The Regulation of Pregnancy in Mozambican Schools: From Policy, to Practice, to Identities

Abstract

This article discusses how institutional practices reproduce and operationalize specific discourses of in-school pregnancy and motherhood in Mozambique. National Decree 39/GM/2003 indicates that girls should be transferred to night courses if pregnant, together with their partners, if also students. This paper considers the implementation of this policy by identifying key roles such as those of Physical Education teachers, in-school pregnancy committees and class representatives. Drawing on qualitative data from 12 focus groups and 63 individual interviews with adults and young people, I claim that school practices mostly rely on acts of policing the female body. The result is the reproduction of a specific institutional regime that defines pupils' identities along gender and age, by means of their (hetero)sexuality and seniority. Subsequently, the national policy, which was introduced to retain girls within education, figures as exclusionary, as students who do not meet the identity regime identified above are excluded from education.

Silence, invisibility and agency: concealing pregnancies at school in Mozambique

“…This constant self-monitoring also has consequences. For example, I talk elsewhere (Salvi 2019b) of how schoolgirls are forced to internalise the institutional gaze, thereby becoming an extension of the surveillance mechanism. The threat of exclusion from day classes means girls become active subjects in their self-exclusion, achieved through concealment.…”

“…For example, Mozambique produced ministerial decree 39/GM/2003 (Nguenha 2003), which indicates that pregnant girls should be transferred to night courses and thereby enabled to complete their education. This continuation policy, which I discuss in more depth elsewhere (Salvi 2019b) is progressive, as it enables pregnant girls and young mothers to complete their education, yet still sanctions pregnancy as an obstacle to personal development. For this reason, it has been criticized as exclusionary (Parkes et al 2013): even if girls are allowed to complete their degrees, the transfer to night courses often encourages dropout.…”