Marseille 2007
Marseille 2007
Abstract book
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Abstract #648  -  Dancing together on the reed mat [sex]: Responsibilities and trust amongst black Africans in England
Session:
  52.4: Exploring discourses and practices of responsibility in the context of HIV (Workshop) on Tuesday @ 13.00-14.00 in CP Chaired by Jeanne Ellard
Authors:
  Presenting Author:   Dr Martha Chinouya - London Metropolitan University , United Kingdom
 
  Additional Authors:   
Aim:
Background: This paper draws on the experience of black heterosexual African migrants in England. Women bear the brunt of this gendered HIV epidemic. The paper begins from the premise that inside African cultures there are concepts related to rights and responsibilities that stress the importance of a complex mutuality that is bound with respect of the self/individual and others in everyday life including HIV prevention. This is the notion of Ubuntu (Southern African languages) or obuuntu (Uganda). Southern Africa and East Africa (including Uganda) are regions where most African migrants living with HIV in England originate.
 
Method / Issue:
Methods: Based on a qualitative study with 120 HIV+ve respondents, the majority of them women, drawn from predominantly Southern and East Africa, the paper shows transitions in the way responsibility is constructed, negotiated and gendered.
 
Results / Comments:
Results/discussion: Initially, most women, influenced in part by Ubuntu/Obuuntu and being a good woman in a formal relationship (e.g. marriage) or long term-relationship e.g. doing pots (cohabiting), believed that together with their male sexual partners they had a shared responsibility of protecting each other (and their children) from HIV. This shared responsibility was embedded in trust. Although some women were aware that their partners were dancing on the reed mat with bad women in informal relationships (e.g. prostitutes), they trusted the men took responsibilities for protecting formal partners/wives and children from HIV. However, most women found that they were HIV+ after a husbands/partners death from illnesses which the men rarely disclosed as HIV related. The discovery of their own HIV+ve status shifted ideas about responsibilities, with women believing in a more individualistic approach. This approach faced challenges in HIV prevention, due to gender/power relations, patriarchy in negotiating condoms-use, disclosures of HIV and childbearing. However it also emerged that this group of Africans construed their individualism
 
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