Tackling the Taboo: Sexuality and Gender Transformative Programmes to End Child Marriage

Introduction and Methodology
The control and regulation of sexuality - in particular, the control of adolescent girls’ sexuality - remains a critical and often unaddressed way in which gender inequality manifests across different cultural contexts. Virtually all communities place legal, religious, political or socio-economic restrictions on:
• how sensuality, intimacy and pleasure are experienced • how people - in particular girls - express their sexuality, including sexual orientation and gender identities • how people engage in sexual and other intimate relationships
• how they understand and ensure their own sexual and reproductive health
• the exercise of sexual agency and bodily autonomy in general.

For adolescent girls, these restrictions are exacerbated because age and gender are key dimensions of power inequalities, and girls usually lack access to power and are highly constrained in their ability to make decisions for themselves. Marriage, as a social, cultural and economic institution, also plays a key role in this control of girls’ sexuality and bodily autonomy. Over the past few years, there has been a growing awareness that patriarchy and the control of sexuality matter in terms of understanding both the complex causes of and the diverse solutions to the practice of child, early and forced marriage (CEFM).2 Girls may struggle to develop a healthy view of their sexuality in the face of prevailing beliefs that deny their sexual desires and define female sexuality as passive and vulnerable.3 Girls’ lives and mobility are under constant scrutiny, and any deviation from the dominant gender norms is severely penalised. The sexuality and mobility of married girls, too, is often highly restricted and limited to household activities and childbearing.

The Child, Early and Forced Marriage and Sexuality Programs Working Group (CSPWG) commissioning this report acknowledges that sexuality is intrinsically linked with power dynamics and as such requires an understanding of different dimensions of inequality including age, class, caste, sexual orientation and gender identity and highlights the importance of challenging practices of CEFM with gender-transformative approaches (GTAs).

The ultimate goal of this research is to identify promising gender-transformative programming that addresses sexuality and links with reducing CEFM, including by highlighting promising gender transformative work taking place in politically and culturally conservative contexts. This research foregrounds successful empowerment approaches that consider the inequalities and harmful social norms that married and unmarried girls and young women disproportionately face, and focuses on and identifies initiatives that recognise and support girls’ autonomy with skills, knowledge, and agency (including sexual agency).

Working definition of gender-transformative programming
Gender Transformative Approaches (GTAs), seek ‘to reshape gender relations to be more gender equitable, largely through approaches that free individuals across the gender spectrum from the impact of destructive gender and sexual norms’. Gender-transformative approaches encourage critical awareness of gender roles and norms; promote the position of girls and women; challenge the distribution of resources and allocation of duties between men and women; and/or address the power relationships between girls and women and others in the community, such as service providers or traditional leaders.

The ultimate aim of GTA is to achieve gender equality, empowering women, girls and gender non-conforming young people, promoting health and eliminating violence. Gender transformative approaches may require working at all levels of an ecological model (individual – family/ relationships – communities – society etc.) and may be highly contextually specific.

Research methodology
The consultant team undertook extensive information-gathering and a detailed analysis of selected programmes and organisations to identify and understand promising programming and approaches with potential for replication. Through a highly iterative process with multiple phases, a review of 190 programmes was narrowed down to a pool of 26 using a set of parameters developed in consultation with the CSPWG and based on existing knowledge of what constitutes gender-transformative sexuality programming . The analysis of the 26 short-listed programmes surfaced promising approaches and positive outcomes linked to sexuality and CEFM. The project put special effort into uncovering lesser known and under-documented grassroots organisations, as well as paying attention to diversity, including context and geography among other factors. Nevertheless, a large number of organisations were excluded from the analysis due to lack of response or ability to provide documentation. 

Findings
 Addressing the control of adolescent sexuality from a rights framework that includes issues like consent, choice, and pleasure is very challenging. Such efforts are often met with reluctance and resistance at all levels – from families, communities, schools, health service providers,
communitybased organisations, government officials, and policymakers. Issues around sexuality are widely considered to be taboo, and the extreme sensitivity around these issues is palpable. In particular, organisations working in highly conservative and religious settings tend to use other entry points to address sexuality (sports and formal education scholarships, for example), and some introduce the topic of sexuality through more general or indirect lenses (through health or hygiene). The review looked carefully at promising approaches that are making significant strides in achieving normative and legal change and positively impacting the lives of girls. While even well-articulated programmes that involved the parents and the communities experienced some form of backlash, it can be argued that this iterative and complex journey is already ‘transformative’ as it shakes the foundations upon which unequal gender norms are established.