Doreen Rosenthal.

Professor Doreen Rosenthal is director of the University of Melbourne’s Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society and Professor of Women’s Health. She is a developmental psychologist and an international expert in the field of adolescent sexuality and sexual and reproductive health. Professor Rosenthal is also author of the award winning website yoursexhealth.org and the book Sexuality in Adolescence: Current Trends, with Susan Moore. She speaks here with University of Melbourne Voice writer Janine Sim-Jones.

Q You have been researching young people for 30 years. How have the issues changed in that time?

A Where to begin? There’s a lot of talk about globalisation and a common youth culture. But if we look closely at the social and cultural environments in which young people develop it’s clear that this is only partly true.

There is great diversity in family forms, in economic and political circumstances, in religious and cultural values, to name only a few examples. In a rapidly changing world, cultural beliefs and practices do change, as we know when looking at issues like sexuality.

Alongside this are the extraordinary changes in communication technologies over the past 30 years. On the one hand, these have provided young people with greater opportunities to interact, via mobile phones and internet chat rooms. But we also have concerns about images of teenagers glued to their computers for hours on end, foregoing social interaction in the ‘real world’.

In particular, the links between technologies and sexual danger have been the focus of some attention. In fact, I think the most profound change, resulting largely from concerns about HIV/AIDS, has been the foregrounding of sexuality and sexual health.

Q Which issues have remained constant?

A Adolescence has always been cast as a problematic period, but the focus on chaos and conflict has subtly changed by reframing adolescents as ‘at-risk’. This risk discourse adopts an individualistic model of behaviour; it places self-managed change as critical if young people are to avoid harm.

But to understand the complexity of adolescents’ behaviours, we have to look to social processes and the social context as well. The risk discourse also ignores the fact that most young people move through this period of life in remarkably stable, risk-free ways.

Most young people in our studies are reflective about their lives and many of them are resourceful, make decisions for themselves, and behave in responsible, positive ways. So, if I had one wish, it would be to abandon this focus on harm or risk and instead look to young people’s potential for positive outcomes.

Q As a society is Australia becoming more liberal or conservative when it comes to issues surrounding sex and sexual health, and do you think these attitudes are reflected in government policy?

A Not all Australians have become more liberal and it would be surprising if this were true, given the many different cultures and values represented in our society. But I would say that most are more open to thinking and talking about and trying to understand issues surrounding sexuality and sexual health.

Certainly there’s more focus on sex in popular media (think TV shows like Sex and the City). Condoms now occupy a prominent place in most supermarkets. There’s a recognition that young people need to be educated about sexuality and sexual health at an early age. There’s greater understanding and acceptance of sexual diversity largely due, I’d argue, to the extraordinary efforts of the gay community – no longer invisible and unspoken about- in preventing an epidemic of HIV.

We, in Australia, were extremely fortunate that an early and bipartisan response to the threat of HIV meant that government policies were rapidly put in place to contain the spread of infection. Australia’s HIV/AIDS strategy with its focus on harm reduction, including needle and syringe exchange programs, has been a model for many other countries in the world.

Q What impact do you think the current political climate is having on the sexual health of young people and women?

A In general, we manage well in Australia compared, for example, to the USA where there is a ‘head in the sand’ attitude towards young people’s sexual wellbeing in spite of very troubling figures for teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

Within Australia governments vary in their approach to reproductive and sexual health. For example, although in some States abortion has been decriminalised, we are only now in Victoria about to debate this issue in parliament.

A bill on the ‘emergency contraception’ pill, RU486, was the subject of fierce debate in Federal parliament several years ago resulting, largely through the efforts of a cross-party group of women, in RU486 becoming available with little difficulty to women.

Nevertheless, those of us interested in women’s sexual and reproductive health have to keep a watching brief on politicians’ (and lobbyists’) attitudes. Our best approach is to continue to provide an evidence base for policies that will progress rather than hamper the health of women, young and old.

Q Are you ever surprised by the attitudes of young people involved in your research? What attitudes do you find especially surprising?

A Having been brought up in an era when sex was a mystery, I’m impressed by young people’s openness about their experiences and willingness to discuss matters that would have been unthinkable even 30 years ago.

Most young people are well informed and as a consequence accepting of difference, whether in sexual practices or sexual ­preferences. So the majority of young people today are not disconcerted by questions about oral sex or masturbation, nor do they express disapproval of gays and lesbians. But one of the troubling aspects is that the gender divide still holds.

Although the old image of women as passive victims of male sexual urges no longer applies to most of today’s young women, there is still a strong belief that male sexuality is of a different order to that of females and to some extent is privileged. We have a long way to go before young people understand the power of gender beliefs and attitudes in setting a sexual agenda.