Abstract
This Welsh study explored young women’s understandings of what it means to have a healthy relationship, including the negotiations of their identity and behaviour within their intimate relationships. This study was completed in seven schools in North Wales. An attitudinal questionnaire (n = 220) was used in order to explore their gendered attitudes, followed by a series of semi-structured interviews with 25 young women aged 15–18, focused on evaluating their experiences of intimate relationships, including the impact of everyday forms of harassment and abuse experienced in schools and beyond. The results indicate that there was a general resistance to, and justification of, somewhat subtle forms of coercion, harassment and control. The findings from the questionnaire and the interviews diverge; however, the journey on both paths reveals an image of young women unable to draw on a narrative of choice in order to assert their voices, their individual needs or negotiate their pre-determined relationship script. Overall, the young women lacked the power to operationalise their egalitarian attitudes in order to engage in relationships that adhere to the description of what they expect, want or desire within a ‘healthy relationship’. This study contributes to the debate on how young women negotiate the conflicts inherent in the contemporary constructions of gender and intimate relationships. The findings suggest the importance of a comprehensive educational approach, with young people focused on promoting gender equality and healthy relationships.
Highlights
If we are to understand the nature of young intimate relationships, we must understand how young people construct meaning(s) about their sexual selves, their relationship aspirations and their attitudes towards ‘good’ and ‘bad’ relationships
The questionnaire findings consistently demonstrated zero tolerant attitudes towards any form of abuse, with the young women noting their understanding of equality and healthy relationships
These attitudes did not transfer to their ‘lived experiences’ of their online or offline relationships described during the interviews
Summary
If we are to understand the nature of young intimate relationships, we must understand how young people construct meaning(s) about their sexual selves, their relationship aspirations and their attitudes towards ‘good’ and ‘bad’ relationships. The nature of young intimate relationships has shifted significantly, as ‘online’ relationships and the emergence of the new technologies play a key role in perpetuating gendered norms and patterns of coercion and control within young people’s intimate relationships (Ringrose et al 2012; Barter et al 2017). In order to understand the nature of young people’s intimate relationships, it is necessary to understand the gendered context of how young women construct their identity and how their limited choices are negotiated through their embodied practices within intimate relationships. Bodies develop gendered identities due to the constant ‘doing’ of attributes associated with masculinity or femininity (West and Zimmerman 1987), which is an active social construct that can be ‘undone’, in particular circumstances (Deutsch 2007). The focus is on this ‘doing or undoing of gender’, the impact of static and established
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