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`When HIV-Prevention Messages and Gender Norms Clash: The Impact of Domestic Violence on Women's HIV Risk in Slums of Chennai, India'.
Vivian F Go, Johnson Sethulakshmi, Margaret E Bentley et al.
Produced : Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA; Y R Gaitonde Centre for AIDS Research and Education, Chennai, India and Carolina.
Women's Feature Service, September 2003.
ABSTRACT
There is a direct linkage between marital violence and women’s ability to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS, this study finds. The research team conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions among men and women in two randomly selected slums of Chennai, India. Violence has been shown to increase women’s risk to HIV/STDs through three main routes: increased sexual risk-taking in women with a history of sexual abuse in childhood or adolescence; forced sex with an infected partner; and women’s inability to negotiate condom use.
The study concludes that to reduce women’s immediate risk to HIV/STD infection, HIV messages promoting condom use and monogamy should also target men. At the same time, long-term, multipronged approaches are needed.
