August 2001 Insights Gender Violence Special Issue

The sugar daddy trap. Peer pressure pushes girls into sex

Male sexual aggression against girls is endemic and institutionalised in Zimbabwe. Girls are propositioned by male pupils and teachers inside the school, and by 'sugar daddies' outside. Money, gifts and promises of marriage tempt girls into sexual liaisons. What is the role of the peer group culture in encouraging abuse? How can the school help to change attitudes and behaviour?

Recent research by the University of Sussex and Africa University, Zimbabwe investigated the nature and pattern of abuse among 112 girls in three co-educational junior secondary schools and an all-girls secondary school in Zimbabwe. Findings suggest that adolescent peer group culture within the school environment encourages male and female pupils to conform to certain stereotypical behaviours which make girls particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse.

Boys want sex. Girls want money.

Money is crucial for girls within this peer culture. Pupils need basic necessities for school attendance such as uniform, books, and money for school fees and bus fares, but also pocket money. Pupils who can afford to buy food and drink from the school tuck shop, for example, are admired or envied. In their desire to be popular and gain acceptance and status amongst their peers, girls are easily tempted into accepting money or snacks from male pupils who have more opportunity to earn cash from casual work. Likewise, gifts or money from teachers and sugar daddies may be difficult to resist. In this way, girls are gradually and unwittingly coerced by obligation into a dependent and exploitative sexual relationship. Even girls from more affluent middle class homes are drawn into the sugar daddy trap by the desire to be seen as grown up, receiving gifts, having fun.

'Those who have many girlfriends are regarded as big stuff'

Equally, male peer group pressure requires that older boys aggressively demand the attention of younger girls. Having a girlfriend and competing over girls are essential features of the adolescent masculine identity. Boys in the upper forms prey on girls in Form 1, force girls to read love letters, invade their private space by touching them, enter their classrooms uninvited during break times, accost them in the school grounds with propositions and beat them up if they refuse. Much is at stake: by buying a girl sweets or snacks, the boy is showing that he is ready to pay for sexual favours.

Girls and boys in the study (the latter with much condemnation) agreed that girls enter sexual relationships with adult men primarily for money. In doing this, however, girls are merely acting out the role taught them by society, one in which they will look to men for physical, financial and moral support.

Aware of their low status in society and lacking in self-esteem and confidence, girls rarely take direct action when harassed or physically assaulted and accept male aggression with passivity. For girls and women this is how things are: girls are always at fault, even if they become pregnant through coerced sex. Teenage girls are socialised to see the female sex as fundamentally flawed.