Psychosocial Context of Young Adult Sexual Behavior in Nicaragua: Looking Through the Gender Lens

This 8-page paper examines the nature and magnitude of gender differences in sexual norms among young adults in Nicaragua, considers how these differences affect sexual behaviour, and explores how this information could be brought to bear on the design of adolescent reproductive health programming.

The empirical findings presented in this report are based on data from a representative cross-sectional survey that was conducted in six departments in the Pacific region of Nicaragua in 1998. This Nicaragua Young Adults Survey (ENJOVEN' 98) was undertaken by the Comision Nacional de Salud Reproductiva, Nicaragua, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs. The survey was intended to evaluate the national communication campaign "Together We Decide When", which was directed toward reducing early pregnancy. (Click here for a summary of this campaign, which was developed by Nicaragua's Minister of Health Margarita Gurdián López and Oscar Ortiz Medrano, Executive Director, Fundación Centro para Programas de Comunicación/Nicaragua).

A total of 552 never-married women and 289 never-married men aged 15 to 24 were interviewed about their perceptions of social pressure to engage in premarital sex; perceived social approval of and attitudes toward premarital sex and premarital pregnancy; perceived sexual activity among peers and siblings; communication with parents on sexuality issues; the psychosocial context of sexual debut; and preferred sources of information on sexuality issues.

The authors share some of the salient study results. Among them: A total of 83% of men reported receiving encouragement to have sex from at least one person in the previous year, compared with 26% of women. Men were more likely than women to have received encouragement from persons in any of the 10 categories studied, and at least half perceived that their father, siblings, other relatives and friends approved of premarital intercourse. A significantly greater proportion of men than of women reported that curiosity or gaining experience motivated their sexual debut (61% vs. 21%). Further, men perceived themselves to have a higher risk of unplanned and unprotected sex than did women. In contrast, women held more negative attitudes toward premarital sex and were more often discouraged by parents (especially mothers) or siblings from engaging in sex. In short, "Double standards regarding the acceptability of male and female premarital sexual behavior are evident both in the attitudes and behavior of the young people in our study and in the explicit and implicit messages they reported receiving from the adults around them."

In the words of the authors, "Carefully designed programs that involve all elements of society, including community institutions, can explicitly question differences in sexual norms, raise awareness about their unjust nature and properly educate young people. Several nongovernmental and community-based organizations, such as Puntos de Encuentros, are already active in this arena. However, programs need to recognize the source, magnitude and nature of gender differences if they are to serve as external catalysts for change..."

* Editor's note: At the time this article was written, Manju Rani was a consultant with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs; as of January 2005, she is affiliated with the World Bank - Development Research Group.

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