Abstract
Debates on human agency, especially female and sexual agency, have permeated the social scientific literature and health educational practice for multiple decades now. This article provides a review of recent agency debates illustrating how criticisms of traditional conceptions of (sexual) agency have led to a notable diversification of the concept. A comprehensive, inclusive description of sexual agency is proposed, focusing on the navigation of goals and desires in the wider structural context, and acknowledging the many forms sexual agency may take. We argue there is no simple relation between sexual agency and sexual health. Next, we describe the implications of such an understanding of sexual agency for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) and for sexual health and rights (SHR) programming more generally. We put forward validation of agentic variety, gender transformative approaches, meaningful youth participation, and multicomponent strategies as essential in building young peoples’ sexual agency and their role as agents of wider societal change. We also show that these essential conditions, wherever they have been studied, are far from being realized. With this review and connected recommendations, we hope to set the stage for ongoing, well-focused research and development in the area.
Highlights
Scientific debates on agencystretch over more than half a century and have co-evolved with broader societal and scientific developments
Agency has been a subject of interest in a variety of social disciplines from psychology to sociology, anthropology to philosophy, gender studies, cultural and media studies, youth and health studies, and the international development literature
In sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) promotion, the complexity involved in sexual agency needs to be met by programs that are securely based in the knowledge that all children and young people are sexual agents in their own lives but that there is important contextual diversity among them [35,39,50]
Summary
Scientific debates on (sexual) agency (generally understood as “effective human acting”). Psychological traditions of media effects research came to be criticized for failing to capture the complexity of women’s experiences in dealing with the ever-presence of their objectification and sexualization This may have caused what has been called a “turn to agency within feminism” [5]. Agency has gained a central position in international development cooperation in the areas of gender and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The implications of such an understanding of sexual agency will be considered for Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE, understood as an evidence- and curriculum-based process of teaching about the cognitive, emotional, social, interactive, and physical aspects of sexuality) and for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). Amongst others provided by the international literature, we aim to set the stage for ongoing, well-focused research and development in the area
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