Adolescent girls and young women in Uganda are at risk of early sexual intercourse, unwanted pregnancy, violence and a disproportionately high rate of HIV infection, partly due to has transactional sex. This article examines the extent to which adolescent and young woman participation in transactional sex is perceived as coercive. We conducted 19 group discussions and 44 in-depth interviews using semi-structured tools. The interviews were recorded on audio tape and transcribed verbatim. The data were processed using thematic analysis. If adolescent girls and young women weren't necessarily talking about coercion, their stories described a number of compelling aspects in their relationships.
First, the coercion by force to have "plucked" a man (ie that they had received money or resources, but did not wish to provide the "obligatory" sexual intercourse under " "implicit clauses of the relationship). Second, they described the coercive role that obtaining resources played in their decision to have sex when faced with verbal insistence from men.
Finally, they talked about having sex as a result of compelling economic circumstances, such as poverty, and peer pressure to have a modern lifestyle. Support for the creation of income-generating activities and microfinance or social protection programs can help reduce the vulnerability of adolescent girls and young women to sexual coercion in transactional sex. Target gender norms that contribute to uneven power dynamics and social expectations that force adolescent girls and young women to provide intercourse in exchange for resources, critically assess the meaning of consensual sex and normative interventions building on the efforts of parents to verify the source of their daughters' resources are also measures capable of reducing the vulnerability of adolescent girls and young women to coercion.