AIDS - Women Die Sooner than Men :: Science Health Diseases Essays

help - Women Die Sooner than MenGiven the varying types of gender-specific expedient diseases associated with AIDS such as cervical cancer, in that location is reason to trust that the biological forward motion of human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS is different in women and men. Still, there is no conclusive evidence in support of the hypothesis that the progression of HIV/AIDS is more accelerated in women than it is in men. Regardless, the item that women infected with HIV/AIDS work sicker faster and die earlier than men can be entirely attributable to social factors that do not depend on the scientific details of the HIV virus. twain social factors primarily responsible for the rapid demise of HIV-positive women in the join States are the mis- and under-representation of women in the national AIDS discourse and the disproportionate cast of woman living in poverty.From the moment AIDS first appeared in the United States as Gay-Related Immuno Deficiency, women (among others ) were left out the national AIDS dialogue. Even though the first case of HIV/AIDS infection in an African-American woman was reported in 1982 (Goldstein 114), the general customary believed for the most part of the 1980s that women would remain unaffected by the epidemic. Since then, women fool been slowly incorporated into the national AIDS debate, albeit in a real limited and qualified manner. In her essay, Seeing AIDS Race, Gender, and Representation, Evelynn Hammonds recognizes an array of coetaneous AIDS narratives depicting different female stereotypes, but contends that the majority of African-American women are not identifying with these narratives. In a study on commercialized street hinge on workers, Kim Blankenship shows how such non-identification with an at-risk population can lead to a false sense of security while engaging in insecure behaviors and can ultimately lead to a late diagnosis of HIV/AIDS. This is particularly problematic for African-Americans, who go away account for 64% of new infections among women in the year 2002 according to the Center for Disease Control but do not see themselves as being affected by the epidemic. Consequently, African-Americans women will be diagnosed later in the progression of HIV/AIDS than men, the ample majority of whom identify themselves either with the at-risk population of men who have sex with men or with that of intravenous drug users (IDU). These women will therefore become sicker faster and die sooner.Another mis-representation of women in the AIDS epidemic that contributes to the alert progression of HIV/AIDS in females is the characterization of women as vectors of transmission.