Teacher Identities and Empowerment of Girls Against Sexual Violence

This 13-page study looks at how the construction of teachers' identities in the Eastern and Southern Africa Region (ESAR) influences the way teachers and learners interact and behave, both in terms of the teacher-learner relationship and relationships between learners, specifically around sexual identity, concepts of masculinity and femininity, and sexual abuse. It also examines memory work as a strategy for conscientising and empowering teachers to empower learners to stop sexual violence.

The study focused on schools in Kenya and found that boys and girls are often disempowered by their teachers, though this manifests in different ways. According to the study, boys are more often unnecessarily beaten for small misdemeanours, or their opinions are "shut down". Boys who participated in the study felt that girls did not have to work as hard, as they were favoured, especially by male teachers. The report found that girls, on the other hand, were more often punished in ways that constitute sexual abuse, were routinely sexually harassed by male teachers, and felt pressured to accept sexual advances by male teachers for fear of receiving a poor grade. The report argues that this construction of girls as sexual beings affects how boys see their female peers, and leads to boys repeating the same kinds of sexual violence as their teachers.

The report looks at memory work as a means to conscientise teachers to sexual violence and its effects. According to the study, memory work involves providing a space for people to look back at their own lives, in this case focusing on violence in their childhood and adolescence. Participants use diaries to record their memories, as well as reflective notes on what particular incidents meant to them when it happened, how they interpret it now, as well as pertinent resolutions. Themes from the diaries can also be used in group discussions in which the participants jointly document strategies for curbing a particular type of violence. According to the report, the value of writing down memories is based on the assumption that people's identities are not static, but are continually being constructed and reconstructed through future and present expectations of oneself, as well as recollections of past events and relationships.

The author reports using memory work with graduate student-teachers in Kenya, focusing on sexual harassment and its effects on girls. The study found that the sexualisation of girls was a major concern for the student-teachers and was frequently documented in their diaries. In addition, following the exercise, the student-teachers felt empowered by the resolutions they had made and said they had never been able to confront any violence in their lives the way they did through the diaries.

The report suggests that engaging teachers and trainee teachers in activities like memory work has the potential to bring adult teachers to terms with the effects of sexual violence on both girls and boys. The author also recommends extending this work to communities to allow adults in leadership positions to be reflect on violence against girls in the wider society.