CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.3 T HE Z IMBABWEAN POLICY LANDSCAPE : G IRLS , EARLY UNINTENDED PREGNANCY ,
1.3.3 Seventh grade transition rate crisis for Zimbabwean girls from primary and secondary
UNICEF notes that “Gender disparities disadvantaging girls in primary education persist in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia” (UNICEF, 2020). In Zimbabwe, transitions from primary to secondary school for girls (DFID, 2005; UNESCO, 2004; 2005; UNICEF, 2003; 2006; cited in Sommer, 2010a:521) warrant attention. Adolescent fertility rates have risen by 2.1 percentage points from 9.9% in 2006 to 12% in 2014 (UNFPA, 2016; cited in UNESCO, 2018:9). At the end of 2016, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Primary and Secondary Education released a disconcerting ministerial statement (Murwira, 2016). It was noted that out of 329 549 candidates who had written their Grade Seven Zimbabwe Schools Examination Council exam,
24 000 would not enrol in secondary school. Of the seventh-graders who allegedly did not enrol, 4 500 (18.8%) were girls who alleged to be dropping out due to pregnancy and marriage. As Figure 5 on page 23 shows, the official expected age of a seventh-grader is 12 years. Similarly in 2018, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education reported that one in eight of 57,500 dropouts across the country were due to pregnancy or marriage (Aljazeera, 2020).
Zimbabwe’s 2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey found that the percentage of girls and women aged 15-49 years who marry before the age of 15 is 4.9% (ZIMSTAT, 2015). This figure has remained stable with a slight decline of 0.1% to 4.8% in the 2019 MICS Findings Report (ZIMSTAT & UNICEF, 2019).
At 7.3% – almost double the MICS rate – the Ministerial statistics indicate a need for further interrogation of the situation. While there may be repeaters above the official expected age for a seventh-grader, perhaps the crisis is unbeknownst to us because this demographic falls outside of age disaggregated databases such as the MICS and the Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey (ZDHS). Almost a quarter (24.1%) of young women in Zimbabwe aged 20-24 years “have had a live birth before 18”, while 17.6% of adolescent girls aged 15-19 have had a live birth (ZIMSTAT & UNICEF, 2019:9). These figures have declined since the 2014 MICS which revealed that 22.4% of young women in Zimbabwe aged 20-24 years and 19.1% of adolescent girls aged 15-19 have had a live birth (ZIMSTAT, 2015). At a rate of 24.6% for live births among girls aged 15-19, Matabeleland South ranks third highest out of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces, indicating a high adolescent fertility rate. The rate has decreased from 120 (ZIMSTAT, 2015) to 108 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19 (ZIMSTAT & UNICEF, 2019). The urban to rural birth rate ratio is more than double at 62 and 136 (ZIMSTAT & UNICEF, 2019:74). Based on this data, the picture is obscure.
Could it be that there is a lack of menstrual preparedness that translates to girls reaching ménarche but not knowing that if they engage in unprotected sex without taking contraceptive measures, they may fall pregnant?
In countries such as the United States (US) and South Africa (cf. page 18), girls who give birth while in school have the same likelihood of completing their schooling as the ones who do not (Upchurch, McCarthy
& Ferguson,1993; Marteleto, Lam & Ranchhod, 2006; 2008). This suggests that there are more complex factors contributing to the education crisis that are unique to Zimbabwe. For example, educational policy implementation in the country mirrors cultural norms. Unlike the US and South Africa, school policies in Zimbabwe penalise schoolgirls who fall pregnant with exclusion without applying the same principle to schoolboys who are equally responsible in cases where both parties are school-going. Pregnant girls are forced to drop out of school while they are expecting, and this affects their likelihood of returning to their studies. It may also substitute their education with labour participation or unemployment (Cantet, 2020).
According to the earlier mentioned ministerial statement, pregnancy heightens their vulnerability to early marriage and low educational attainment. The Education Act [Chapter 25:04]43 of 1976 is under review through an amendment bill around which policymakers have begun to debate introducing a ‘maternity vacation’ for expecting schoolgirls that allows them to return to their studies after birth. The Education Minister, Professor Paul Mvima, argues that excluding girls from school because of pregnancy is discriminatory as it violates the right to education enshrined in Section 75 of Zimbabwe’s Constitution on the basis of gender. Countries like the US have pregnancy schools devoted exclusively to pregnant girls.
While South African schools do sometimes exercise the same school policy as Zimbabwe (of excluding pregnant pupils), the South African Schools Act of 1996 criminalises the exclusion of pregnant girls from schools. South Africa has one pregnancy school, the Pretoria Hospital School.44 There are no such provisions for pregnant girls in Zimbabwe.
School policies that permit the expulsion of schoolgirls without applying the same principle to schoolboys who are equally responsible in cases where both parties are school-going re-enforce asymmetrical45 consequences that disempower school-going girls who fall pregnant by forcing them to drop out of school.46 They also mitigate the successful transition from school to work by preventing women from obtaining the necessary qualifications to compete with men for jobs and attain the same earning potential. In Zimbabwe, like Kenya and Malawi, the policy guidelines for re-entry of girls following pregnancy are in draft. The Zimbabwean Ministry of Education Circular P35 (1999) entitled, ‘Discipline in Schools: Suspension, Exclusion and Corporal Punishment’ (UNESCO, 2018). The Circular states that pregnant learners are permitted to take time off from school and places the responsibility of ensuring re-entry for girls on School Heads, in so far as is possible. The majority of the population are not aware of this circular and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has pointed to the need to ‘raise awareness on the contents of the circular’ (2018:xix). The fact that this Circular is has still not been formalised as a parliament-approved policy document is yet another instance of gender being swept under the rug.
43 amended in 2004
44 https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/south-africa-school-for-pregnant-teens/2412382.html
45 See also Gordon (1996) and MoHCC, ZNFPC and UNFPA (2016).
46 For example, in 1981 the Ministry of Health, at the time known as the Ministry of Home Affairs “expelled 45 students from a nursing college because they were pregnant” (Seidman, 1984:432). After the submission of this dissertation, I learned that the Education Act was amended in 2020 to illegalise use the expulsion of girls from school because of pregnancy. See: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/25/its-now-illegal-for-zimbabwe-schools-to- expel-pregnant-girls and Education Amendment Act of 2020 [Chapter 25:04].
1.4 Conclusion
To summarise some of the findings of this chapter, it is important to note that in 2005 there was focus on girl-centred policy in Zimbabwe. However, in the subsequent 5-year national action plans of 2011 and 2016, girls zoomed out of the focus. In the process, their visibility was lost as they were absorbed into the broader category of orphans and vulnerable children. I have argued in this chapter that girls need to be centred in development discourse because without doing so, we will not find the right solutions to poor menstrual preparedness and its far-reaching implications. By focusing on girls, we are able to make ostensibly unrelated but key connections between gender, health and education. This chapter has defined the problem of poor menstrual preparedness and introduced the fieldsite. It has provided a background to the problem by painting a picture of the country’s education system, policy landscape and gender disparities disadvantaging girls. It prefaces the interrelation between early unintended pregnancy, early marriage, educational, pointing to a seventh-grade transition rate crisis for Zimbabwean girls from primary to secondary school and how this crisis may be linked to poor menstrual preparedness. The chapter has demonstrated that the long-term effects of investing in the education of women and girls cannot be ignored.