Fighting Gender-Based Violence and Challenging Gender Norms in Mozambique

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You can’t talk about providing reproductive and sexual health care without talking about gender inequality, and you can’t talk about gender inequality without talking about sexual and reproductive health. In Mozambique, 20,000 + women and girls have received gender-based violence services from facilities supported by Pathfinder International, and the organization is on the ground providing access to reproductive health care and building a strong local response to gender-based violence. Estrella Alcalde with Pathfinder International Mozambique talks to us about the ways gender norms impact access to SRH care, and vice versa.

Currently, Pathfinder International Mozambique is employing a program funded by Global Affairs of Canada in two provinces that experience high rates of early marriage, early pregnancies, and gender inequality. The program targets adolescent girls in young women and encourages them to exercise their right to sexual and reproductive health and bodily autonomy. Pathfinder Mozambique conducted a survey with young girls, women, and men in these communities in order to pin down social norms, perceptions, and attitudes towards gender-based relationships, contraceptives, gender-based violence, and more. Thanks to the survey, Pathfinder found that patriarchal norms and gender-normative thinking is prevalent amongst populations in these communities.

The survey also showed the normalization of gender-based violence by adolescent girls, which is seen commonly in sexual and reproductive health clinics. Many girls have experienced sexual abuse, assault, or rape. These young women and girls internalize the harmful cultural norms that contribute to guilt and shame. Pathfinder is working with providers and police to try and approach gender-based violence in a multi-sectoral way, which includes training providers to leave their judgement behind, provide contraception and prophylaxes, and working to actively combat gender norms in these areas.

Pathfinder is working at the individual level to address these harmful gender norms, with both girls and boys. The organization provides safe spaces for girls to converse about issues with their bodies, sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, and cultural norms. Pathfinder also engages in community intervention in order to garner involvement and support of access to sexual and reproductive health care.

links from this episode

Pathfinder International
Pathfinder International on Facebook
Pathfinder International on Twitter
Mozambique information through Pathfinder International

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to RePROs Fight Back- a podcast on all things repro. I'm your host, Jennie Wetter. And each episode I'll be taking you to the front lines of the escalating fight over our sexual and reproductive health and rights at home and abroad. Each episode I will be speaking with leaders who are fighting to protect our reproductive health and rights to ensure that no one's reproductive health depends on where they live. It's time for repros to fight back.

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Hi everybody and welcome to this bonus episode of RePROs Fight Back. We are again recording from Women Deliver and unfortunately it's gotten a little loud in the background here, so you're all going to have to bear with us for this important conversation. So with me now, I have Estrella Alcalde with Pathfinder International and she is currently in Mozambique. Um, hi Estrella.

Estrella: Hi. Good morning. Thank you.

Jennie: Um, thanks for being here. Um, do you want to tell me a little bit about, um, your work?

Estrella: Okay. I work for Pathfinder International Mozambique and I am actually involved in several projects. They are working to promote sexual reproductive health, particularly with um, adolescents and youth, also promoting gender equality. And actually I see that as something that goes together. Like we cannot talk about gender equality and women's rights rights if we are not tackling sexual and reproductive health and rights. And we cannot talk about reproductive and sexual health and rights if we are not also addressing gender inequalities. So it's something that really goes together and we are working on these in several projects and if I could I started to talk a little bit about one of the projects that is funded it by Global Affairs of Canada and that they have been talking about during Women Deliver.

Jennie: Okay. So, um, yeah, you wanna tell me a little bit more about some of the projects you're working on in Mozambique.

Estrella: Okay. I will actually focus on one specific project is a project funded by Global Affairs of Canada in two provinces, two provinces where we have a high rates of um, early marriage, high rates of um, early pregnancies. Also where gender inequalities are very strong and um, and present. And so in this project, we are focusing on girls and young woman and improving gender equality. And so that as we say that this adolescent girls, young women can exercise their rights to bodily integrity and the rights to sexual and reproductive health. And the same thing that goes really together. And we asked, one of the first steps in this project was to carve out a survey. We created a survey with the girls and women and and also with men in the communities to really have a better knowledge of what were the social and gender norms in the communities. What are the perceptions and attitudes towards certain issues of gender relationships, how are relationships in the house, how they saw that. And also in relation to um, contraceptive methods to eh, real age, gender based violence. And so it was a survey that has given us a lot of information on what is the context we are working with.

Jennie: Great. Was there anything that surprised you in the survey?

Estrella: Well, actually there were some, there is some information that it really is aligned with the demographic. And health survey that was carried out all over. I mean all across the country, like some statistics are similar but we did for example, find out that the gender marriage is more common than what we thought it was based on those statistics. Something that okay, we know when we work in this field, but I think that the studies shows is that the also women themselves and these young women, they also have very ingrained patriarchal norms. So how, for example, when they were asked you think that a man has the final say in the household? I mean we have even more girls and young women saying that yes, it is the man who has the final say in the household and the men themselves or when they were asking if a man has the right to kick the his wife out of the house if she's raped. Almost more than a quarter said yes, yes, he has that right. So I think that is some aspect that, we have to remember that. Yeah. Themselves, they also believe that and all that. There are situations in which wives deserve to be beaten. No. Half of girls think that there are situations, for example, if she's cooking and she burns the cook or if she didn't, uh, take good care of the children or she left the house or different situations if that she did wrongly. So I think this shows how, um, women also accept in that context that these situations are accepted and normalized. And that's why, you know, at the community level they are seen if a woman has been suffering, domestic violence is sometimes even thought that, okay, the man is even educating the woman. Right? Or is it his role to do that. And so we are not gonna get into that situation and it's accepted. And even if he gets really bad, the family kind of, um, the family also kind of is there to [inaudible]. But yeah, I feel like that's one of those things that is not particularly uncommon to see is the difference between, um, the ingrained gender norms that maybe aren't actually held. Um, I know in a lot of countries you see like with family planning, um, you see a lot of girls and women saying that men should get the final say or he's against it. And when you see the men being asked, they're in favor of it. Um, and it's just these very different views. Yeah. And then also the fact of the pressure that these girls have to also be the first to get married and also to show their fertility. Yeah. Because it's in their fertility that they are valued. And the studies showed that that one in four men think that a woman who cannot bear children is not a real woman. And the girls responded the same way. No. And so the pressure that they have to show that is very, very strong. And so this is something that also the studies show them that we are working about them. And then the barriers that girls and young women to have to, for example, access familial contraception or they're also very, very, very important. And that also includes, I mean, different barriers. One of them for example, providers, health providers bias.

Jennie: Oh yeah, absolutely. That is something you run into in a number of ways, right.

Estrella: Whether it's not wanting to give it to unmarried women or girls who haven't had, haven't already had a baby. Um, you know, sometimes there's that or just even, um, younger people going, they don't want to provide services or aren't gonna provide them in a youth friendly way. There's a lot of bias, a lot of judgment and a lot of not providing all the information available or even the health provider making the decisions for the girl or the young woman herself. Well what's the right, what's the right for you and not letting the girl or young woman decide for herself. So we saw in the survey, but we are also seeing in our, actually in our activities in the field, one of the things you saw on the survey is, um, girls internalizing a lot of the patriarchy and accepting that gender based violence is part of their lot in life.

Jennie: Um, is that something you're also feel like you see a lot in the clinics and stuff as well?

Estrella: We see that in the, yeah, we see the, we see that in the field and, and also that is linked to even for example, when it comes to sexual violence, the way we see that is that there are many, many adolescents and young women being sexually abused or raped. And the way they take this is usually in the guilty way, they are, they feel that they probably, or as the culture says, we're provoking or you are not. So usually there is a lot of, um, first guiltiness, eh, and then shame. They also feel like being not pure, not being, uh, not being again valuable like that. And so, and when it comes to, uh, in the, in the domestic area? In the household, yeah, they've many times they fill it like, well this is the way my mother also said you have to face this is always been like that. Sometimes it's like that you have to endure this situation. And I mean, but at the same time we see that there are awesome more girls and young women speaking up, speaking out reporting cases. I mean this is going, this goes also together with active actions that are being put in place to have a response to gender based violence. So there is a particularly addressed by Pathfinder. We are also working with the health providers, we are working with the police, we are addressing gender based violence in a multi-sectorial way and involved in different partners so that there is some more broad in response to gender based violence. So I think that's also starting to make more girls and young women report to have services. I mean, for example, one of the interventions that we have with the health system is to have a response that means to have, eh, prophylaxis, to have emergency contraception, to have trained providers to attend these cases in a friendly way. And because we also had situations in which also the provider [young girls see] would be judgmental to these cases. It's always heartbreaking when you're already traumatized and then aren't getting compassionate care when you see a provider.

Jennie: So it's so great that you guys are working to ensure that that changes, um, in Mozambique. So what are some of the strategies you guys have been working on to change these gender norms that we've been talking about?

Estrella: Well, we were working in the US, at the individual level and mostly with girls, but also we are working with boys, but with girls it is particularly for creating spaces for girls to discuss issues related to their body, to their health issues, even just having their spaces to share their ideas. Sometimes that does make sense. Yeah. We are working with starting from a younger age. We are starting working with the primary schools in fifth and seventh grade with boys and girls. Also to start talking about making decisions, taking out at that age of shame changes poverty and also what those changes mean. Talk about menstruation for example which is also a big taboo and and a source of suffering for many girls. So, and what that means and we started to talk about violence and what is right and it's not right. We start working our way around this in primary schools and then in secondary schools. And then also we have these groups of girls outside the school because we also know that they are girls that left the school earlier or they are married and or because they got pregnant and then they didn't go back to school. So there are also many girls that are outside the house, and the educational system and that we are also working with them. And we also have a community intervention, because if we want to change the gender norms, and if we want a more enabling environment for adolescents and young woman and boys to also have access to the sexual and reproductive health services, the community should also be involved. It has, yeah. So we are working with them. We are working with community leaders actually we have like community leaders that are part of the project. They are involved in the project and they’re allies and they also had to go through training. And also they are still in the process of also reflecting and learning themselves. But let's say they’re on our side and, we also work with other community activists, uh, that they are creating a spaces within the communities to discuss around this issues. So we have different types of activities, community debates, groups where we have men and women together having open discussions and dialogues. We are also working with the, with the um, with just men. Some of them what we say like, uh, the barrier man or the difficult man's, not all the, it's not just groups of the difficulties, difficult ones, but some of them are those parents that Eh, they want their children, their daughters to leave leaving school or man that we know that may, that they are a bit uh, aggressive or that they, so we have some specific and we thought they're managing. We have a specific also groups to discuss these issues and to work on the masculinity norms and, and then we have another type of intervention which is more clinical interventions and also working with other institutional partners. Like I was saying, propel system as well as the social action institution and others.

Jennie: Yeah, it's really important. Like we often talk about needing to work with the young girls and boys, but also working with the broader community because you know, we talk about the importance of the girls are newly um, empowered or feeling like they want to see in school and don't want to get married if you're not also working with the community to change the community norms, it's harder for them to do that. Or if girls decide they want to access services but the rest of the community hasn't been brought along, they might not feel comfortable going to the clinics to do that.

Estrella: Yeah, if that girl has an aunt, we support you right there. She could go with her to the health facility or she knows that a, her mother or her sister is there is someone she could turn to if she has a problem. Because I think that's essential. And, and actually sometimes there are some projects where it seems like they've, they focused more on just from the man, like I said, the barrier. But we know that we should of course also work with those mothers though grandmothers, they aren't the, I mean in the end everyone in the community, we also support supporting certain norms that the, yeah, absolutely and sometimes the mothers are more of the gatekeepers then than the men. We've seen that with some traditional practices like with FGM that often it's the mothers that are still very invested in keeping the practice alive and not the men. Absolutely. Yeah, so those are, I would say that the, this community dialogues are very, very interesting because Eh, you get, they really get to have on a reflection and they bring the, for example, on some practices like could be early marriage or okay, what are the effects of these? What happens? Is it good? It's not good. Why? I mean, what if these girls are getting married at 15 and she marries at 20 and that's it. Why are they different? They put themselves in different situations and so just to at least to start questioning if this is good or not on what our defects is, I think it's already a great step forward. I'm at least to start thinking about it and reflecting together about that.

Jennie: No, I think that that is the first step for change. Absolutely. So, yeah. What can, what can listeners do to help change social norms, not just in Mozambique, but you know, in their own community?

Estrella: Yeah. Well I think we all can do something is I think, yeah, we can do this. The action, we should start from ourselves, right? And a I think, for example, just on how, eh, those who have children, how, I mean, I think we should realize and think more about how we are educating them. We are already reinforcing stereotypes since they are born or eh, so I think from the very, very simple things actually, and how we manage our households and are we sharing thoughts with our partner? So I would say at all levels, Eh, breaking the silence when we see inequalities, when we see also violence, but sometimes it's these micro violence that [is important] it's not just talking about rape. We, I mean there are so many forms of violence that somehow we are overlooking and miss more things. Something particularly like language. How we use our language and how language is also, yeah, language matters. Language matters so much. And the words we use, how we do, we use them I think I should start being more careful.

Jennie: Absolutely. That's something I've been working on and I think everybody needs to be paying particular attention to the words they use. Um, and it can go a long ways to making a difference, particularly for marginalized people.

Estrella: Yeah, absolutely. And I think we realized that we can be very, we are not inclusive many times yes. In our language and that we leave many people out. Yup. Absolutely. [inaudible] yes.

Jennie: That is our homework this week is everybody needs to sit down and think about their language. And I know I'm trying to be better, but I'm not always going to be perfect. Um, but I also encourage listeners to push me. If they catch me, I'm not being perfect to do better. And you know, maybe there are things that you, that you haven't considered yet that are ways you can be better. And so I always encourage people to push, push me to be better. So Estrella, thank you for being here. it was a wonderful conversation. Thank you.

Jennie: For more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit our website at reprosfightback.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at RePROs Fight back. If you like our show, please help others find it by sharing it with your friends and subscribing, rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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