Fear, Shame and Falling Motivation: How GBV Is Undermining Education in Eswatini

Gender-based violence (GBV) can undermine education long before it forces a learner out of school. Fear, humiliation and psychological distress can weaken concentration, participation and motivation, turning what may appear to be a safeguarding problem into a wider threat to learning, attendance and educational progress.

In the study "The Impact of Gender-Based Violence on High School Learners in Eswatini: Analysing Emotional, Psychological, and Academic Consequences," published in Societies, Gibson Makamure of the University of South Africa draws on accounts from 36 learners across six high schools to show how GBV can seep into everyday school life. Learners described fear, shame, anxiety, withdrawal, difficulty concentrating, absenteeism and declining motivation, revealing how emotional and psychological harm can translate into weaker engagement with education.

The Hidden Education Cost of Fear, Shame and Humiliation

Many of the experiences described by learners do not begin with dramatic acts of physical violence. Participants spoke about insults, body-shaming, harassment, intimidation and threats that gradually affected their self-confidence, emotional security and willingness to participate in school life.

Some learners associated repeated humiliation with feelings of worthlessness and reluctance to attend school. Others described anxiety about facing classmates or teachers, while persistent thoughts about harassment and threats made it difficult to concentrate during lessons.

The study expands the definition of what education systems should treat as a threat to learning. Policies often focus on visible incidents, formal complaints or severe forms of violence, yet repeated emotional abuse and intimidation may produce cumulative effects that are harder to document but no less consequential for participation.

The research reframes school safety as an educational outcome in its own right. A student may remain officially enrolled while becoming increasingly detached from learning, avoiding classroom participation, skipping lessons or losing confidence in their ability to continue. In that sense, enrolment alone can conceal a deeper erosion of educational opportunity.

Psychological distress aggravates the problem. Participants described anxiety, hopelessness, isolation, helplessness and shame, with some becoming reluctant to disclose what they had experienced because they feared judgement or misunderstanding.

For schools, this creates a difficult feedback loop. Violence can generate shame and fear; those emotions can discourage reporting; weak disclosure then makes the problem less visible to institutions, reducing opportunities for early intervention. The result is that silence itself can become part of the mechanism through which harm persists.

When Psychological Distress Becomes an Academic Problem

The most direct education-policy concern emerges from learners' descriptions of deteriorating engagement. Participants reported difficulty concentrating, declining motivation, absenteeism, reduced participation and, in some cases, worsening academic performance.

Some learners said emotional pain left them unable to focus on schoolwork. Others described avoiding classes because they felt unsafe, while some reported losing interest in their academic results altogether.

These accounts suggest that educational underperformance cannot always be understood through conventional explanations such as teaching quality, school resources or household poverty alone. Psychological safety can also influence whether students are cognitively and emotionally available for learning.

The study is appropriately cautious here. Learners' accounts show perceived relationships between GBV and educational difficulties, but they do not establish that violence was the sole or direct cause of falling grades or absenteeism. Family conditions, socioeconomic pressures, school resources, relationships and other stresses may also influence outcomes.

The caution strengthens rather than weakens the policy message. Education systems do not need proof that GBV explains every academic difficulty before treating school safety as part of learning policy. They need credible mechanisms to recognise when fear, trauma or harassment is contributing to disengagement and to respond before those experiences become entrenched.

This is specifically relevant in developing-country contexts where governments are simultaneously trying to improve enrolment, retention, learning outcomes and gender equality. Investments in classrooms, curricula, digital tools and teacher recruitment may deliver less than expected if students remain exposed to environments that undermine their ability to participate.

Why Schools Cannot Solve GBV With Counselling Alone

The study uses Bronfenbrenner's ecological model to interpret learners' experiences. Rather than treating violence as an isolated interaction between individuals, the framework connects personal distress with peer relationships, teacher responses, institutional systems, community support and broader social norms.

The common institutional response to trauma is often to focus primarily on counselling the affected student. The study suggests that counselling is necessary but insufficient when the wider environment continues to reproduce fear, weak accountability or barriers to disclosure.

Teacher behaviour, for example, can influence whether learners feel protected or abandoned. The research notes that teachers may be among the first adults to receive disclosures, making their responsiveness critical. Where reports are ignored or mishandled, students may become more reluctant to seek help; where teachers respond appropriately, they can activate safeguarding and referral pathways.

The implications extend beyond teachers. Schools need confidential reporting mechanisms, functioning referral systems, stronger counselling services, documented procedures and connections with specialised psychosocial or protection services. Prevention also needs to address bullying, harassment, peer norms, harmful gender expectations and disrespectful relationships before they escalate.

Community institutions matter as well. Parents, traditional leaders, faith-based groups, civil society organisations and service providers can either reinforce silence around GBV or help challenge norms that normalise abusive behaviour. The study therefore argues for interventions operating simultaneously across individual, school, community and policy levels.

This approach also has governance implications. A safeguarding policy existing on paper is not equivalent to an effective protection system. Governments need to know whether learners trust reporting channels, whether teachers act on disclosures, whether referrals actually lead to services and whether institutions follow up after cases are reported.

The Bigger Development Question: Can Education Be Inclusive If It Is Not Safe?

The research also complicates simplistic assumptions about gender. Both girls and boys described emotional distress, withdrawal, anxiety, concentration difficulties and reduced educational participation, even though their experiences and positions in relation to GBV differed.

Some participants described victimisation or witnessing violence, while others acknowledged engaging in harmful behaviour and reported guilt or emotional conflict. The study does not equate those experiences, nor does it suggest that gendered patterns of violence disappear. Instead, it cautions against reducing school GBV to a binary in which girls are always survivors and boys are always perpetrators.

The nuance is important for designing interventions. Survivor-centred protection must remain central, but prevention programmes also need to address accountability, empathy, behavioural change, peer culture and gender-transformative education. Treating all boys as potential perpetrators or all girls as passive victims risks overlooking the complexity of school environments.

For Eswatini, the research points toward a broader education reform agenda in which safety, psychosocial support and institutional responsiveness become integral to quality education. The paper explicitly connects its recommendations with Sustainable Development Goals 4 and 5, linking educational inclusion with gender equality and safer learning environments.

The study is based on 36 purposively selected learners from six schools, is not nationally representative and cannot estimate prevalence or test statistical differences between genders. Its cross-sectional design also prevents causal claims, while some acknowledgements of harmful behaviour were self-reported rather than independently verified.

Future research needs larger and longitudinal datasets capable of examining how different forms of violence relate to attendance, retention, mental well-being and academic performance over time. Evaluations of reporting systems, teacher training, trauma-informed education and community-based prevention would also help identify which interventions deliver measurable improvements.