‘ We girls like pleasing boys’
Love, risk and gender power in rural girls’ (hetero)sexual relationships
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24215306 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thembeka Myende (0000-0001-5783-6341, University of South Africa), Ndumiso Daluxolo Ngidi (0000-0002-5287-8531, Durban University of Technology) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-17 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-05 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Gender Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0958-9236 • E-ISSN: 1465-3869 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09589236.2026.2743019 |
| OpenAlex | W7220373908 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 31 |
This article examines how teenage girls in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, navigate heterosexual relationships shaped by emotional dependency, patriarchal moralities, and intersecting structural inequalities. Drawing on focus groups and interviews with 48 school-going girls, and framed through intersectional Afro-feminist perspectives, the article shows that sexual risk-taking among rural teenage girls is rooted not in ignorance but in affective economies that equate love with sacrifice, trust with compliance, and loyalty with endurance. The findings reveal how girls’ emotional labour, such as sustaining relationships, tolerating infidelity, and avoiding conflict, becomes a key mechanism through which heteropatriarchal power is reproduced in intimate life. By foregrounding emotion as a site of political regulation and negotiation, the paper advances a relational understanding of teenage sexuality and calls for interventions that centre emotional justice, feminist relational ethics, and structural transformation. The study contributes to gender studies and, in particular, African feminist scholarship by illuminating how Black rural girls’ affective worlds expose both the vulnerabilities and the subtle resistances embedded in the everyday politics of love and survival.
adolescent girls · Affect · Afrofeminism · Black girls · Emotional labor · gender and power · heteropatriarchy · heterosexual couples · Intersectionality · KwaZulu-Natal · Patriarchy · relational ethics · rural youth · sexual risk behavior · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender and Feminist Studies
Adolescent sexual and reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa
Nego‐Feminism
Black Rural Girlhood and the Moral Economies of Transactional Sex in South Africa
Gender, relationship dynamics and South African girls' vulnerability to sexual risk
My partner was not fond of using condoms and I was not on contraception”
Hegemonic masculinity
Stop the War on Women’s Bodies”
Geographies of adolescent heterosexual dating and intimacy in a rural community in South Africa
Expectations and Sexual Desire in Romantic Relationships
Gender, Black Feminism, and Black Political Economy
I feel scared of being a girl”
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Sexuality and the limits of agency among South African teenage women
Humhandara and hujaya
Girls becoming 'sexy' on digital spaces
Critical Contradictions
| Highly cited | No |
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