Young Africans’ social representations of sexual abuse of power in their HIV-related creative narratives, 2005–2014: cultural scripts and applied possibilities

Abstract

The sexual abuse of power is a form of sexual coercion in which individuals - typically male - use their positions of authority to obtain sex. We analysed social representations of sexual abuse of power in a sample of 1,446 narratives about HIV written by young Africans between 2005 and 2014. The narratives were prepared at five different points in time (2005, 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2014) by authors aged 10-24 in urban and rural areas of Swaziland, Kenya, South-East Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Senegal. We combined three analytical approaches: descriptive statistics of quantifiable characteristics of the narratives, thematic data analysis and a narrative-based approach. Analysis revealed two underlying cultural scripts describing the sexual abuse of power between (a) teachers and female students, and (b) male employers and domestic workers. Cross-national variation was evident in the emphasis authors placed on socio-contextual inequalities, particularly poverty, and on individual level blame. While a minority of Nigerian and Burkinabe authors depicted female characters creatively exercising agency and avoiding unwanted sex, overall there was little critique of underlying assumptions of male sexual entitlement and female responsibility for controlling male sexuality in the context of unequal control of resources. We outline recommendations for strategies to deconstruct these harmful scripts.

Social Representations Theory and young Africans' creative narratives about human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome, 1997–2014

“…In our analysis of sexual abuse of power in our data, we found that many narratives reflected common cultural scripts embedded within two common story skeletons around relationships between teachers and female students and male employers and domestic workers (Singleton, et al., 2019). There was little in the way of critique of underlying assumptions of male sexual entitlement and female responsibility for controlling male sexuality in the context of unequal control of resources: the power dynamic of these encounters went unquestioned by the authors (both male and female) who conflated sexual abuse of power with consensual sex, particularly in Nigerian and Kenyan texts and those by younger authors in earlier study years, ultimately blaming the female characters for their sexual behaviour.…”

“…More than 150,000 young people from across sub‐Saharan Africa took part in HIV‐themed scriptwriting contests held at 8 discrete time points between 1997 and 2014, creating over 75,000 narratives. Over recent years colleagues and I have engaged in the analysis of a stratified random sample of close to 2000 narratives from five or six (depending on the study) epidemiologically and culturally diverse countries (Beres, Winskell, Neri, Mbakwem, & Obyerodhyambo, 2013; Singleton, 2019; Singleton, Winskell, Nkambule‐Vilakati, & Sabben, 2018b; Winskell, Beres, Hill, Obyerodhyambo, & Mbakwem, 2011; Winskell, Brown, Patterson, & Mbakwem, 2013; Winskell, Hill, & Obyerodhyambo, 2011; Winskell et al., 2015; Winskell, Kus, et al., 2018; Winskell, Obyerodhyambo, & Stephenson, 2011; Winskell et al., 2020; Winskell et al., 2020b).…”

A variational approach to scripts

“…Deciding which one to pick depends on the conceptual clusters that can be found in the local environment. These clusters are created directly via analogy or conditioning (Abelson, 1981;Singleton et al, 2019). Scripts are in this sense similar to narratives (Bouinegarene et al, 2020).…”

“…The script construct is here used in a way that emphasizes the social reality that is constituted by the enactment of cohesive, institutionspecific modes of acting. Scripts are cast as the building blocks for coherent communities with shared values (Singleton et al, 2019;Wierzbicka, 2002). Scripts are higher level constructs as well on this conception, but these constructs have a social reality outside the mind of the individual.…”

“…The script construct has a long history spanning several disciplines. Scripts have been applied fruitfully to study human behaviour in different fields, from disciplines centred on individual humans minds and their interactions, such as psychology (Ekblom & Gill, 2016), neuroscience (Allain et al, 2007), and artificial intelligence (Abelson, 1981;Tzeng, 2006), to the social sciences, where it has been used influentially in fields like sociology (Goffman, 1999(Goffman, , 2009Mahardale & Lee, 2013), criminology (Ekblom & Gill, 2016), anthropology (Singleton et al, 2019), and sexology (McCormick, 2010;Metts & Spitzberg, 1996;Wiederman, 2015). Different definitions of scripts abound, with their different focuses.…”