Oral

Social justice approaches that have linked gender inequality and HIV/AIDS prevention have been crucial in intervening on women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. Numerous approaches now link women’s and girls’ empowerment, anti-violence, and HIV/AIDS prevention efforts. Simultaneously, however, rarely do scholars and practitioners take the opportunity to critically examine the term empowerment, what it means, what its promises and limitations are when deployed on the ground, what is implied within such a paradigm, who or what is left out of the paradigm, and what can be done to take much needed next steps in the science base. To respond to this, this session invites researchers with expertise in deploying empowerment related concepts on the ground in prevention interventions across several developing country contexts and also those who call for critical re-examination of these approaches and paradigms.

Session Objectives: The primary aims of this full scientific session are: 1. To describe the dominant approaches within HIV/AIDS prevention and anti-violence work that deploy an “empowerment” strategy with women and/or men, particularly in developing country contexts; 2. To explore the promises and limitations of such paradigms and approaches in on-the-ground interventions within numerous developing country contexts; 3. To identify and discuss challenges to and suggested improvements in such paradigms and approaches to fill much needed gaps in the social science and prevention science literature on anti-violence and HIV/AIDS prevention.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)