Lovelife: productions and re-productions of gender constructs and HIV
The HIV/AIDS youth education organisation, loveLife, was examined to determine how its production of knowledge and values relates to transforming gender relations as they impact on HIV/AIDS in a South African context. The research originated out of a concern that loveLife, the world's largest HIV/AIDS youth education organisation in the world, was possibly replicating gendered inequities in its communication initiatives geared toward reducing transmission of HIV in the adolescent population. To carry out the research data was collected from three different "sites" and was analysed using discourse analysis. The approach to discourse analysis was informed by both Foucauldian and feminist theory. Furthermore, both the literature review and the primary data were informed by a social constructionist approach, in an attempt to recognise the environmental, social, structural, temporal and political impact on the constructions of AIDS, gender and sexuality by loveLife messages, staff and participants as they intersect with the lived realities of South African adolescents. All of the primary data is qualitative, and therefore, limited in scope. The research is experimental and iterative in nature and the data produced is varied. Nevertheless, it provides a useful snapshot with which to begin an examination of loveLife's production of knowledge and values. The data sites included: loveLife's second major print media campaign; interviews with loveLife staff and their volunteer youth corps, known as "groundBREAKERS"; and a focus group with participants at a loveLife youth centre. The print campaign included a series of five billboard advertisements and produced the most static of all the data examined. The interviews were conducted with five loveLife staff and four groundBREAKERS at loveLife's head office in Johannesburg and at a loveLife youth centre in Langa. Finally, the focus group consisted of three young men and two young women between the ages of 14-18 and was also conducted at the youth centre in Langa. The ﬁndings show that loveLife's constructions of gender are both narrow and problematic and often lose relevance when intersecting with the target audience as represented by the focus group. The ﬁndings also show that through its chosen strategy to promote loveLife as a brand, loveLife is producing a discourses that both homogenises its target audience and shifts the focus of the organisation away from transforming behaviour change as it relates to sex, sexuality and gender relations in an attempt to curb HIV transmission. Lastly, the ﬁndings also reveal that loveLife assumes that sexual choice is universally available to all South Africans. However, because this assumption does not reﬂect the lived realities of South African youth, particularly the realities of young women, loveLife ignores, and consequently, further replicates existing gendered inequities.
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