Forced early sexual encounters the norm for large number of women
“THE culture of predatory behaviour is so rooted in our psyche, that oftentimes it takes someone on the outside to point out the obvious,” says sex education specialist Keisha-Ann Wellington. “The fact is, so many Jamaican girls are forced into early sexual experiences when they have no business even participating, and the domino effect continues for generations, until it becomes commonplace.”
Wellington says a cultural shift is necessary to change this, as too many people see men preying on young girls as okay; young girls looking towards older men to finance their lifestyles as normal; and large age-gap relationships as ordinary.
Statistics from the Women’s Health Survey, 2016, and the Reproductive Health Survey, 2021, paint the picture Wellington describes above. The co-publication of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica, Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women; and the National Family Planning Board found that:
•Women who reported ever having had sex were asked to indicate the age at which they first had sex. Of these women, 52.2 per cent had their first sexual intercourse between the ages 15 and 17 years. Close to 14 per cent of respondents had their first sexual experience before age 15. Among the women who reported their age at first sex to be below age 15, almost one-third (32.8 per cent) reported that this experience was forced.
•One-fifth of young females (20.5 per cent) who started having sex before age 18 had sex with a partner who was five to 10 years their senior.
• Where young women cannot choose when to have sex, they are likely to be powerless to make decisions about contraception.
•Childhood sexual abuse is real for almost one-fifth of Jamaican women. Girls are mostly abused by someone known to them, like a friend or acquaintance.
•Adolescent females who have their first sexual experience with an older partner, are more likely to have negative sexual experiences such as sexual coercion, higher incidence of HIV and STI transmission, and a greater likelihood of not using contraception at first sex.
