‘You get tired of eating beans every day’: Social, cultural and economic aspects of married women’s HIV risk in rural Mexico


Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

5067.0: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 9:00 AM

Abstract #107880

‘You get tired of eating beans every day’: Social, cultural and economic aspects of married women’s HIV risk in rural Mexico

Jennifer S. Hirsch, PhD, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University, 722 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, 212-305-1185, jsh2124@columbia.edu

Topic: This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study exploring married women's HIV risk in a rural migrant-sending community in Western Mexico. This study explored how emerging ideals of marital love combine with gender inequality and other forms of social stratification to put married women at risk for HIV infection. Methods: Data collection involved 22 marital case histories, 13 key informant interviews (priests, psychologists, male and female sex workers), archival research on popular culture, and 6 months of participant observation focused on family life and men's sex-segregated patterns of socializing. Findings: Most married men in this rural migrant-sending community engage in extramarital sex. The three most common types are long-term relationships with women, casual sex with women, and casual sex with other men. Economic factors (labor migration, gendered opportunity structures, and women's economic dependence on their husbands) combine with social factors (kinship organization, sex-segregated patterns of socializing, the role of marriage in social reproduction) and cultural influences – such as masculine prestige hierarchies – to shape the behavioral patterns observed. A minority of men did not engage in extramarital sex, and key protective factors include the role of religious institutions, access to other forms of masculine prestige, and not being a labor migrant. Implications: In rural Mexico, men's extramarital sex is a structural aspect of society. In order to be effective at preventing marital HIV transmission, interventions should take into account the structural nature of married women's HIV risk.

Learning Objectives:

After having listened to this presentation, audience members will be able to

• Describe the methods used by the systematic ethnographic research project
• Discuss how these methods will create an ethnographic data set from which findings can be generalized to migrant-sending communities throughout rural Western Mexico
• List the primary kinds of extramarital relationships in which men in the community engage, including their HIV risk behaviors, social and economic exchanges, and relative levels of public visibility;
• Discuss the social, economic and cultural factors that underly and influence these risk behaviors, and
• Articulate the implications for prevention policy of these findings on the structural nature of married women’s HIV risk.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS, Gender

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation

HIV/AIDS Risk for Married Women

The 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition (December 10-14, 2005) of APHA