1. The scope of this article does not permit a discussion of the forms of pressure and coercion that both young women and young men experience to become sexually active. For example, Eleanor Preston-Whyte and Maria Zondi ‘African teenage pregnancy: whose problem?’ in S Burman and E Preston-Whyte (eds) Questionable Issue, Illegitimacy in South Africa (1992) 226 at 241 write that with ‘the overwhelming value placed on sexual performance in men and fertility in women and girls, it is hardly surprising to find that teenagers find it difficult to take seriously the injunctions of their elders to remain virgins until marriage’. In addition, the recent National Progressive Primary Health Care Network Unicef study on teenage sexuality (entitled Youth Speak Out (1996) at 123) observed that only 67.2 per cent of the teenagers surveyed ‘said that their partners have the right to say “no” to sex’ and that only 40.6 per cent of these were boys. Therefore, in addition to the subtle forms of coercion based on discriminatory attitudes towards women which result in unwanted pregnancy, cultural messages, whether from the religion, community or the mass media, influence attitudes towards sex. Sexual education is. therefore, an essential component of any reproductive health agenda and is integral to any systemic change in South African society.
2. For example in the United States, the 38 million sexually active women and their partners using contraceptives account for 1.5 million unintended pregnancies, 43 per cent of all unintended pregnancies in the United States. Rebecca Cook writes that it is estimated that rates of contraceptive failure range from 6 per cent of women using the pill experiencing failure during the first twelve months of use, to 14–16 per cent for the condom, diaphragm and rhythm methods, to 26 per cent for spermicide: R Cook ‘International Human Rights and Women's Reproductive Health’ in J Peters and A Wolper (eds) Women's Rights; Human Rights (1995) 261.
3. R Hirshowitz, S Miliner and D Everatt ‘Growing up in a violent society’ in D Everatt (ed) Creating a Future: Youth Policy for South Africa (1995) 87.