Marseille 2007
| Abstract #372 - Where are the men? Presence of heterosexual men in the World AIDS Conferences | ||||
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Session: 6.11: Posters A (Poster) on Monday in Chaired by Authors: Presenting Author: Dr Brenda Spencer - University Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, Lausanne, Switzerland |
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| Additional Authors: Dr Alexandre Duchne, Dr Franoise Dubois-Arber, | ||||
| Aim: The concept of gender relations figures increasingly in the AIDS discourse. World AIDS Conference (WAC) proceedings represent a unique corpus of information reflecting the progress of thinking since the onset of the epidemic. The issue of gender tends to be equated with womens issues, and it was hypothesised that heterosexual men, as compared with women, have less often been the focus of scientific attention. | ||||
| Method / Issue: Quantitative longitudinal and in-depth qualitative analysis of the WAC proceedings 1988-2004 was performed. Quantitative data are reported here. Inclusion of the terms men and women, differentiated by sexual preference, was investigated in indexed key words (available 1988-1996) and in abstract titles (available 1996-2004). | ||||
| Results / Comments: Findings remained relatively constant over the years. The term women appeared as a keyword as from 1998 and became increasingly differentiated with successive conferences. Men, was absent from keywords. In abstract titles, women was the most frequent of the 4 identified categories, these being: homosexual men; men (heterosexual or n.e.c.); homosexual (lesbian) women; women (heterosexual or n.e.c.). Women occurred approximately four times more than men and 2-3 times more than homosexual men in abstract titles. Homosexual women appeared rarely. | ||||
| Discussion: The absence of homosexual women as a focal subject may be explained by epidemiological data, but this is not so in the case of heterosexual men. The hypothesised absence of heterosexual men in the AIDS discourse was confirmed. Greater attention should be paid to the perspective of men, since the adverse impact of gender relations on HIV/AIDS prevention can only be improved if the needs and difficulties of both genders are taken into account. | ||||
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