The purpose of this page is to raise awareness on the sexual and reproductive health rights of girls and the crucial role of education on these rights to empower girls to make informed decisions about their bodies and health.
The South African government has made important efforts toward fulfilling the right to education for every woman and girl in South Africa. However, poor access to sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) information and services negatively impacts girls’ access to schooling and educational outcomes.
We continue to see an increase in dropout rates and absenteeism amongst adolescent girls. For many black South Africans living in poor rural and urban communities, teenage pregnancy is a risk factor, accounting for a third of girl learner dropout. Beyond the impact of inadequate SRHR information and services, sexual misconduct against girls has wide-ranging consequences for girl learners’ physical and psychological wellbeing, school performance and attendance. Schools are one of the places learners are most vulnerable. It is, therefore, important that learners be protected from any forms of abuse, including sexual violence and sexual harassment.
We have created three resources on sexual and reproductive health rights in education for girl learners.
Our research report considers the importance of education on sexual and reproductive health rights and protection from gender-based and sexual violence and evaluates the efficacy of existing policies and curriculum content. Our research report can be downloaded here.
Our training manual is aimed at teaching girl learners about their sexual and reproductive health rights. We provide child-friendly and scientifically accurate information on the following topics, including activities:
What are sexual and reproductive health rights?
· What does having sexual and reproductive health rights mean at school?
· Bodily changes during puberty
· What is sex?
· What are the risk factors of sex?
· Pregnancy, contraceptives, and abortion
· HIV and other STIs
· Sex and active consent
· What is sexual harassment?
· What is sexual assault?
· What to do when you have experienced sexual harassment or sexual assault?
The factsheet on SRHR can be downloaded here.
Our training manual can be downloaded here.
Our toolkit captures the content of the training manual, in a simplified user-friendly video format.
Our toolkit can be downloaded here.