| From: |
Manuella Donato [ profile ] |
| Subject: |
Call For Papers: Reproductive Health Matters:
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| Sent: |
May 30th, 2012 - 10:54:55 |
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Call For Papers: Reproductive Health Matters: "Young People, Sex And
Relationships"
*Source: *Reproductive Health Matters
25/05/2012
Improving young people’s access to sexual health information and services
is critical...This journal issue aims to explore the changing language and
culture around young people’s sexual relationships and sexual health, as
well as the gap between what young people want and need, what young people
are told they need, and what they are actually receiving.* Deadline for
papers: **± September 2012.*
Improving young people’s access to sexual health information and services
is critical. Young people represent an increasing proportion of the world
population and without information and services, are at high risk of sexual
and reproductive health-related morbidity and mortality. Improving young
people’s access to information and to sexual and reproductive health is
called for in a range of international conventions and initiatives
including:
- Millennium Development Goal 3 (2000): promoting gender equality and
empowering women;
- Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989): giving children a say in
what should happen to them and protection from harm;
- Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (1979): eliminating discrimination against women in matters relating
to marriage and family relations;
- ICPD Programme of Action (1994): protect and promote the rights of
adolescents to reproductive health
education,
information and care; greatly reduce the number of adolescent pregnancies;
support education and counselling of adolescents on gender relations and
equality, violence, responsible sexual behaviour and family planning,
family life, and STI/HIV prevention.
- Commission on Population and Development (45th session, 2012):
resolution calling for full recognition of young people’s human rights,
including gender equality and the highest standards of sexual and
reproductive health.
Much work around young people’s sexual health focuses on specific health
outcomes and has been promoted by governments and NGOs on public health
grounds. In the context of entrenched conservative opinion, advocating for
sexual health education or contraceptive and sexual health services using
public health arguments may be an effective way to build consensus across
different cultural, political and religious perspectives. Mainstream
opinion too may be more receptive to meeting public health objectives, such
as reducing STIs and preventing teen pregnancy, than to education or
services that acknowledge ‘normal’ adolescent sexuality.
However, while health-based arguments may be less contentious, they risk
marginalising the*right* of young people to good education on sex and
relationships, contraception and sexual health care ̶ as well as the role
of sex education in promoting young people’s rights. They can also lead to
a narrow curriculum, bypassing issues of gender inequality and
discrimination on the basis of sexuality, and may problematise any
adolescent sexual behaviour at all.
Increasingly, young people themselves are calling for a rights-based
approach to sexual health and rejecting the idea that they should be
passive recipients of a sex education that aims to define and control the
boundaries of what is acceptable, or that aims to impose social and
cultural norms which they perceive as belonging to their parents’
generation. Instead, they are calling for sex education that eliminates
shame and stigma, not reinforces them. They reject being represented as
passive and uncritical consumers of ‘sexualising’ media messages and
pornography, rather than as active decision-makers who can be trusted to
unpick and make sense of the multiplicity of messages and images they are
bombarded with through the television, music and advertising, and mobile
technologies.
Young men as well as young women have sexual and reproductive issues and
need information and services. They want to participate in conversations
about pregnancy and other topics they have traditionally been excluded
from, including issues of consent and coercion, and understand their rights
and their responsibilities. Young men and women both question pervasive
sexual identity and gender stereotypes.
This journal issue aims to explore the changing language and culture around
young people’s sexual relationships and sexual health, as well as the gap
between what young people want and need, what young people are told they
need, and what they are actually receiving.
The following are just some of the issues we would be interested in
receiving submissions on:
- How do adolescents and young people see their own and others’
sexuality?
- How can sex education support men to participate in healthy sexual
relationships?
- What is adolescent sexual experience today?
- What should comprehensive sex education include?
- Linking sex education and sexual and reproductive health services
- ‘Culture’ as a tool to regulate and define sexual health information
- Confidentiality, parental consent and notification – whose rights?
- The hierarchy of acceptability: relationships not sex, contraception
not emergency contraception, contraception not abortion
- Inclusion and visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT)
issues
- Female genital mutilation and other sexual violence against young
people
- Child marriage and forced marriage
- Are pornography and ‘sexualisation’ affecting relationships, body
image and sexual health?
- Adolescents having babies and adolescents having abortions –
Cinderella subjects
- Sexual exploitation – is it being tackled in sex education?
- How are the internet, social media and new technology influencing the
information young people access? Opportunities for young people to
influence/create content?
- What’s happening today in HIV/STI education and prevention for young
people?
We welcome submissions from young people on these and other issues, and on
what is happening (or not) in sex education and the real world. Older
people can send papers too!! Submissions need not be academic papers. They
can be discussion and opinion pieces; reports of interviews with young
people, sex education teachers, or sexual health service providers; or
about young people’s experiences. They can describe/critique sex education
programmes, health and safer sex promotion, or law, policy and regulatory
issues. Most important is that papers are in-depth and have something
important to say to an international audience of the author’s peers.
RHM author and submission guidelines are at:
www.rhmjournal.org.ukauthorssubmission-guidelines.php
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