Gender And Hiv Aids

Gender issues are central to the causes and impact of the ongoing AIDS epidemic. The editors bring together cutting edge contemporary scholarship on gender and AIDS in one volume. They address questions related to gender and sexuality, how women and men live the epidemic differently and how such differences lead to different outcomes. The volume joins research on Africa, Asia and Latin America and illustrates how the epidemic has different gendered characteristics, causes and consequences in different regions. Collectively, the chapters demonstrate the fundamental ways that gender influences the spread of the disease, its impact and the success of prevention efforts. This scholarly, interdisciplinary volume provides a comprehensive introduction to the themes and issues of gender, AIDS and global public health and informs students, policy makers and practitioners of the complexity of the gendered nature of AIDS.

Women now account for the majority of all new HIV/AIDS cases diagnosed in the United States. Yet, the resources allotted to women for research, health services, education, and outreach remain woefully inadequate. The Gender Politics of HIV/AIDS in Women fills crucial gaps in understanding the specific effects of HIV and AIDS on and in women's lives. It takes as its starting point the premise that it is vitally important for researchers, teachers, health service providers, public policy makers, and community-based organizers to begin taking gender-- especially as it intersects with race, class, and sexuality-- into consideration as they work with HIV-infected women. The first comprehensive, interdisciplinary volume on this topic, The Gender Politics of HIV/AIDS in Women goes beyond tokenism, with a contributor's list made up of approximately 45% people of color, including African Americans, Latinos/as, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. The volume emphasizes marginalized populations such as the homeless, sexworkers, youth, the elderly, intravenous drug users, transgendered people, lesbians, bisexuals, incarcerated women, and victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. The contributors, including Evelyn Hammonds, Risa Denenberg, Michelle Murrain, and Paul Farmer, are recognized experts in their diverse fields. From their posts at the center of the pandemic--in the laboratory, the academy, clinics, and community based organizations--they criticize blind spots in the recognition and treatment of HIV in women and articulate accessible and practical solutions to specific areas of difficulty.

Confronting Discrimination and Inequality in China focuses on the most challenging areas of discrimination and inequality in China, including discrimination faced by HIV/AIDS afflicted individuals, rural populations, migrant workers, women, people with disabilities, and ethnic minorities. The Canadian contributors offer rich regional, national, and international perspectives on how constitutions, laws, policies, and practices, both in Canada and in other parts of the world, battle discrimination and the conflicts that rise out of it. The Chinese contributors include some of the most independent-minded scholars and practitioners in China. Their assessments of the challenges facing China in the areas of discrimination and inequality not only attest to their personal courage and intellectual freedom but also add an important perspective on this emerging superpower.

Women, especially young women, have increasing infection rates from HIV/AIDS and the death rate among women is now almost as high as men.

he starting point for this guideline is the point at which a woman has learnt that she is living with HIV and it therefore covers key issues for providing comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights-related services and support for women living with HIV. As women living with HIV face unique challenges and human rights violations related to their sexuality and reproduction within their families and communities as well as from the health-care institutions where they seek care particular emphasis is placed on the creation of an enabling environment to support more effective health interventions and better health outcomes. This guideline is meant to help countries to more effectively and efficiently plan develop and monitor programmes and services that promote gender equality and human rights and hence are more acceptable and appropriate for women living with HIV taking into account the national and local epidemiological context. It discusses implementation issues that health interventions and service delivery must address to achieve gender equality and support human rights.

This international collection examines a wide range of psycho-social aspects of AIDS and HIV infection, including prevention, education, healthcare and policy in terms of gender challenges.

In some parts of South Africa, more than one in three people are HIV positive. Love in the Time of AIDS explores transformations in notions of gender and intimacy to try to understand the roots of this virulent epidemic. By living in an informal settlement and collecting love letters, cell phone text messages, oral histories, and archival materials, Mark Hunter details the everyday social inequalities that have resulted in untimely deaths. Hunter shows how first apartheid and then chronic unemployment have become entangled with ideas about femininity, masculinity, love, and sex and have created an economy of exchange that perpetuates the transmission of HIV/AIDS. This sobering ethnography challenges conventional understandings of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

China’s concentrated HIV epidemic is on the brink of becoming a generalized one and syphilis infection has become a major public health threat. Social factors relating to gender and gender inequality exacerbate the spread of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) in China. A better understanding of the proximate social determinants of HIV related to gender will be crucial to effectively curbing HIV and other STIs in China. Aspects of China’s governance - including administrative procedures, the developing legal system, social institutions, and the public health infrastructure – are instrumental in shaping strategies and responses to HIV. International studies suggest that women who are more economically and socially vulnerable may also have a greater risk of HIV infection, yet few initiatives have focused on discrete areas where achievable and sustainable gender policy measures could be linked to the public health response. This study presents perspectives ranging from criminology to social psychology to better understand how gender perspectives can inform HIV policy in the context of China.