Karabo Mokobocho-Mohlakoana Chapter Three:Understanding Through Stories
people on sex related issues. This is in line with studies undertaken in the country before (Mturi,2003).
and embraced the move. For example,government introduced free primary education and policies to encourage children's education. In addition, the Department of Gender has included in its policies that pregnant women should not be expelled from schools.
These were moves to respond to the research that was carried out on young women's education. Some areas of research focused on the financial, communal, and cultural constraints and barriers outside the school. It is only recently that studies examining the gendered structure of schooling and experiences of learners are being investigated (Leach et al, 2000). In Lesotho, the issue of young women's pregnancy was researched from relatively similar angles and no studies have taken gendered experiences into account (Polonyana, 1993 and Mturi and Moerane,2001).
Research has neglected to observe gendered relations in schools (Bhana, 2003). It is this missing piece that results in simple explanations of pregnant girls disappearing and not coming back to school, dropping out, and parents withdrawing them from school. The research then fails to pick up what principal Sefali says in an article in a local newspaper.
The good principal observes that teachers are not trained as nurses and classmates laugh at and insult pregnant young women (Khashane and Hlabane, 2003, and Solwandle, 2004). The gendered power relations result in an unbearable environment that is antagonistic and sometimes cruel to the girls. Such behavior has been naturalized, accepted and tolerated by both perpetrators and victims alike (Leach,2000).
In studies that used gendered frameworks to investigate schooling experiences, in general schools have been identified as dangerous places, more so for girls (Bhana, 2002; and Leach et al, 2000). Both male and female students experience violence but the gender specific experiences are different. An example of gender specific violence may result from pregnancy. The pregnant body translates the experience.
The violence is from student to student within and across gender and may also come from teachers. Sometimes students become victims of power relations among teachers themselves. More studies indicate that young women are the worst victims and in general established that male and female pupils and teachers abuse young women (Leach et al,
Karabo Mokobocho-Mohlakoana Chapter Three:Understanding Through Stories
2000). They are abused both verbally and physically both within and outside school.
Some girls passively and obediently accept their status and acknowledge the existing power structures. By behaving in this manner,the girls resign themselves to being afraid.
Where young women have witnessed or experienced abuse from teachers the situation is made worse by the lack of trust in the teachers to protect them. The case of pregnancy while schooling therefore magnifies the ongoing abuse. Sometimes the perpetrator is in the same classroom as a teacher and at times as a classmate. Young women who have been confronted with abuse within the same classroom walls have expressed their feelings in the following words: "embarrassed, shy, ashamed, miserable, insulted or scared they felt like hiding".A number of young women in the study said that there were teachers who made young women pregnant. They have also said they knew of relatives who had been made pregnant in school by their principals. One added a testimony of her family where she was told that her mother was her father's student. The father has made her mother pregnant while she was his student. The father and student later married her (Leach et aI, 2000).
I argue that schools are not neutral institutions but value-laden replicas of community, church, family, and research in terms of imbalanced power relations. Differences in experiences exist for both girls and boys. Abuses of female learners that include sexual abuses originate from both male and female family members and teachers alike. Also boys within and without the school and other girls have been noted as abusive to one another (Leach et aI,2000). The type of abuse that happens creates an atmosphere of fear around the young women. Evidence of coerced sexual relationships that result in young women's pregnancy is the order of the day (Leach et al.,2000 and Boonstra et al.,1998).
The discourse that reigns is that of an adult who is constructed as a savior, a guide; a control manager and a role model for behavior. The immediate adult in the school is the teacher and learners look to teachers for support. However,a number of young women in the study said there were teachers who made young women pregnant. How then do the young women manage when the teachers who promised protection erode the pledge in
overt and covert ways? It surely is not the young woman's fault that the teachers abuse them,and structures are answerable for the safety of children.
In a school-based study in Zimbabwe,parents were asked what should happen if a young woman gets pregnant while schooling. Some participants felt that the young woman should be given permission to return to school after giving birth. Most people with this view set some limitations around which this return should occur.Some observed that the young woman's father might refuse (Leach,et al.,2000).
3.11.2 The school environment
Surprisingly, some parents operate in a similar manner to schools in that when parents were asked about what should happen when a schoolgirl gets pregnant the respondents blamed the pregnant young women. Some individuals were surprisingly harsh in the way they made suggestions on possible ways to punish pregnant young women, for example:
causing them suffering, beating,being sent to the partner's home, being sent to stay with relatives in rural areas, and jailing. One said she should be beaten but not killed. Such harsh suggestions are a clear indication of the strong feelings that young women's pregnancy evokes in some members of the community. While many countries are trying to revoke the death sentence on the basis of the right to life, some participants even think of young women's pregnancy as punishable by death. Just the thought that the participant says'be beaten but not killed' indicates the intensity with which some people view young women's pregnancy. I wish to argue that for any occurrence in life to brew and blow so much dust, there must be a very strong reason. But what reasons are they? Only research that questions the very source of the emotions can be relevant. The same harshness, if not adequately addressed,gets transferred into both written and unwritten policy as adults are dominant in the policy making world in many countries (Khashane and Hlabane, 2003, 2003 and Leach et al.,2000).
3.11.3 The school uniform
The relationship between dress and control of women and their expression of sexuality is not new. In the case of school going woman the politics is around school uniforms
Karabo Mokobocho-Mohlakoana Chapter Three: Understanding Through Stories
(Boonstra et al, 1998) When that kind of dress and size does not fit,the young women know that in an unfriendly environment, other means of hiding must be found. The uniform on its own is not problematic for advocates of exclusion of pregnant girls from school. School uniform forms a dress code for students in many countries and is usually not discussed. The uniform becomes problematic when worn by a pregnant body. This emanates from the constructed notion of women's bodies that are idealized as sexy and slender. Many pregnant women do not qualify to be sexy and slender according to the norms (Bordo, 1993).