Because I am a Girl - Plan USA

girl says: “My father left my mother when
he found out she was pregnant, and
always said that I was not his daughter.
He has had two other women and has
had sons and daughters with them too. I
think he is a bad man, because he refuses
to acknowledge his children and so we do
not have a father who loves us.” 45
Fear that their daughters might become
pregnant at a young age leads many
parents in El Salvador to restrict their
daughters’ movement outside the home.
Jasmine, aged 20, says: “Girls have more
difficulty even going to school because
girls are more vulnerable – our parents
may not send us to school because of
the risk of becoming pregnant.” She says
this is particularly true once they reach
adolescence: “From Grades 1 to 9 parents
are ok about it but the most difficult stage
comes when they reach high school – girls
have to leave rural areas for urban ones
[because there are no local secondary
schools] and parents are afraid.”
Jenifer, aged 17, from a youth group
in Opico, says: “I am not allowed out
because they think I am at risk. It is
different with boys.” Guillermo, aged 16,
agrees: “Boys get to go out because there
is no risk of pregnancy. But girls get their
freedom restricted.”
Parents may be right to worry.
Nationwide, 21,534 girls under 19 had
babies in 2009. Just under a thousand
were girls between 10 and 14, while the
rest were between 15 and 19 years old. 46
This is why Plan El Salvador’s training
for young people on gender work is
so important. Alma Salmeron, who
works as a Girls’ discrimination project
coordinator for Plan and is responsible
for 94 vulnerable children, says that out
Members of the youth
focus group in Opico.
N i k k i v a n d e r G a a g
of 94 children, only 10 have fathers who
are present. “Men want lots of sons;
women want protection.” But she says
many young mothers are depressed. “The
only way to stop this is to work with
children and young people, both male and
female.”
Christian, aged 21, from Cabañas,
feels that the discussions in the Plan
programme have changed his view
of what it means to be a father: “If I
didn’t have this training I would have
another way of thinking. I want to be
a responsible dad but I see other cases
where young men don’t know anything
about this and become macho and don’t
care about women. They leave a girl
pregnant with no support.”
The country has a long way to go
before most men are like Christian, and
young women like Adina no longer have
the responsibility of being a parent on
their own when they themselves are still
children. Absent fathers and teenage
mothers mean a daily struggle both
economically and emotionally for the
wider family and the children left behind.
The attitudes that young women and men
have about what it is to be a man and what
it is to be a woman shape the way that they
behave at this critical time. One study with
young men in the Balkans found that they
felt a young woman’s view of ‘an ideal man’
was very different from that of a young
man. 47
Many young people still hold very
polarised attitudes towards sex, perhaps not
surprisingly given how entrenched these
become at an early age. The prevailing norm
in some countries is that men are ‘studs’
Christian in
full flow.
N i k k i v a n d e r G a a g
The ideal man
Man’s man
Cool guy
Macho
Knows everyone in
the neighbourhood
Smokes
Fights/aggressive
Has a lot of women
Stubborn, not
changing his opinion
Woman’s man
Makes her feel safe
Charming
Intelligent
witty
Gentle
Faithful
Knows how
to listen
Never shows emotion Shares his emotions
and should be free to have as many sexual
partners as they can, whereas teenage girls
behaving in a similar way would be labelled
promiscuous. More than six out of 10 young
people interviewed by Plan in India and
Rwanda agreed that “men need sex more
than women do”. 48,49
Many teenage men are socialised to
believe that they have to prove themselves
sexually. As this young man from India said:
“My friends challenged me. They said ‘If
you are a Real Man, then engage that girl
[to get her to have sex] within eight days’.” 50
Njoki Wainaina, a gender expert from Kenya,
notes that: “Boys and men are socialised to
believe that sex is their right and that they
are entitled to it whenever they want it.” 51
This is an attitude that is hard for a young
man to challenge. And young women in their
turn may have learned to believe that their
role in heterosexual relationships is a passive
one. They may also find that they have little
power – not even the power to say ‘no’. One
study in South Africa found that “young
women identified their ideal relationship as
one in which the male made the decisions,
including the use of condoms and the timing
of sex”. 52 In Jamaica, 69 per cent of boys and
32 per cent of girls aged 11 to 15 said they
agreed with the statement that “if you really
love your [partner], you should have sex with
them”. Thirty per cent of girls and 58 per cent
of boys said that a girl should have sex with a
boy if he spends a lot of money on her. 53
Of course, not all young women agree
with this. “A man who doesn’t treat a
J o n S p a u l l
woman well, I think he’s not a real man – if
he beats women up, for example,” said
Josiane, aged 14, from Plan research in
Brazil. 54
And this young man from Zagreb, Croatia,
said: “Marriage is about asking help from
a woman to go through life together, with
mutual respect.” 55
But negative attitudes may lead to highrisk
behaviours, which not only affect the
young men involved, but also obviously
affect their partners as well, as we will see in
the next section.
Entre Nós – Young people work
together to promote gender
equality in Brazil 56
The media and new communications
technologies such as the internet and
mobile phones play a major part in
young people’s lives as they grow up.
Jackson Katz argues in his film ‘Tough
Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in
Masculinity’ that media images have a
primary influence in shaping perceptions
of what it is to be a man. He notes that
this makes it of crucial importance to look
critically at these ideals of masculinity,
because merely questioning these images
can start a whole debate on definitions
of manhood. 57 Entre Nós (Between
Ourselves), an innovative multi-media
campaign, aims to do just this.
Entre Nós’ flagship is a radio-based
soap opera about a young couple,
Beto and Jessica, and their friends.
The storyline addresses first sexual
experiences, condom use, unplanned
pregnancy and adolescent parenthood
The 'Entre Nós'
campaign in
action.
88 the s tate of the world’s girls 89