Sexual exploitation/sextortion is a multi-causal phenomenon. Causes include patriarchal social norms; corruption, including the abuse of teachers’ professional authority; the financial insecurity of girls and young women; a lack of support networks for girls and young women; and university funding structures that incentivise management to ignore sexual exploitation perpetrated by professors.
Patriarchal norms
Sexual exploitation/sextortion is a manifestation of patriarchy, i.e., a system of maintaining gender – as well as class, racial and heterosexual – privilege through crude forms of oppression, such as violence, and more subtle ones, such as laws. Sexual exploitation/sextortion is the result of the cultural normalisation of violence against women and girls, especially sexual violence. Individuals are rooted in culture, and everyone – women and girls, and men and boys – receives social validation when acting in socially approved ways. This makes culture very pervasive and persistent.
The causes of violence against children (VAC) are often patriarchal and often overlap with the causes of GBV. Up to one billion children have experienced violence worldwide and this frequently leads to other experiences of violence later in life.
Corruption
The issue of sex for grades and sex for jobs differs from that of sex for education fees because the former involves an abuse of entrusted authority by a teacher or employer for sexual purposes. In contrast, sex for fees usually involves a sponsor/sugar daddy relationship which, although exploitative, is not an abuse of entrusted authority.
The abuse of entrusted authority by a teacher or employer is a form of corruption, which is why the term ‘sextortion’ is often used. This corruption perspective is needed to understand and address the issues of sex for grades and sex for jobs. While sex for fees might be addressed through financial means such as loans to girls, this is not necessarily the case for sex for grades and sex for jobs because the teacher or employer’s abuse of authority cannot be solved by financing girls. Funding is still needed to address this abuse of authority, but it must be targeted at providing access to quality social norms change to challenge the idea that sexual exploitation of girls and young women is acceptable.
The expression ‘sex for grades’ suggests that sex is the starting point of the exchange. However, if instead one says, ‘grades for sex’, one shifts the focus to the power that the teacher has to get sex from his student. In doing so, the teacher violates his professional ethics and abuses his authority to get sex, which is a form of corruption.
Sextortion can make the survivor seem complicit because it can appear that she “agreed to it” and is assumed to have some responsibility for it. This is related to the idea of the exchange between the perpetrator and the survivor. It is easy to say that one should not blame the survivor, but it is hard to do this in practice because of social norms about men’s entitlement to sex. For example, if a woman or girl knocks on the door of her employer/teacher at night to have sex, people may say she is complicit. However, this is not the case. It is always the fault of the person engaging in sexual corruption, i.e., the one holding the power in the exchange.
Framing sextortion as corruption might help people see it as a serious crime. If a man is convicted of corruption, which is a criminal offence, it might be taken more seriously than an accusation of sexual violence, which is often (wrongly) not considered harmful.
Financial insecurity
The financial insecurity of girls and young women can increase their risk of sexual exploitation. Respondents to GFF’s survey were clear: education is needed to get out of poverty, and financing is needed to pay for this education. 45% of respondents reported that they had entered relationships solely to pay for education costs. Regarding tools that could have prevented exploitation, the most prevalent response was related to money, chosen 29% of the time.
However, providing unaffordable loans to girls could exacerbate cycles of debt, as has been seen in some microfinance lending. Furthermore, financial solutions that only focus on school fees are often insufficient since other factors can lead to sexual exploitation cases in schools. For example, some girls experience sexual exploitation in schools where male teachers control access to menstrual products. Financial support must therefore be sufficient to cover the true costs of studying (and not working), loans must be affordable, and financial support should also be accompanied by other comprehensive support for students’ needs.
Lack of support networks
Lack of emotional support for girls is a key causal factor in sexual exploitation. For example, girls who are orphaned are likely to be targeted by perpetrators. Although this may relate to girls’ financial insecurity, it is also caused by a lack of emotional support meaning it is harder for them to resist sugar daddies. In some cases, family members may endorse their daughter having a sugar daddy because of the material gifts they enjoy that arise from the relationship.
We need to ask whether girls at risk of sexual exploitation have anyone to talk to when faced with the advances of sponyos/sugar daddies. Do girls’ parents, educators and peers have the tools to discuss the risk of sexual exploitation with them? Do girls feel comfortable in confiding in any of those people, given that there is considerable sensitivity regarding discussions about sex in many countries and contexts? Do girls feel they have the option of saying no to sponyos/sugar daddies? It is important to consider the answers to these questions when thinking about how to end sexual exploitation/sextortion.
Furthermore, findings from GFF’s survey show that only 2% of respondents reported the sexual exploitation they had experienced to authority figures out of fear of retribution, which highlights the perceived lack of support for survivors from formal authority figures.
University funding structures
Funding systems within universities can contribute to the sexual exploitation of young women because professors are usually responsible for securing departmental funding. Universities are therefore more likely to ignore sexual exploitation perpetrated by these professors. Many universities also wilfully ignore that student fees may come from sponsors/sugar daddies.