Index words. HIV/AIDS, South Africa, women, relationship power

Black Women's Risk for HIV: Rough Living is a valuable look into the structural and behavioral factors in high-risk environmentsspecifically inner-city neighborhoods like the Rough in Atlantathat place black women in danger of HIV infection. Using black feminism to deconstruct the meaning and significance of race, class, and gender, this text gives a voice to a unique disenfranchised population and legitimizes their lives and experiences. This important ethnographic study focuses not only on the problems associated with the continued rise in HIV rates among African American women, but provides viable solutions to these problems as well.

Based on interviews with women who are HIV positive, this sobering pandemic brings to light the deeply rooted and complex problems of living with HIV. Already pushed to the edges of society by poverty, racial politics, and gender injustice, women with HIV in South Africa have found ways to cope with work and men, disclosure of their HIV status, and care for families and children to create a sense of normalcy in their lives. As women take control of their treatment, they help to determine effective routes to ending the spread of the disease.

The South African HIV/AIDS pandemic exposes the hegemonic intersection of gender, power and sexuality.This qualitative study aims to explore South African rural black women's agency in intimate partnerships at a time of transition and amidst the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It explores whether there is some empirical evidence for what is a common perception, namely the lack of agency that rural black women have in negotiating their sexual relationships and the impact that this has on the risk of HIV/AIDS. One of the assumptions made was that age is a critical variable because of the changing dynamics of time figurations in gender practice. The author suggests that in non-violent partnerships the decisive variable for a woman's capacity for agency both in terms of decision-making on having sex as well as their potential for HIV self-protection strategies is marital status and not age.

It is universally agreed that HIV/AIDS constitutes one of the most serious threats to human life in our era. The immigration of Zimbabwean people into America plays a major role in the socialization of Zimbabwean adolescents. Zimbabwean adolescents are exposed to the Western culture of sexual socialization, which is different from the African culture. The social bonds and traditions that used to shape Zimbabwean young people's behavior and help them make the transition to adulthood have weakened in the face of migrating to Western countries. The main problem is the transition and loss of cultural identity that affect Zimbabwean adolescents' knowledge of HIV/AIDS transmission and sexual behavior.

Recent innovative research has identified key factors that put vulnerable South African women at risk of HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence, including high-risk patterns of alcohol abuse and sexual partnering, gender norms that place men in control in sexual relationships, low educational levels and limited access to employment, poor health care, inadequate housing, and sex work. These studies suggest that targeted HIV-prevention interventions can effect improvement for this vulnerable population when programs remain sensitive to gender and cultural differences and expectations and address the social and economic inequalities that make women vulnerable. Solving these problems on a larger economic scale will require institutional participation and political support for women’s equity, HIV-prevention literacy, and a broader HIV-prevention agenda. This can be accomplished with a multilevel, collaborative response from government, community, and international partners using multiple prevention strategies and fostering sustainability.