While working on projects aimed at meeting contraceptive needs of young women in India, I have found stories and experiences driven by fears and inhibitions. These stories and experiences often lie outside the scope of contraceptive uptake yet fall under the larger realm of sexual and emotional well-being. My role as a designer is often limited by the scope of the project and its intended outcomes. However, design research expands our learning beyond the target outcome - to the experience as a whole. That was how I saw an opportunity to independently discover fears and inhibitions of young women beyond the targets. Thus, emerged my YLH project - a design-led study of post-sex fears of young women in India.
Through my project, I put out the invisible nuanced and often emotional aspects of initial sexual experiences of young women, with a focus on the journey post-sex. I invite you all to join this movement of bringing out the invisible fears, addressing them through innovation and advocating for their inclusion in further scope of work.
Thank you Meru.
My thought on this will be what’s the level of sex education among young women before their sex debut. Is the project like post sex trauma and not basically FP focus
Hey Belindar,
Through my YLH project, I derived the post-sex fears of young women. Now that we have defined the problems, I will be continuing the human- centred design process to design
interventions to address these fears. Some things that we are looking at as next steps are:
Collate and present explanations and tips to address each fear for young women visiting the platform, with the intention of calming their anxiety and distress
Normalise their experiences by showing them proof that others too have faced the same
Advocate for conversations on these invisible emotional problems on national and global platforms
As for what the post-sex journey for young women looks like, I guess I’ll wait for the Project Exhibition to share that
Levels of sex ed among young women vary, and the ones we spoke with definitely felt that it was insufficient. However, sex ed often does not cover these nuanced and often emotional aspects of initial sexual experiences.
The project is about the anxiety and distress faced by young women around their initial sexual experiences, that affects their mental health.
I’m happy to share Unspoken - a platform that gives words to these invisible nuanced and often emotional aspects of initial sexual experiences of young women in India. We invite you to explore these post-sex fears and join us as we advocate for inclusion of mental health outcomes of sexual experiences.
