Refining out-of-school youth sexualities empowerment programmes using a sexual and reproductive citizenship lens: the Masizixhobise toolkit
- Authors: Macleod, Catriona I , Mthethwa, Thobile
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/460998 , vital:76072 , https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2024.2412666
- Description: Out-of-school comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programmes are viewed by UNFPA as important in empowering youth. These programmes may, however, be critiqued for, firstly, inadvertently equating empowerment with individual agency to the exclusion of social justice; and, secondly, using the word empowerment as a self-evident signifier. We propose that empowerment be conceptualised within a critical sexual and reproductive citizenship (CSRC) framework that draws on feminist and queer re-workings of the principles of citizenship. To operationalise this conceptualisation, we developed the Masizixhobise toolkit from the five key issues outlined in the CSRC framework. The aim of the toolkit is to aid in the design and refinement of theoretically embedded empowerment CSE programmes. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of the toolkit. To do so, we analyse the Partners in Sexual Health’s (PSH) Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights facilitator’s manual. A template analysis was conducted on this manual using a priori of themes from the toolkit. We sift through the PSH manual’s alignments or misalignments with the CSRC framework and make recommendations for enhancing the empowerment components of the manual. This example may assist others in designing and refining theoretically embedded and socially just youth empowerment CSE programmes.
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- Date Issued: 2024
Implementing a sexual and reproductive citizenship intervention refinement instrument for youth sexuality education: a formative evaluation
- Authors: Mthethwa, Thobile
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Sexuality education , Sexual and reproductive health and rights , Reproductive rights , Sexual citizenship , Entitlement
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/425008 , vital:72201
- Description: While Out of School sexuality education (SE) programmes in South Africa have attempted to bridge the gap in the number of young people who receive SE, there is still a large number of youth between the age groups of 15 to 24 years who lack adequate sexual knowledge. The manner in which sex education is taught and its accessibility is accompanied by challenges, in particular in relation to empowerment. To better understand the effectiveness of sexual education programmes, evaluations of their content is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether and how an Out of school SE programme run by Partners in Sexual Health (PSH) promotes understandings of sexual and reproductive citizenship. A formative evaluation of their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) facilitator’s manual was conducted (owing to COVID the actual programme was not run in the year data for this thesis were collected). To help perform the formative evaluation, the feminist sexual and reproductive citizenship (SRC) framework as conceptualized by Macleod and Vincent (2014) was used. The SRC framework consists of five key principles that, it is suggested, need to be adopted for SE programmes to be inclusive, namely, citizenship as status and practice, differentiated citizenship, private and public interstice, and politics of recognition, redistribution and reparation. An additional principle of inclusive and process-based educational practices was added into the five key principles. To analyse data, template analysis was used which enabled the researcher to create a priori of themes using the Masizixhobise toolkit which is informed by the SRC framework. Findings from this study reveal the interconnectedness between the different citizenship principles. Moreover, while the PSH SRHR programme promotes principles of the SRC framework, there are aspects of the SRC that are lacking from the programme. Therefore, the SRHR manual needs to take into account a spectrum of issues which include but are not limited to the incorporation of sexually diverse differently-abled individuals' sexual experiences and challenges when it comes to accessing SE. This means for SE programmes to achieve inclusivity and to be empowering, they need to encourage individuals to be agentic beings, engage in informed decision-making and encourage young people to take up their rights. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 2023
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- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
Assessing the impact of the expanded Global Gag Rule in South Africa
- Authors: du Plessis, Ulandi , Sofika, Dumisa , Macleod, Catriona I , Mthethwa, Thobile
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , report
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434306 , vital:73047 , ISBN Report , https://www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/criticalstudiesinsexualitiesandreproduction/documents/IWHC_Report.pdf
- Description: South Africa has one of the most progressive abortion laws in the world and as the constitution states, South Africans also have “the right to make deci-sions concerning reproduction”(Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996). Alongside being a free service, this should seemingly translate into accessible country-wide abortion services. However, less than one in ten public clinics actually perform abortions (Amnesty International, 2017). One of the main reasons for this has been the failure, on the part of the Depart-ment of Health, to regulate conscientious objection, ie the right of a healthcare worker to refuse to provide a service against which they are mor-ally opposed. Another reason is a lack of resources, in terms of both health professionals and finances, which manifest particularly in rural areas. As a result, women who are considering abortion either turn to illegal providers whose advertisements are scattered around towns, or towards private ser-vice providers such as Marie Stopes. Both options are usually costly, espe-cially to poor women. And illegal backstreet abortions often result in sepsis and infection. Recent data on abortion services in South Africa indicate that between 2016 and 2017, 20% of all abortions performed on women aged between 15-44 years were provided by the public health sector, while 26% and 54% of abortions were performed by illegal providers and the private health sector respectively (Lince-Deroche et al., 2018).
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- Date Issued: 2019