4.2 Article

Cellphones and romantic relationships of young women in urban informal settlements in South Africa

Journal

CULTURE HEALTH & SEXUALITY
Volume 24, Issue 10, Pages 1380-1394

Publisher

ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2021.1953609

Keywords

Intimate partner violence; technology; South Africa; women; urban

Funding

  1. UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID)
  2. 'Context and Health - An inter-disciplinary approach to understanding and intervening on contextual factors that shape HIV-risk for young women and men in South Africa' project - UK Research and Innovation [MR/T029803/1]

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The study found that cellphones and social media play a significant role in young women's sexual relationships, giving them more control while also enabling partner surveillance. Cellphones are central in establishing trust and can be both a gift and a source of struggle for women in relationships. Overall, women's relationships are largely influenced by wider social and material forces.
Cellphones have impacted on people's intimate sexual relationships. Using the framework of relationship formation, maintenance and ending, we explore how cellphones and attendant social media have impacted on relationships among a group of young women living in urban informal settlements in Durban, South Africa. We conducted in-depth repeat interviews with 15 women enrolled in the Stepping Stones and Creating Futures trial, as well as group discussions and light-touch participant observation. Our data show that cellphones and social media are central to women's sexual relationships and allow women greater control over relationships - particularly their formation. However, cellphones and social media also enable greater control and monitoring by partners. In this study, cellphones were central in establishing (or not) trust in relationships, as well as being gifts, sometimes given by men to demonstrate love, but often becoming a snare for women who then struggled to end relationships because the phones 'remained' the property of the man. We conclude that while cellphones have created new spaces and opportunities for women's agency, overall the wider social and material forces of women's existence were deeply constraining and were the main driver of patterns in women's relationships.

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