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Sexuality: Health, Education and Rights
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Sexuality: Health, Education and Rights

A special issue of Youth (ISSN 2673-995X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2024 | Viewed by 8366

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Melissa Kang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
General Practice Clinical School, Sydney Medical School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Interests: adolescent and young adult health; sexual and reproductive health; adolescent sexuality; sex education; primary health care; health services research; access to health care
Dr. Cristyn Davies

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Specialty of Child and Adolescent Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Interests: child and adolescent health and development; gender and sexuality; LGBTI health, discrimination, and violence; sexual and reproductive health; comprehensive relationships and sexuality education; human papillomavirus, HPV vaccination and adolescent vaccination; vaccine delivery systems (including standard and microarray patch technology); knowledge translation and implementation science
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jacqueline Hendriks

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Curtin School of Population Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Perth 6102, Australia
Interests: sexuality from birth to young adulthood; diversity of sex; gender and sexuality; sexually transmissible infections; relationships and sexuality education (school, home, and peer); workforce development in human sexuality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite submissions for a Special Issue in ‘Youth’ titled Sexuality: Health, Education and Rights. This Special Issue aims to explore, as well as to critically examine, adolescent and young adult sexual and reproductive health, the evidence for the positive health and wellbeing impacts of comprehensive sexuality education *, and the rights of young people to flourish as they understand, experience, and express their own unique sexuality. 

While international evidence shows that partnered sexual activity usually commences during the second decade of life, social and cultural beliefs and norms profoundly influence the contexts in which this occurs. Further, young people today express identities, interact with peers and intimate partners, and gain knowledge and misinformation about sex and sexuality through an increasingly complex web of media that was not as widely available even one generation ago.

Yet, young people’s sexual behaviour is heavily sanctioned, and their sexual and reproductive health and rights remain threatened. Some populations of young people are more likely to experience poor sexual, reproductive, and/or mental health as a result of stigma and discrimination, low health literacy, poor access to healthcare, and other factors. When multiple forms of disadvantage compound, the intersectional impacts on health and wellbeing can increase exponentially.

Current predictions for Sustainable Development Goal 5, Gender Equality, suggest that at the current rate, it will take 300 years to end child marriage, considering one in five young women are married before their 18th birthday. Sustainable Development Goal 3.7 (the proportion of women aged 15–49 years have family planning satisfied with modern contraceptive methods) suggests that despite strong progress, it has not been sufficient to meet the target of ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services by 2030.

International bodies such as the World Health Organisation, UNESCO, and the International Association for Adolescent Health have called for comprehensive sexuality education as a right that all young people should be afforded. Further, the International Association for Adolescent Health has ‘called out’ recent challenges to national governments, the WHO, and UNESCO as ‘orchestrated attempts by […] ideology-driven organisations […] to undermine years of legislation and advocacy that […] protect the rights of children and adolescents and also save lives’ (Gray et al, 2023).

For this Special Issue, original research articles, systematic and scoping reviews, commentaries, case studies, and book reviews are welcome. We warmly invite youth-led and/or youth-co-authored papers. We are seeking a diversity of papers: those which reflect the depth and breadth of thinking across sociocultural influences, studies that rigorously evaluate education or health promotion programs and their impact on one or more aspects of young people’s sexuality, health, and wellbeing, commentaries and case studies which provide in-depth analysis and provoke calls to action or solutions, and reviews of books or other media, such as documentaries, films or series, which contribute to our understanding of young people’s sexuality, health, education, and rights.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

* The term comprehensive sexuality education is used as this is the language of international bodies such as the World Health Organization. We understand and accept that other terminology is preferred in different contexts (e.g., relationships and sexuality education and sexual health education) but that the underpinning principles and evidence base are those articulated by the WHO.

References

Gray, N., Pemde, H., Sawyer, S., et al., on behalf of the IAAH Council. (2023). An Open Letter from the International Association for Adolescent Health (IAAH) about Comprehensive Sexuality Education. International Association for Adolescent Health. Quebec, Canada. Available online: https://iaah.org/statements-cse-2023/.

Dr. Melissa Kang
Dr. Cristyn Davies
Dr. Jacqueline Hendriks
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Youth is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • adolescents
  • youth
  • young people
  • sexual and reproductive health
  • sexuality
  • sex education
  • rights
  • gender equality

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 279 KiB  
Article
Just 4U™: Reusable Period Pants Alongside an Ovulatory Menstrual Health Literacy Program
by Kate Fraser Roux, Felicity Roux, Jacqueline Hendriks, HuiJun Chih and Sharyn Burns
Youth 2024, 4(4), 1757-1773; https://doi.org/10.3390/youth4040111 - 9 Dec 2024
Viewed by 350
Abstract
The concept of “period poverty” describes the lack of access to menstrual health education and menstrual care products. This quasi-experimental mixed-methods study evaluated a collaboration called Just 4U™ to address period poverty. This collaboration was formed between My Vital Cycles®, [...] Read more.
The concept of “period poverty” describes the lack of access to menstrual health education and menstrual care products. This quasi-experimental mixed-methods study evaluated a collaboration called Just 4U™ to address period poverty. This collaboration was formed between My Vital Cycles®, as the provider of educational content, and Modibodi®, as the provider of period pants as a reusable menstrual product (RMP). Five co-educational schools, including a regional school, participated and were of average to below-average socio-educational advantage ranking in Australia. The pre- and post-intervention evaluation with 63 postmenarcheal adolescents (14–18-year-old) in Grades 9–12 showed an improvement in their ovulatory menstrual health literacy. Open-ended questions explored their perspectives on the RMP. Overall, the RMP was well received by participants, who reported a positive impact on their mindset and cycle management. School staff (n = 6) who had observed delivery of Just 4U™ were interviewed. They believed the program had benefited the participants and recommended that teacher training would help the intervention to be sustainably implemented in schools. Findings highlight the worthwhile inclusion of RMPs alongside ovulatory menstrual health education. This study contributes to ongoing research in adolescent ovulatory menstrual health education. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sexuality: Health, Education and Rights)
18 pages, 255 KiB  
Article
‘[Do] I Have to Get It in Writing or Something?’ What Happens When Sexuality Education Is Conceptualised Through Consent?
by Giselle Woodley, Gracie Cayley, Imogen Senior, Harrison W. See and Lelia Green
Youth 2024, 4(4), 1739-1756; https://doi.org/10.3390/youth4040110 - 9 Dec 2024
Viewed by 411
Abstract
Consent education was recently introduced into the Australian curriculum, and has contributed to much of the public discourse for the past few years. However, teens’ accounts of their Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) classes indicate that consent is being taught to varying degrees [...] Read more.
Consent education was recently introduced into the Australian curriculum, and has contributed to much of the public discourse for the past few years. However, teens’ accounts of their Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) classes indicate that consent is being taught to varying degrees of consistency. Qualitative data collected from 49 semi-structured interviews with 30 Australian teens (aged 11–17), with 19 interviews reprised one year later, involved teens discussing their experiences of RSE, including consent. These data were extended by 4 x teen focus groups with 18 participants. Using thematic analysis, teens’ perspectives and experiences revealed how consent appears to dominate RSE. Teens expressed dissatisfaction with how RSE was delivered and how sex is often framed in a context of safety and risk, where current framings of consent appear to contribute to fear-based messaging. Often, consent was taught as how to seek or give permission for sex or to avoid sexual assault in ways that may not reflect teens’ actual experiences. While the implementation of consent signifies welcome progress in relation to RSE, teens reveal there is still room for improvement. More positive representations of sex and sexuality are needed to balance an emphasis on safety and risk. Support is also required to help educators navigate curriculum changes, while further attention is needed to support teens’ skill development in more holistic and comprehensive aspects of sexuality and relationships. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sexuality: Health, Education and Rights)
29 pages, 1121 KiB  
Article
Barriers to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Migrant and Refugee Youth: An Exploratory Socioecological Qualitative Analysis
by Michaels Aibangbee, Sowbhagya Micheal, Pranee Liamputtong, Rashmi Pithavadian, Syeda Zakia Hossain, Elias Mpofu and Tinashe Moira Dune
Youth 2024, 4(4), 1538-1566; https://doi.org/10.3390/youth4040099 - 1 Nov 2024
Viewed by 775
Abstract
(1) Background: Migrant and refugee youth’s (MRY’s) sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) are a global health issue. MRY encounter adverse SRH experiences due to limited access to and knowledge of SRHRs services. Using a socioecological framework, this study examined the barriers [...] Read more.
(1) Background: Migrant and refugee youth’s (MRY’s) sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) are a global health issue. MRY encounter adverse SRH experiences due to limited access to and knowledge of SRHRs services. Using a socioecological framework, this study examined the barriers affecting MRY’s SRHRs. (2) Methods: A cross-sectional study utilising a participatory action research design was used. A total of 87 MRY (ages 16–26, from 20 cultural groups within Greater Western Sydney, Australia) completed seventeen focus group discussions on their SRHRs experiences. The focus groups were co-facilitated by youth project liaisons to ensure their authenticity and validity. The data were analysed thematically and interpreted using socioecological theory. (3) Results: The findings identified socioecological barriers, a lack of awareness about and access to services, and sociocultural dissonance as leading to the under-implementation of SRHRs services. These barriers included cultural disconnects, language barriers, remote service locations, intergenerational cultural conflicts, and ineffective SRHRs services. The key themes identified included traditional and institutional stigma, lack of SRH education, reliance on social media for SRH information, and privacy concerns. (4) Conclusions: There is a limited consideration of MRY’s SRHRs and the impact of intergenerational discordance and stigma on MRY’s rights. The findings suggest the necessity for a collaborative SRHRs strategy and policy design that empowers MRY’s agency across multicultural contexts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sexuality: Health, Education and Rights)
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