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Dialectics of Gender and Health: The Case of HIV Serodiscordance in Uganda

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Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Couples with Mixed HIV Status: Beyond Positive/Negative

Part of the book series: Social Aspects of HIV ((SHIV,volume 2))

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Abstract

The relationship between gender and health is a deeply interdependent one. Yet research in this area has focused primarily on how gender relations determine health behaviour and health outcomes. This article advocates a more holistic approach that conceptualises gender and health as fully intertwined and mutually constitutive. This interplay is explored through the case of HIV serodiscordance in which one person in a relationship is HIV positive and the other HIV negative. Drawing on in-depth research with discordant couples in urban Uganda, this study indicates that living with discordance can both reinforce and challenge normative gender power dynamics in relationships. This study, therefore, illustrates how significant health problems can influence gender relations. As such, it reveals the dialectical relationship between gender and health and also provides important insights for HIV prevention in the new era of antiretroviral treatment as prevention.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the participants in the study for graciously sharing the intimate details of their lives with me. This article also benefited from exceptional research assistance provided by John Paul Matovu, Barbrah Nanyunja and Julius Lwanyaaga.

This chapter was originally published in 2013 as an article entitled “Dialectics of gender and health: the case of serodiscordance” in Sociology of Health & Illness, Volume 35, No. 8, pages: 1260–1274. The article is re-printed here with permission from the author and the publisher of Sociology of Health & Illness; John Wiley and Sons Ltd. Copyright clearance and permission to re-print was granted on 26 April 2016, Licence number 3856641240461.

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  1. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Robert Wyrod

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  1. Robert Wyrod
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Correspondence to Robert Wyrod .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Social Research in Health, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Asha Persson

  2. Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA

    Shana D. Hughes

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Wyrod, R. (2017). Dialectics of Gender and Health: The Case of HIV Serodiscordance in Uganda. In: Persson, A., Hughes, S. (eds) Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Couples with Mixed HIV Status: Beyond Positive/Negative. Social Aspects of HIV, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42725-6_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42725-6_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42723-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42725-6

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