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TEEN PREGNANCY REQUIRES STRUCTURAL RESPONSE

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Sir,

Teenage pregnancy must be understood as an opportunity cost for human capital development; it is a threat that may reproduce and deepen inequality. Addressing the challenge of teenage pregnancy that potentially thwarts the future of girls is, therefore, a critical development imperative. But more honestly, teenage pregnancy must be treated, especially now, as a societal problem that demands both a cultural and structural response. In the current form of conceptualisation, efforts in policy and programmes will not be able to turn around this problem. It may, as proven over time, wane, that is to say, that the rates of teenage pregnancy per year may seem to be waning, but as we have seen, they behave like a wave, rising and falling. Their rise and fall relate directly to what is happening in the social and cultural lives of young children.

Restricted

At a social level, the lockdown, which restricted human mobility, including teaching and learning, also resulted in an upward surge in teenage pregnancies. Teenage pregnancy is a persistent problem across time and across different societies. But it presents multiple development opportunity costs that we should face head-on. Weirdly, around 2012 or so, the poor black girls’ body, which is the African black girls’ body, became a site of compacting.  The African girls’ body became a site where multi-national agencies, government departments, and large-scale corporations galvanised.

Strategies

Suddenly, strategies to provide sanitary pads were devised, and charity drives were organised. Corporates were giving away thousands of sanitary pads for poor girls. This was given rise by a study that shockingly revealed that poor girls lost an equivalent of 50 days of school because of menstruation and a lack of sanitary pads. Government and corporations galvanised around this problem. Today, the campaign continues and has grown with teachers’ staff rooms often crowded by boxes of sanitary pads. I must hasten to say that the charity is welcome and applauded as it gives much-needed relief. However, the question that remains is whether this approach addresses the root problem. The inequality from which the problem of lack of sanitary towels stems.

The thing is, teenage pregnancy is but one societal problem that needs a wide societal compact around; the same compact that organically emerged around sanitary pads provision. The fact that people and corporates can galvanise in this way to respond to a problem that poor girls are facing, means that the capacity to do so is there. Perhaps what we need is to pivot from the sanitary pad compact towards broader level issues, which in addressing them helps us address multiple other related problems. Focusing on one entry point thus allows for intersectional analyses and a set of responses. Going back to what was earlier stated, analyses of teenage pregnancy starts us questioning about girls’ and boys’ leisure time, what are they exposed to, and what the parents are doing.

Ohara Ngoma-Diseko

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