Gender Prejudice and its Effects

The majority of African children grow up in rural areas. Life in the rural areas is not materially comfortable for any child, but it is especially difficult for an African girl. Girls do not get the opportunities in education or development that boys receive.

The girls are especially disadvantaged because most families would rather educate their sons than daughters. In the whole area of approximately 10,000 people, there are not more than 10 girls who have completed secondary school education, and not more than four girls who have gone to the university level.

Improvement in women's lives cannot be sustained if girls are not given the tools and opportunities to realize their full potential. These tools and opportunities can only be given to girls through education and vocational training.

Sexual Exploitation

Girls often lack the information and power necessary to negotiate for delayed or safe sex. Girls living in the rural areas are particularly vulnerable: they are living in poverty and have limited opportunities for education and employment. Most girls and young women in the village are forced into sexual trading in order to survive. Some are forced into marriage at an early age, becoming parents and family caretakers while still in their teens. They are deprived of their rights as children and are denied rights to develop at the natural pace.

In the years before adolescence, inappropriate sexual socialization acts as a kind of brainwashing, shaping the girl's sense of who she is and what she can do. If a girl's first lesson of sexuality is taught through force, violence, coercion or trickery, her capacity for self-efficacy is negatively affected. She may lose the sense that she controls her own destiny and can by her actions make a difference. Thus, premature and exploitative sexual socialization affects later self-competence, as well as self-care, by creating a defeatist attitude. Such an attitude can lead to dangerous and self-destructive relationships with men and with self.

AIDS

The village's proximity to the beach, and the business activities generated by the influx of fishermen into the beach has immensely contributed to the spread of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections in the area. Mama na Dada Africa runs a program for young girls and women, providing weekly HIV/AIDS education, care and support, training and counseling, and peer education. There are approximately 60 girls participating in the program at present, more than half of who are either orphans or have only one parent alive, having lost their parents to HIV/AIDS. The other half comes from families who cannot afford to educate them.