Body and Sexuality:Locating Patriarchal Roots of HIVAIDS

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Body and SexualityLocating Patriarchal Roots of
HIV/AIDS

• By Skylab Sahu

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Patriarchy
Socio-Cultural construction of womens body
Less Rights
Normalization
Mystification
Powerlessness
Vulnerability of women to HIV/AIDS
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Research Design

• Research questions ?
• How far women were treated as sex objects were
  deprived of their rights
• Whether situation of powerlessness pushed them
  towards the infection
• Research Sample
• 200 HIV positive women in West Bengal and
  Karnataka, India.
• Random sampling method

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Indicators and Findings

• Indicators of powerlessness and rights
• Marital age and decision regarding marriage
• Husbands behavior and decision making at the
  household level
• Decision making in reproductive rights issues
• Marital relationship violent, dominant and
  cooperative
• Impact of economic status of women (income/no
  income) in exercising rights.
• Womens powerlessness, extent or level of
  knowledge less capacity of exercising rights
  increased vulnerability to HIV/AIDS

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Implication

• In a quest of empowering and ensuring better
  rights to HIV positive women, there is a need to
  address several powerlessness associated with
  women in a particular socio-cultural context