Young women and sexual and reproductive health and rights

ost people in African societies still shy away from an open discussion about women’s sexuality and sexual choices. The claim that making the personal political is ‘Western’ and ‘un-African’ has been widely accepted. Therefore, challenging discrimination on the grounds of sex as a human rights issue is dismissed as ‘un-African’ – implying that the widespread acts of violence against women have become characteristic of our society today because they are condoned and justified as a prerequisite to preserving ‘African’ values. Women’s bodies are policed and constantly under attack. From an early age, young girls are taught that their bodies are dirty – harbingers of disease – and certain limits are put on how much flesh can and cannot be exposed. This is repeated at many levels, from coercing them to pull their labia, to virginity testing and arrests of women who are perceived to be deviant i.e. women in sex work, hence systematically denying women any form of control over their bodies.