Intimate partner transmission of HIV  Download (pdf 2,056 KB)

Responding to the Feminization of AIDS: Women and Intimate Partner Transmission of HIV (Indonesia, Lao PDR and Thailand)

This research for UNIFEM looked at the causes and impacts of intimate partner transmission of HIV, and how these affect women.  The research focussed on three countries in the Asia region: Indonesia, Lao PDR and Thailand. As HIV prevention responds to most-at-risk populations, over time HIV transmission among women and men in intimate relationships comes into starker view.

The report discusses the unique experiences of the focus countries and emerging issues common to all three:

• Sex work: its illegal or morally ambiguous status which reduces the ability of sex workers to negotiate condom use, and the increases challenges of reaching male clients of sex workers
• Stigmatization of condoms: this is a major barrier to couples in intimate partner relationships using condoms with each other
• Gender-based violence: there is a lack of data on its prevalence and its impact on STI transmission
• Gender expectations: which encourage men to have multiple sexual partners, reduce women‟s power in decision making, exclude men from participating in sexual and reproductive health services, and promote hormonal therapy and sterilization among women which in turn reduces their ability to negotiate condom use
• Traditional practices: such as women‟s abstinence from sex during pregnancy creates expectations and opportunities for men to have extramarital sexual relationships, whether casual or paid
• Migration affects all countries, both internal and external movement, and legal and illegal migration