Combating Adolescent Girls Pregnancies and Dropouts through Contraceptive Knowledge, Use and Civic Engagement in Zambia

Mulenga Muntanga Chanda¹, Gift Masaiti¹ and Francis Simui^1,

¹School of Education, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia

Cite this paper:
Mulenga Muntanga Chanda, Gift Masaiti and Francis Simui. Combating Adolescent Girls Pregnancies and Dropouts through Contraceptive Knowledge, Use and Civic Engagement in Zambia. Journal of Sociology and Anthropology. 2021; 5(1):9-16. doi: 10.12691/jsa-5-1-2

Abstract

Zambia’s Education system keeps recording high dropout rates among adolescent girls in secondary school due to unintended pregnancy. Teenage pregnancies reported among girls in grades 1-12 at both primary and secondary level from the years of 2010 to 2017, show that, at primary level they have been a total of 100,664 pregnancy cases recorded and a total of 20,771 pregnancy cases at secondary school level. The implications of these high dropout rates among girls are low female participation and representation in governance, parochial citizens, lack of employment and poverty among others. This study therefore aimed at finding out how engaged various stakeholders were in teaching contraceptive knowledge and usage of contraceptives in school adolescent girls as a mitigation strategy to pregnancy and dropout. This study was located in the social constructivism paradigm in which a qualitative approach was used and the case study design was employed. A total sample size of 30 participants in which a sampling technique of: Typical Purposeful sampling was used on all the participants. Data was analyzed thematically. The findings seem to suggest that there was acceptability and civic engagement in teaching contraceptive knowledge by teachers and NGOs because they believed it would give the girls better education outcomes and reduced dropout rates. Parents were still resistance to usage of contraceptive because they thought it would lead to moral decay and promiscuity. The study among others recommends that society start opening up in talking about finding lasting solutions to the current problem of adolescent pregnancy in secondary schools in Zambia, by breaking cultural misconceptions.

Keywords:
education dropout pregnancy contraceptives knowledge use challenges Zambia

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