Small Acts, Strong Voices: Agency, Dignity, and Informal Feminisms Amongst Adolescent Mothers in Sierra Leone

Mangenda Kamara; Mohamed Gibril Sesay

doi:10.18535/ijsrm/v13i09.sh05

Abstract

Adolescent pregnancy in Sierra Leone is widely treated as a developmental crisis, associated with school dropout, poverty reproduction, and moral failure. This article reframes the issue through a womanist lens that emphasizes agency within constraint. Using participatory methods - Photovoice and Peer Ethnography - in Tombo and Mattru Jong, the study points up the lived experiences of adolescent mothers and their strategies of survival and dignity. Findings show that young mothers rely on informal care networks, engage in small-scale trading, reconstruct identities through maternal pride, and navigate institutions through strategic compliance. These everyday acts, though often invisible to policy, represent forms of constrained but meaningful agency. The analysis cautions against romanticizing resilience while revealing the structural violence that demands it. It calls for interventions that recognize adolescent mothers as beyond being recipients of aid; they are also knowledge producers, moral actors, and contributors to community life.

Keywords

Adolescent motherhoodSierra LeoneAgencyWomanist lensInformal supportFeminist praxis 1

References

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[refR-2] Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). Routledge.Google Scholar ↗

[refR-3] de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press.Google Scholar ↗

[refR-4] Hunter, M. (2010). Love in the time of AIDS: Inequality, gender, and rights in South Africa. Indiana University Press.Google Scholar ↗

[refR-5] Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Development and Change, 30(3), 435–464. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7660.00125DOI ↗Google Scholar ↗

[refR-6] Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar ↗

[refR-7] Mama, A. (1995). Beyond the masks: Race, gender and subjectivity. Routledge.Google Scholar ↗

[refR-8] Ngabaza, S., & Shefer, T. (2013). Policy commitments vs. lived realities of young pregnant women and mothers in school, South Africa. Reproductive Health Matters, 21(41), 106–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0968-8080(13)41683-4DOI ↗Google Scholar ↗

[refR-9] Nnaemeka, O. (2004). Nego-feminism: Theorizing, practicing, and pruning Africa’s way. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 29(2), 357–385. https://doi.org/10.1086/378553DOI ↗Google Scholar ↗

[refR-10] Tamale, S. (2011). African sexualities: A reader. Pambazuka Press.Google Scholar ↗

[refR-11] UNFPA. (2022). State of world population 2022: Seeing the unseen – The case for action in the neglected crisis of unintended pregnancy. United Nations Population Fund. https://www.unfpa.org/swp2022Google Scholar ↗

[refR-12] Walker, A. (1983). In search of our mothers’ gardens: Womanist prose. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar ↗