Progressive policies protecting women's rights to make reproductive decisions and the recent increase in literature exploring female sexual agency do not appear to have impacted on more equitable sexual relations in all contexts. In South Africa, gender power inequalities, intersecting with other forms of inequality in society, pose a challenge…

In a number of countries in Africa, young women who become pregnant are excluded from school. This article presents a critique of policy and practice in this area drawing partly on Diana Leonard's scholarship concerning the relational dynamic of gender, generation, social division, and household forms. Much of the policy prescription of large…

Young women's sexuality is a contested terrain in multiple ways in contemporary South Africa. A growing body of work in the context of HIV and gender-based violence illustrates how young women find it challenging to negotiate safe and equitable sexual relationships with men, and are often the victims of coercive sex, unwanted early pregnancies and…

This study investigated the attitudes of 43 teachers and school administrators towards sex education, young people's sexuality and their communities in 19 secondary schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and how these attitudes affect school-based HIV prevention and sex education. In interviews, teachers expressed judgemental attitudes…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the motivations underlying the specialisation choices of six female specialist doctors working in Cape Town, South Africa and to investigate whether the specific gender work identity associated with that specialism resulted in their motivation to enter it. Design/methodology/approach: The research…

This paper explores the ways in which young South African school children (aged between seven and eight) in a predominantly white primary school give meanings to HIV/AIDS. Using ethnographic methods and interview data, the analysis of young children's responses shows that their accounts of HIV/AIDS draw from their knowledge of disease more…

In South Africa, the centrality of gender-based violence in the spread of HIV/AIDS has led to many educational efforts to address it. The particular social values that male teachers hold around gender-based violence have been less examined. By focusing on African male teachers' understandings of gender-based violence, this paper highlights the…