Sex, Silence, and Young Women: Reimagining Voice and Agency Through Participatory Praxis. Where Counselling Practice Meets Participatory Action for Social Transformation

Abstract

In the context of growing concern about the impact of pornified cultural norms and inadequate sex education on young people’s wellbeing, this thesis explores how young women in a socioeconomically advantaged girls’ school in Aotearoa New Zealand navigate contemporary norms of heterosexuality, femininity, and sexual agency. Grounded in a social constructionist paradigm, the study is methodologically informed by Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) and employs reflexive thematic analysis to examine qualitative data. Twenty-five participants took part in a series of focus groups and workshops designed to elicit dialogue, reflection, and collective meaning-making. The research was shaped by the author’s dual role as counsellor and researcher, with the counselling space positioned not merely as a site of individual therapeutic support but as a politically significant location for interrupting dominant narratives - particularly through participatory, small-group dialogue and meaning-making. The analysis investigates how silencing, cultural expectations, and resistance are experienced and negotiated. Young women’s accounts reveal the powerful cultural scripts that shape their experiences of consent, embodiment, and relational practices. The findings highlight how social expectations of politeness, sexual availability, and emotional labour constrain agency, while also tracing the critical spaces where participants resist, reframe, and disrupt these norms. This thesis foregrounds young women's meaning-making as an inherently political act, demonstrating how collective dialogue fosters critical consciousness and opens possibilities for change. It argues that young women are not only shaped by dominant discourses but are active in challenging and reshaping them. The study calls for education, counselling, and policy practices that centre young people's lived realities, amplify their voices, and support relational, structurally responsive approaches, to the forces influencing their lives.