Women living with HIV in South Africa : discourses of 'normalisation' and femininity
Sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest proportion of people living with HIV. As of 2005, 28.5 million people in southern Africa were living with HIV and 57% of them are women (UNAIDS, 2005). As the pandemic progresses, scholarly work is produced surrounding HIV but this still remains within the confines of the hegemonic construct of HIV as a biomedical problem. The literature does not reflect the fact that HIV is a gendered experience nor does it reflect the discourses of HIV produced by the women who are living with the virus. This study focused on uncovering the discourses of women living with HIV by conducting 15 semi-structured qualitative interviews with women living in a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The research was conducted within a feminist framework and the interview questions focus on women's experiences of living with HIV. The interview transcripts were discursively analysed. The analysis focuses on the context in which the women were speaking as well as the language they employed. The discourses that emerged are: normalisation through men and work, the positive and negative effects of disclosure, taking care of men and children versus abuse, and bodily changes. The findings indicate that future research must take into consideration not only the dominant bio-medical discourses of HIV, but the discourses of the very women living with the virus. In addition, the discourses of women that emerge in this study indicate the need for the global restructuring of oppressive hegemonic systems that have exacerbated the HIV problem for women as well as men, if we are to see the end of HIV as a social problem.
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