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Volume 35, Numbers 1 and 2, March and September - Special
Issue on
Women, HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Sponsored by UNESCO, New Delhi. |
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Women and AIDS
in India through a Gender Lens
Prarthi Sharma
Both globally and nationally, AIDS is emerging as a disease of
women. This paper is aiming to analysis various data on AIDS
situation in India with special reference to women. The main aim
to this paper is how women are doubly victimized by the AIDS
epidemic. It has explored the existing gender relation in the
context of AIDS, and how gender imbalances makes situation worse
for women. It has explained and analysis the risk and
vulnerability of the disease to the women population in the
India context with gender imbalances and their more
vulnerability due to women’s biological and socio-cultural
conditions. It has suggest that the existing gender imbalance
and power dynamics make it particularly difficult for the women
to initiate or negotiate safer sex practices, because of their
social status in the patriarchal society like India. Beside,
this paper has observed the most important factor, which is
emerging from the study, is that young women are at high risk,
and population, which are considered to be low risk, now become
at high risk.
Key words: HIV/AIDS, Gender, Patriarchy, Gender
imbalance, Power dynamics, Social construction of sexuality.
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