How do gender hierarchies matter for young people's political action? Youth activism on sexual health in Ecuador and Peru

Researchers increasingly consider young people as political actors in their own right rather than merely as preparing to be political actors as adults. Studies further show that young people are not apathetic to political issues and are even more politically active than adults, but that they do politics differently from participating in conventional parties and electoral processes. Less attention has been paid to understand how gender hierarchies – and intersections with other axes of social difference – shape young people’s political action.

This is of particular interest in the case of body politics in Latin America. Until recently, second-wave feminist movements were the main claim-maker for reproductive and sexual rights in the region, and their activism went hand-in-hand with questioning gender hierarchies. Today, youth movements also address body politics, thereby raising the question of how they perceive gender hierarchies in relation to their activism.

To address this question, we took young people’s actions as our point of departure. The study aimed to understand how young activists working on sexual health in Ecuador and Peru perceived and assigned meaning to their actions. Grounded Theory with small N comparison was used to analyze qualitative data on four initiatives, two in each country. In total, 60 young activists participated in individual and group interviews, semi-structured around broad themes with open-ended questions.

The findings showed that gender hierarchies – and their intersection with other axes of social difference – shaped young activists’ strategies, including responding to adult allies; building organizations and leaderships; and carrying out social and policy advocacy. In this paper, we present these findings and interpret them in light of the existing literature on the role of gender and other axes of social difference within young people’s political action as well as social movements more broadly.