TY - JOUR
T1 - HIV/AIDS and the Gendering of Stigma in Tamil Nadu, South India
AU - van Hollen, Cecilia
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments The 2004 research was supported by a Fulbright Scholar Program Research Award. Pilot research in 2002–2003 was funded by the Pilot Fund for Faculty-Student Research in the Social Sciences of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts. My deepest
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - Drawing on the seminal theoretical work on stigma by Goffman, this article analyzes stigma through the lens of Parker and Aggleton, who call for the joining of Goffman and Foucault to better grasp relationships among stigma, power and social inequality. Studies on the social impact of HIV/AIDS globally have demonstrated that women tend to be blamed for the spread of HIV/AIDS, and as a result, HIV-positive women face greater stigma and discrimination than HIV-positive men. Based on ethnographic research among 50 HIV-positive women in South India in 2002-2003 and 2004, my research supports this standard argument. However, my findings suggest that the gendering of stigma and discrimination is more complex and context specific. The gendering of stigma varies depending on the social context of private versus public spheres. The tendency to stigmatize women is due in part to cultural constructions of gendered bodies and not only to a gendered double standard of sexual morality, as has been previously reported. Even when a cultural argument about women's wayward sexuality is evoked, this rhetoric must be understood in part as a strategy to mask economically motivated responses, rather simply being attributed to sexist ideology per se.
AB - Drawing on the seminal theoretical work on stigma by Goffman, this article analyzes stigma through the lens of Parker and Aggleton, who call for the joining of Goffman and Foucault to better grasp relationships among stigma, power and social inequality. Studies on the social impact of HIV/AIDS globally have demonstrated that women tend to be blamed for the spread of HIV/AIDS, and as a result, HIV-positive women face greater stigma and discrimination than HIV-positive men. Based on ethnographic research among 50 HIV-positive women in South India in 2002-2003 and 2004, my research supports this standard argument. However, my findings suggest that the gendering of stigma and discrimination is more complex and context specific. The gendering of stigma varies depending on the social context of private versus public spheres. The tendency to stigmatize women is due in part to cultural constructions of gendered bodies and not only to a gendered double standard of sexual morality, as has been previously reported. Even when a cultural argument about women's wayward sexuality is evoked, this rhetoric must be understood in part as a strategy to mask economically motivated responses, rather simply being attributed to sexist ideology per se.
KW - Gender
KW - HIV/AIDS
KW - India
KW - Stigma
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U2 - 10.1007/s11013-010-9192-9
DO - 10.1007/s11013-010-9192-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 20842521
AN - SCOPUS:77957907662
VL - 34
SP - 633
EP - 657
JO - Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
JF - Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
SN - 0165-005X
IS - 4
ER -