on the woman’s rights to her body. Where rights were mentioned, it was in reference to foetal rights (using cultural, moralistic religious understandings of abortion as killing). The missing ‘reproductive rights’ discourse points to a need to move from a reproductive rights framework to a reproductive justice framework that can be applied through local understandings of hunhu/ubuntu. By doing this, abortion is not seen as a ‘choice’ that a woman makes but rather as involving broader social and environmental circumstances that make a pregnancy ‘unsupportable’.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Nascent Desires: Gendered Sexualities in Life Orientation Sexuality Education Programmes and Popular Music
- Authors: Moodley, Dale Dhersen
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3274 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021260
- Description: Formal school-based sexuality education is one medium, amongst others, that recognises young people’s sexuality, but usually as at-risk and/or risk taking subjects, or as innocent subjects. I analyse the gendered sexualities of young people as represented in: Grade 10 Life Orientation sexuality education programmes and popular music, as two mediums of sexual socialisation in Grade 10 learners’ lives, and as engaged with by Grade 10 learners and educators. I collected data from two schools in the Eastern Cape that included: (i) sections on sexuality from two Life Orientation manuals used by educators in classrooms: ‘Oxford Successful Life Orientation’ (2011), and ‘Shuters Top Class Life Orientation’ (2011); (ii) videos and lyrics of three songs voted most popular by learners which were ‘Climax’ by Usher, ‘Beez in the Trap’ by Nicki Minaj, and ‘Where Have You Been’ by Rihanna; (iii) observations of seven sexuality education classes; and, (iv) in-depth semistructured interviews conducted with eight learners and two educators. I draw on an integrated theoretical and methodological approach – Foucauldian, feminist poststructural and psychosocial psychoanalytic perspectives – to conceptualise and analyse gendered sexualities in terms of: (i) the dominant gendered discourses found in sexuality education manuals, and music videos and lyrics; (ii) the reflexive and interactive gendered subject positions taken up and/or resisted by learners and educators during classroom lessons and one-on-one interviews; and, (iii) learners’ and educators’ conscious and unconscious investments in particular gendered subject positions during one-on-one interviews. These three sets of analysis produced four major themes. The first theme centres on responsible sexuality; young women are expected to assume more sexual responsility than young men, thus curbing their sexual agency. The second theme outlines three types of pleasure – sexual, romantic and dating and/or relationship pleasure – that accord young men and women active and passive ways of exercising pleasure. The third theme highlights the heteronormative transitioning adolescent subject that constructs young women as reproductive subjects and young men as sexual subjects. The last theme focuses on gendered power relations and raunch culture, and maintains that young men are powerful and likely to commit acts of sexual violence against young women because they are powerless. The central argument developed when viewing all the themes is that dominant gendered discourse, gendered subject positions, and conscious and unconscious investments in these positions challenge the extent to which the gendered meanings that underpin adolescent learners’ sexuality are stable and fixed. The gendered discourses in the Life Orientation sexuality education programmes showed that gender is expressed rigidly, thus privileging masculine over feminine sexuality. However, the gendered discourses in the popular music contested rigid gender binaries and produced fluid and equitable masculine and feminine sexualities. The classroom practices depicted multiple and more equatable gendered sexualities, highlighting just how contested gender is. Finally, educator and learners’ personal biographies illustrated how conflicting masculine and feminine sexualities present a signficant source of emotional conflict for them. It may benefit policymakers and stakeholders to consider informal mediums of sexual socialisation for learners, such as music, when drafting the Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum, whilst also taking into account learners and educators personal lives.
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- Date Issued: 2016