The “Feminization” of HIV in Papua New Guinea
The phrase “the feminization of AIDS” has commonly been used to refer to women’s greater vulnerability to, and disproportionate infection with, HIV globally. The phrase serves as a kind of shorthand for the fact that female sex (specifically, female reproductive physiology) and female gender (a culturally constructed role and relation of power) interact to make girls and women especially vulnerable to infection. In this paper I suggest that a focus on vulnerability to infection is overly narrow, and that, in fact, AIDS can be understood as “feminized”—or having specific consequences and implications for women—in multiple ways. I examine three HIV case studies taken from my fieldwork in Papua New Guinea: the first focuses on female vulnerability in the context of resource extraction; the second is an AIDS awareness workshop in which men and women almost came to blows; and the third demonstrates women’s greater social isolation and moral devaluation once they receive an HIV-positive diagnosis. Through the exegesis of these case studies, I suggest that gender, as an analytic, needs to be considered as a dimension of epidemics in all stages—from vulnerability, to intervention, to treatment and care.