Teachers stalk students in 'sex for grades' swap
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Loading... - Jennifer Offei
- 24 Aug 2022
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Rita and I sat in a small beach café in the small town of Barra along the Mozambican coast. The view was spectacular, the ocean spread out before us and shimmered in a dizzying array of blues and greens, the white sandy beach giving the illusion of being in paradise. However, that which 15-year-old schoolgirl Rita was telling me made Barra feel anything but idyllic.
As Rita explained:
"The teachers give the girls their phone numbers and ask them to call them. They don’t want to get married, they just want to have sex with the girls and leave them."
Rita was talking about the phenomenon of "sex for grades", a practice where teachers exchange grades for sexual favours. Young girls are pressured by their male teachers to sleep with them and if they don’t, the girl will not pass a particular grade.
As much was happening at Rita'sescola secundária, as she confirmed:
"If students say no to the teachers, they’ll be in trouble with their marks. If they accept, then they’ll get better marks. It happens a lot. I don’t think it’s right. The teachers are taking advantage of children’s poverty."
Situated along the southeastern coast of Africa, Mozambique ranks 181 out of 189 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index and it is estimated that 70% of the country lives in poverty. For many young girls, this poses enormous barriers to getting educated.
According to The Borgen Project, more than 50% of girls drop out of school by the fifth grade and only an estimated 11% make it to secondary level. As a result, roughly 28% of women in Mozambique are educated and only 1% of women attend university.
Due to this lack of education, many young women feel pressured to marry early in order to attain financial stability with around 48% of women marrying by the time they are 18. This places women at greater risk of harmful cultural practices such as child marriage as well as domestic and sexual violence.
It is thought that more than half of Mozambican women have not only experienced violence in the home but believe that violence against women is justified. Read More...
