intertwined with gender, sexuality, race and class. Accounts and experiences of violence in the study highlighted alternate forms of femininities that disrupted gender norms. Bhana argued that gender violence must no longer be conflated with male power.
Other studies, too, have shown that violence is not enacted by boys alone but that girls can and do engage in acts of violence (Morojele, 2011; Renold, 2005; Ringrose and Harris, 2013). Bhana, however, showed that while girls’ engagement in violence worked to challenge or subvert dominant constructions of gender, it was not advantageous for their femininity because accepting subordination to hegemonic masculinity and having as many friends as possible were key to girls’ popularity.
These five studies all highlight how research that explores sexual violence in South Africa tends to focus on older girls and boys and that, in most instances, when younger participants are included in studies, their voices are subsumed by older youth. Bhana (2018) and Lynch et al. (2018) are notable exceptions. The literature is consistent in that it shows that sexual harassment and sexual violence are extreme manifestations of gender power inequalities and powerful influences supporting the hegemonic forms of masculinity, normative gender roles, and heterosexual norms that shape primary school girls’ schooling experiences. The gender violence that primary school girls are subjected to overwhelmingly centres on sexualised verbal and physical harassment generally aimed at diminishing girls' their power. The literature highlights how girls thus challenge disempowering constructions of them as sexually innocent, and how they are invested in their sexuality and desirous of heterosexual relationships. However, sociocultural beliefs accorded to gender and young girls’ sexuality renders their negotiation of their sexuality complex and contradictory.
In the following section I explore international studies on how sexual violence features and is constructed in schools, in order to give the reader an appreciation of the global scale of this phenomenon.
3.3. Sexual violence in schools: a global phenomenon
Sexual harassment and sexual violence is recognized as a common phenomenon in schools throughout the world (Pinehero, 2006). The increasing attention it is receiving globally shows that it is not a recent problem. I focus on studies conducted in America (Ashbaugh & Cornell,
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2008; Espelage, Hong, Rinehart & Doshi, 2016; Gruber & Finneran, 2008; Haavind, Thorne, Hollway & Magnusson, 2014; Hlavaka, 2014), Australia (Robinson, 2005), Jamaica (Cobbett
&Warrington, 2013), the United Kingdom (Renold, 2005), Spain and Italy, Sanchez (2010) and Sweden (Shute, Owens & Slee, 2008). Ashbaugh and Cornell (2008) found that
sexualised teasing, taunts and jokes created distress and emotional anxiety in American school girls. Sanchez (2010) also found that school girls were subjected to sexual harassment and sexual violence in the form of verbal abuse, sexual graffiti and exposure to pornography, but that it is important to consider these behaviours in relation to heterosexual attraction since sexual harassment emerging out of heterosexual attraction can normalise sexual harassment and violence in intimate partner relationships.
The following themes dominate global literature on which I focus:
Sexual harassment: mis-identified, mis-labeled, minimised or ignored by school personnel
Girls’ experiences of sexualised verbal violence perpetrated by boys
Girls as perpetrators of sexualised verbal violence
Girls’ experiences of sexualised physical abuse perpetrated by boys
Girls’ experiences of physical violence in heterosexual relationships
3.4. Sexual Harassment: mis-identified, mis-labeled, minimised or ignored by school personnel
Gruber and Finneran (2008) challenged the misnomer “bullying” that is often used to explain sexual harassment in schools arguing instead that girls’ experiences of sexual violence are shaped by gender power inequalities that cost them dearly—to the extent that their greater growth is stunted. They also assert that sexual harassment is a manifestation of gender power inequalities that are underpinned by deep sociocultural beliefs around gender, race, class and sexuality. Their argument resonates with those of Hlavaka (2014) who show how the notion of sexually harassing behaviours as developmental has in fact worked to normalise sexual harassment in schools. They found that the developmental perspective attributed to sexual harassment misses how gender inequalities are invoked and sustained. Hlavaka argues for shifting the lens towards understanding how and why these acts are produced and maintained in schools. Her views are based on the American Association of University Women (AAUW, 2011) study which revealed that out of 1965 students, nearly half of them reported
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experiences of sexual harassment and only 9% reported their experiences to institutional heads. Hlavaka also noted that more girls than boys accounted for experiences of sexual harassment which included sexualised verbal abuse and being coerced into heterosexual relationships.
Other scholars (Conroy, 2013; Espelage, Hong, Rinehart & Doshi, 2016; Haavind, Thorne, Holloway & Magnusson, 2014; Summit, Kalmus, De Atley & Levack, 2016) found that sexual harassment and sexual violence in primary schools operates in the shadows and that individuals and institutions thus fail to spot it. According to these scholars, sexual harassment and sexual violence is not just between boys and girls, rather there is consensus that societal and cultural norms attached to gender interact with other structures such as sexuality, race and class that must be seen as enablers that facilitate gender power inequalities.
Miller et al. (2013) also link heterosexual violence to aggression and bullying. However, they clarify that whilst bullying emerges from childhood, sexual harassment is borne out of
pubescent changes that bring an increased awareness of the sexual self and are accompanied by boys’ and girls’ desires to attain self-efficacy and autonomy. However, these authors maintain that sexual harassment, aggression and bullying co-exist and therefore should not be viewed in isolation. They conducted their study with Grade 7 and 8 learners in North
Carolina, America. Gruber and Finneran (2008), on the other hand, are clear that these behaviours should not confused because sexual harassment is especially driven by male sexual entitlement and is also intended to shame girls (and women) especially, as well as others who transgress gender norms. This resonates with Duncan (2004), who found that the perception and construction of sexual harassment as bullying points to a failure to recognise the gendered behaviour of children. He asserts that failure to identify sexual harassment highlights the neglect or absence of an understanding of how gender and gender power, aided by sociocultural norms, impact on school girls (and boys). He believes that failure to
recognise sexual harassment leads to incorrect interventions within the range of the school and an inability to address unequal gender norms in society more generally. By applying a developmental perspective to sexual harassment, sexual violence becomes normalised as a feature of hot-blooded masculinity that fails to account for how young girls themselves view and respond to gender and sexual violence.
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