REFRAMING WOMENS RISK - SOCIAL INEQUALITIES AND HIV-INFECTION

Social inequalities lie at the heart of risk of HIV infection among wo men in the United States. As of December, 1995, 71,818 US women had de veloped AIDS-defining diagnoses. These women have been disproportionat ely poor, African-American, and Latina. Their neighborhoods have been burdened by poverty, racism, crack cocaine, heroin, and violence. To e xplain which women are at risk and why, this article reviews the epide miology of HIV and AIDS among women in light of four conceptual framew orks linking health and social justice: feminism, social production of disease/political economy of health, ecosocial, and human rights. The article applies these alternative theories to describe sociopolitical contexts for AIDS' emergence and spread in the United States, and rev iews evidence linking inequalities of class, race/ethnicity, gender, a nd sexuality, as well as strategies of resistance to these inequalitie s, to the distribution of HIV among women.