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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

bonds of marriage, gender, AIDS, homosexual men, drug users

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Sociology

Abstract

Past research on AIDS, has focused generally on high risk groups; such as homosexual men and intravenous drug users. In many of these studies the cultural and contextual facts concerning sexual interaction have been ignored (1). Few studies of AIDS have focused on heterosexual men and women and married couples. A recent announcement by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding the rise in the number of heterosexual AIDS cases, suggests a need for more research in this area. The CDC reported that as of 1993, 24% of bisexual men who died from AIDS were married. There is a unique social network in a marriage which causes prevention behavior to differ from the behavior of those in the single population (2). In addition they also acquire specific patterns of behavior due to gender. For example, women may be slightly better informed about AIDS, however women generally are less likely to protect themselves against AIDS within their marriage. For this reason, I predict that although there may be a relationship between knowledge of AIDS, risk perception and protecting oneself against AIDS, the gender based “sexual scripts” that are legitimized in society will have the largest affect on AIDS preventative behaviors. Particularly within a marriage there are certain sexual scripts based on socially constructed gender norms that may cause a spouse to not protect themselves against AIDS, even when they perceive themselves at risk. These dynamics are essential to our understanding of AIDS preventative behavior within the married population. In addition to gender and marital status, other background characteristics have been found to influence sexual behavior; In particular, age, race, religion and education, have been found to influence sexual behavior in past studies (3).

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