Black Rural Girlhood and the Moral Economies of Transactional Sex in South Africa
Survival, Desire, and Inequality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16768262 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi (0000-0002-5287-8531, Durban University of Technology, corresponding author), Thembeka Myende (0000-0001-5783-6341, University of South Africa) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 128 |
| Pages | 1-15 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Australian Feminist Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1321-7568 • E-ISSN: 1465-3303 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/08164649.2025.2599193 |
| OpenAlex | W4417310206 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
This paper explores how adolescent girls in a rural KwaZulu-Natal community navigate transactional and survival sex within intersecting conditions of poverty, patriarchy, and postcolonial inequality. Drawing on qualitative interviews and focus groups with forty-eight schoolgirls aged fifteen to eighteen, the study uses an intersectional Afro-feminist framework to examine how material scarcity, emotional neglect, and gendered expectations shape girls’ constrained choices. The findings reveal that transactional sex is not simply exploitative but a pragmatic negotiation of survival, care, and recognition within a social order that limits autonomy. Through practices of provision, appearance, and aspiration, girls assert forms of tactical agency while contending with the contradictions of respectability, dependence, and desire. Their narratives also illuminate how consumerism and local moralities intersect to produce new forms of vulnerability and resistance. By situating these dynamics within the broader histories of colonial patriarchy and racial capitalism, the paper reinterprets transactional sex as both a response to and a critique of structural abandonment. It argues for intersectional and culturally grounded interventions that address not only economic deprivation but also the affective and relational dimensions of inequality, contributing to decolonial feminist understandings of Black girlhood, sexuality, and justice in South Africa
Gender inequality · Inequality · Lived experience · Moral economy · Transactional leadership · Transactional sex · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Sex work and related issues
Beyond the Masks
“Men Rule… this is the Normal Thing. We Normalise it and it’s Wrong”
The role of material deprivation and consumerism in the decisions to engage in transactional sex among young people in the urban slums of Blantyre, Malawi
From Survival to Glamour
Girls want money, boys want virgins
A man without money getting a sexual partner? It doesn’t exist in our community”
Revisiting the understanding of “transactional sex” in sub-Saharan Africa
There is a No that means Yes!’ – Coercive and aggressive sexual behaviours in adolescents’ heterosexual relationships in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Women and the politics of austerity
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Mapping the Margins
Assessing risk factors and health impacts across different forms of exchange sex among young women in informal settlements in South Africa
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |