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Preliminary Investigation of the Abuse of Girls in Zimbabwean Junior Secondary Schools - Education Research Paper No. 39, 2000, 100 p. [Previous Page] [Table of Contents] APPENDICES
Appendix 1: numbers interviewed Appendix 1: numbers interviewedAppendix 1: numbers interviewed
* includes Guidance and Counselling teacher for Schools B, C
and D Appendix 2: Tables
Table 1: January 1999 enrolments in the four schools Table 1: January 1999 enrolments in the four schoolsTable 1: January 1999 enrolments in the four schools
Table 2: Background information on girlsTable 2: Background information on girls
Table 3: If a schoolgirl gets pregnant......girls' and boys' opinionsTable 3: If a schoolgirl gets pregnant......girls' and boys' opinions
Table 4: If a schoolgirl gets pregnant................. teachers' opinionsTable 4: If a schoolgirl gets pregnant................. teachers' opinions TEACHERS
Table 5: If a schoolgirl gets pregnant............ parents' opinionsTable 5: If a schoolgirl gets pregnant............ parents' opinions PARENTS
Appendix 3: Interview data
GIRLS' INTERVIEWS GIRLS' INTERVIEWS
Abuse by male pupils Abuse by male pupilsExamples of abusive behaviour by boys were provided by nearly half the girls interviewed. These included: One boy came into our class, and poked my head with a pen and accused me of Abuse by teachersa. Girls who had been propositioned Of the 14 girls who said they had been propositioned by a male teacher, seven were in School A, four in School B and three in School C. None said they had been approached in School D (however, teachers there reported a few incidents, as detailed in section 3.3 of the report). Some of the circumstances under which the girls were approached were described by them as follows: He slipped a love note into my exercise book.One girl said her primary school teacher had proposed to her when she was in Grade 6: He told me that he loved me and I yelled at him. After that in class he tried to hit me, or send me out of the class for no apparent reason. The memory makes me cry every time I think about it. b. Girls who know others whom they suspect of having an affair with a teacher Of the 48 girls who said they knew another girl who had been approached, 18 were in School A, 11 in School B, 14 in School C and five in School D. Some girls named several girls. However, in none of the schools were they completely sure that the girl had accepted; they just suspected so. When asked how they knew that girls were having affairs with teachers, evidence given was: My friend was sent by the teacher to call the girl to his home - they live in the same neighbourhood.c. Evidence that girls sometimes encouraged teachers Ten of the 17 girls interviewed for a third time agreed that some girls encourage the teacher by, for example: Giggling and moving up and down when the teacher is there Abuse by older men and 'sugar daddies'Many examples were provided by girls in all four schools, including: A man just touched me on the breasts. I couldn't do anything because he just forced his hand on me. I was angry and I nearly hit him but I was afraid. BOYS' INTERVIEWSd. Examples of ways in which boys proposition girls If you have one girl, boys will laugh at you. If you have more than one, you are seene. Suggestions that girls sometimes made sexual advances to boys Girls trick boys into having sex, they plan to get pregnant Appendix 4 : Teachers' definition of abuseTeachers' definition of abuse Which of the following would you classify as 'abuse' against girls? a) male students demanding sexual favours or physical intimacy of girls Appendix 5: Pupils' WorkshopsTwo-day workshops in Schools A and C in October 1999 Two workshops were held, each over a two-day period, in two of the case study schools (A and C). Each consisted of a number of activities using participatory (PRA) methods. We spent the first day exclusively with girls; the first part of the second day was spent with boys on their own, and they were joined later by the girls. The girls ended the workshop on their own with some role play. There were 15 girls and ten boys involved in the activities with School A and 18 girls and ten boys in School C. The girls started the first morning with 'loosening up' activities in the form of songs and games. They were asked to indicate whether they liked school or not by placing stickers on 'Happy' and 'Sad' faces. Most indicated that they liked school. In groups of four to five, the girls were then asked to draw a map of the school and the surrounding area and use stickers of different colours to indicate areas where they felt safe and areas where they felt unsafe (green for 'safe', red for 'unsafe'). The groups then came together to discuss the maps giving reasons for their choices. The girls were then asked what they understood by 'abuse'. They appeared to have a clear understanding of this, although there later emerged heated debate as to whether corporal punishment constituted abuse or not. Most thought that they did not deserve beatings for offences like noise making, lateness and failure to answer questions correctly in class, but a surprising number did approve of corporal punishment in moderation. Once having made clear that they understood the term 'abuse', they were asked to draw a spider with each leg indicating the type of abuse that existed in and around the school. Each pupil in the group was given a set of 20 sticky dots and asked to place them where she thought the abuse was most serious. Girls identified being beaten by teachers, and being touched on their private parts (breasts or buttocks) by boys and teachers as the most serious forms of abuse, followed by Form 4 girls trying to persuade them to go with Form 4 boys, and teachers not giving their lessons. Again the groups came together to discuss the forms of abuse. They were then asked to draw a 'cause and consequence' tree with roots as causes and branches as consequences. Two groups were asked to address the double question: 'Why do boys have sex with girls?/Why do girls have sex with boys?' and another two groups 'Why do teachers have sex with girls?/Why do girls have sex with teachers?' When asked to indicate why a girl would have sex with a teacher, most indicated that the girls wanted money to buy things like chocolate and sweets at break time. They might also want to show off or do what they think other girls are doing. Because of the AIDS scare, teachers would want to have sex with young girls whom they thought were free of the disease because they were still virgins. Teachers might also want sex with young girls 'to satisfy their feelings' or because they envied the girls' lives. As consequences, the girl might get pregnant but the teacher if he was married would not leave his wife for her; the girl might also get a sexually transmitted disease or AIDS. The girl will be expelled and she may end up committing suicide or dumping the baby. The teacher may also be dismissed. When asked why boys wanted sex with girls, alongside the suggestion that boys wanted to experiment, to make girls lose their virginity and to be sure that the girl loved him, the girls (and the boys when they did the activity the following day) expressed the notion that boys want to 'fix' the girl, i.e. place her under his control, show that he is a man, and in some sense punish her for being female. As for a girl, she might have sex with a boy because she needed money, but also because she might want him to marry her or to show her genuine feelings.
Cause and consequence tree The same activities, in an abbreviated form, were carried out with boys on the second day. The boys and girls were then brought together and their activities discussed. A comparison of the school maps indicated that there were common areas where both boys and girls felt unsafe (red stickers), such as outside the school boundaries, near the administration block which housed the school office and the staff room, and in the orchard or vegetable garden. It was interesting to learn that, whereas girls were clearly afraid of boys, the boys too had their own private fears. In particular, younger boys in both schools complained of bullying by the bigger boys. In one of the schools visited, one of the bigger boys in the workshop group had a professionally made rubber strap in his possession. When asked about it he claimed that it belonged to a friend. However, girls identified more areas within the school grounds where they felt unsafe. These included: the caretaker's house, the new classrooms being built (where there were construction workers) and the car park (see below). On another map, the girls identified the teachers' houses (out of bounds just outside the school boundary) and the tuckshop.
Safe and unsafe places in the school - Girls
Safe and unsafe places in the school - Boys A comparison of the 'abuse' spiders showed that girls saw abuse very much in terms of beatings by teachers and boys and being touched by teachers and boys. For boys, being beaten by teachers and given harsh punishments were of most concern as was also being sent out of the class, and being forced to smoke dagga and drink beer by older boys around the school premises. In one of the schools, it was known that boys frequently bunked lessons to go off into the nearby mountain to smoke and drink -they were referred to as 'mountain boys'.
'Abuse' spider : Girls
'Abuse' spider : Boys After comparing their school maps and the 'abuse' spiders, the girls and boys were asked in mixed groups to draw on a single sheet of paper an ideal relationship, with the boys drawing their ideal female partner on one side of the sheet and the girls drawing their ideal male partner on the other side. Most of the groups focused on physical appearance like good looks and smart dressing when doing this task, but when required to indicate the four most important characteristics that the mixed group could all agree on (indicated by brightly coloured cards), these tended to be moral qualities such as good behaviour, being respectful, honest and loving, and being educated. It was noticeable that in these mixed groups, the girls were much quieter and the boys were uneasy.
an ideal relationship In the afternoon of the second day, in each of the schools girls prepared some role play about the abuse they experienced in and around the school. Some were very realistic. One portrayed a male teacher who used his position to abuse girls in his class; if the girl fell for his sexual favours she would be given pocket money and be the teacher's favourite but if she declined he would use any pretext to beat her. Another group showed how a teacher's attention was focused on one particular girl in the class: the teacher passed comments on how smart the girl was, patted her and tried to straighten her blouse so as to touch her on the breasts. The class knew what was going on and booed and hissed when he asked her to come to the front of the class to read, and when he praised her after she had read a passage badly in class. He would detain her after class, send her to buy something for him, or ask her to bring books to his base room, where he would engage her in conversation and try to touch her - while the class tried to listen to what they were saying. He gave her money, which she boasted about to a friend. Despite being advised against going with a teacher, she ignored her friend but when she told the teacher she was not interested any more, he told her that she could not refuse because he had given her money. She had to pay him the money back. Another dramatised event was where a teacher had got a girl pregnant. He had told her earlier that he would marry her and give her everything she wanted. Now that the girl was in trouble, the teacher refused to share any responsibility. Both the teacher and the girl were dismissed from school. Another play vividly depicted the harassment that girls went through on a daily basis as a gang of boys lay in wait for them in the bushes leading away from the school; they then pounced on the girls, whistling at them, grabbing them by the breasts and locking them in an embrace which they struggled against.
boys ambushing a girl on her way from school After the role play, the girls were asked to write their problems on pieces of paper which were stuck onto a large 'problem wall'. The problems were then grouped under different headings like 'beatings by teachers', 'touching by teachers', 'boys proposing' etc. These were then prioritised. For School A, their prioritised problems (in decreasing order of importance, with some items given equal ranking) agreed by all were: Boys proposing/teachers proposing/sugar daddies
proposing For School C, their prioritised problems were: Dumping babies (i.e. getting pregnant and abandoning the
baby) It was interesting that by far the most commonly mentioned problem when they were building the problem wall (beatings by teachers) was not ranked the highest when they came to prioritise them (ranked fourth by both groups). The researchers and the girls discussed these problems and ranked them according to which were easy to solve and which were difficult. They then looked at how they could best be solved in terms of classifying them as strategies to be undertaken 'by us', 'with us' and 'for us'. Their suggestions for what they themselves could do are reproduced in section 5.2. above. As for what the school could do for them, they wanted boys who assaulted them punished and teachers who were known to make proposals to girls dismissed. Appendix 6: Teachers' Workshops
School A: 8 teachers These workshops were held with teachers (male and female) in the four schools as part of their January staff development programme. As already noted, when asked to detail problems they experienced when teaching girls, the teachers revealed much negative stereotyping about girls, e.g. gossiping, day dreaming, fighting over men, behaving childishly. At the same time, despite an insistence on punishment, their strategies to address abuse in schools make positive suggestions which for the large part are practical and implementable. These do however require a significant change of attitude and behaviour on the part of the teachers themselves if they are to bring about significant improvements in the way schools treat girls. It should also be noted that the four workshops only attracted between 8 and 12 teachers in each school, despite there being between 24 and 48 teachers per school. This would suggest a relatively low level of interest in the issue, or a reluctance to talk about it. It is also likely that the main perpetrators of abuse stayed away. At the start of the workshop, teachers were shown the list of prioritised problems that the girls had developed during their own workshops. Teachers were asked to rank them in order of priority, with the results shown below (table 1). They were then asked to identify problems that they experienced in teaching girls and then to rank them in order of priority and according to three categories: in class, in and around the school, and outside the school (table 2). Finally, they developed strategies to address the girls' problems, and indirectly the problems they themselves experienced in teaching girls, according to three categories: the teacher, the school and the parents (table 3). The main findings of the workshop activities are presented for each of the four schools on the following pages. School A: 8 teachersTable 1: Girls' problems prioritised by teachers (in decreasing order of importance) · Boys and teachers proposingTable 2: Problems that teachers face with girls (prioritised in decreasing importance)
Table 3: Teachers' solution strategies (prioritised in decreasing importance)
School B: 8 teachersTable 1: Girls' problems prioritised by teachers (in decreasing order of importance) · Shortage of books and furnitureTable 2: Problems that teachers face with girls (prioritised in decreasing importance)
Table 3: Teachers' solution strategies (prioritised in decreasing importance)
School C: 10 teachersTable 1: Girls' problems prioritised by teachers (in decreasing order of importance) · Beatings by teachers and use of abusive languageTable 2: Problems that teachers face with girls (decreasing importance)
Table 3: Teachers' solution strategies (prioritised in decreasing importance)
School D: 12 teachersTable 1: Girls' problems prioritised by teachers (in decreasing order of importance) · Teachers and boys proposingTable 2: Problems that teachers face with girls (decreasing importance)
Table 3: Teachers' solution strategies (prioritised in decreasing importance)
DFID Department for International Development Department For International Development
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