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Gender and AIDS Stigma

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Stigma, Discrimination and Living with HIV/AIDS

Abstract

In the last decade, greater attention has been paid to AIDS stigma as a social process, including how stigma both reflects and reproduces entrenched power dynamics. While gender relations have been recognized as part of these processes, the links between stigma and gender power dynamics have not been systematically examined. This chapter presents a novel conceptual framework that links the structure of AIDS stigma to gender as a social structure. This framework helps clarify why women and men often experience AIDS stigma in different ways and the role gender relations play in these processes. Understanding these complex social dynamics will allow us to integrate a more robust gender analysis into AIDS prevention programs. This is an especially pressing issue today given advances in using antiretroviral drug therapy to reduce HIV transmission. For such biomedical approaches to fulfill their promise, they need to incorporate an awareness of how gender is intertwined with AIDS stigma.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I stress heterosexual men here because where men and AIDS stigma has been the center of analysis, in Africa and elsewhere, it is largely in relation to men who have sex with men (e.g., Cloete et al. 2008; Feng et al. 2010; Padilla et al. 2008). The focus, therefore, has been primarily on stigma and sexual identities, rather than stigma and gender identities.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter is an extension of ideas I first presented in “Masculinity and the persistence of AIDS stigma,” Culture, Health & Sexuality, Vol. 13, No. 4, April 2011. I would like to thank Taylor & Francis for permission to incorporate some of this earlier material here. My research in Uganda would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of the men of the AIDS support group, health clinic staff, and volunteers.

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  1. Women’s Studies Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, MI, USA

    Robert Wyrod

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  1. Robert Wyrod
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Correspondence to Robert Wyrod .

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  1. School of Public Health, La Trobe University, Bundoora, 3086, Victoria, Australia

    Pranee Liamputtong

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Wyrod, R. (2013). Gender and AIDS Stigma. In: Liamputtong, P. (eds) Stigma, Discrimination and Living with HIV/AIDS. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6324-1_3

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