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.

Throughout the world, the threat of HIV/AIDS to women’s health has become the focus of increased concern. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2004) reports that almost 20 million women and girls are living with HIV globally, accounting for nearly half of all people living with HIV worldwide. Infection rates among women are rising in every region worldwide including high-income countries in which heterosexual intercourse may now be the most common mode of transmission. Although there are many contributing factors to the current trends in HIV, most women who become HIV-infected do not practice "high-risk" behaviour. Women worldwide may individually view themselves as less susceptible than men, and may pay less attention about how HIV is transmitted and how to prevent infection. There are also gender inequalities, stemming from sexual double standards that constrain women’s access to care, treatment, and support. This work focuses on international perspectives on women and HIV casting a deliberately wide net addressing the issue of the interaction between HIV and gender in a specific geographic area. Our intention is to provide a forum for innovative manuscripts whose contribution to the literature is found in their unique approach to this interaction and application of empirical investigation to unique problems and/or populations. This material was published in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment.

Carole Campbell examines the position of women in the AIDS epidemic (women living with HIV, and women caring for HIV-infected family members) in a sociocultural context. Campbell draws a connection among women's risk of AIDS, gender roles (particularly adolescent gender role socialization), and male sexual behavior, demonstrating that efforts to contain the spread of the disease to females must also target the male behavior that puts women at risk. This study concludes that compared with men, HIV-infected women face unequal access to care and unequal quality of care. Informed by the moving personal accounts of eleven HIV-infected men and women, this book offers a rare, broad picture of the sociocultural causes and the impact on American society of AIDS among women.

Substantial empirical research has documented that HIV prevention and decision-making are heavily influenced by the knowledge and practice of values and beliefs regarding infection and behavior. Most HIV research is still concentrated among high-risk populations (IDU and FSW), leaving out women in long-term heterosexual marriage who have been considered "safe" and less at risk of infection. In addition, researchers have called for more comparative and cross-cultural studies focused on the interplay of health education, behaviors, context, and HIV risk perception. The objective of this dissertation is to advance understanding of the factors sexually experienced women in Postsocialist Georgia consider important when they assess HIV perceived risk of which they are made aware by messages emanating from the social environment. A conceptual framework that integrates concepts from traditional social psychological theory and the constructs of context-specific factors to guide research intervention is applied. Combined quantitative and qualitative approaches are used to achieve a better understanding of perceived HIV risk and its association with different factors. The testing of relationships from two national Reproductive Health Survey samples (1999 and 2005) demonstrate strong positive associations among increased HIV transmission knowledge, belief in accidental transmission, HIV testing practice, and HIV perceived risk, while controlling for sociodemographic factors. Characteristics associated with social norms and economic factors (including stigmatizing attitudes about the rights of PWAs, constrained attitudes concerning sexual control, and experienced migration) demonstrate a strong significant link with assessment of HIV risk perception. Qualitative research with women strengthens the argument of superficial health education and helps to explain variations in perceived risk assessment. Through the interviews, HIV prevention practice is examined in relation to a myriad of cognitive components. This study finds health knowledge, misconceptions, stigmatizing attitudes, and beliefs in sexual and gender norms among the major factors constraining successful HIV/AIDS prevention practices. An effective strategy for HIV/AIDS prevention will require enhancement of research, more emphasis on an integrated approach to target education efforts, training providers in information diffusion approaches, and promoting a general communication campaign.

Choosing Unsafe Sex focuses on the ways in which condom refusal and beliefs regarding HIV testing reflect women's hopes for their relationships and their desires to preserve status and self-esteem. It also discusses the related issue of seropositivity concealment or non-disclosure. Many of the inner-city women who participated in Dr. Sobo's research were seriously involved with one man, and they had heavy emotional and social investments in believing or maintaining that their partners were faithful to them. Uninvolved women had similarly heavy investments in their abilities to identify or choose potential partners who were HIV-negative. In either case, women sought to present and to view themselves as wise and their men as monogamous. Women did not see themselves as being at risk for HIV infection, and so they saw no need for condoms. But they did recommend that other women use them; they saw other women as quite likely to be involved with sexually unfaithful men. Choosing Unsafe Sex includes recommendations for educational strategies that are sensitive to cultural expectations for relationships. Dr. Sobo's findings have significance not only for inner-city HIV/AIDS educators but for all who seek a deeper understanding of mainstream assumptions about heterosexual relationships.