Demonising women in the era of AIDS: On the relationship between cultural constructions of both HIV/AIDS and femininity

Abstract Results from an ethnographic study carried out in a community within the Durban area concerning the meanings and symbolic representations given to sexual activities and to HIV/AIDS are presented in this article. The interpretation of the field-work material draws on the literatures of the genderification of HIV/AIDS and on studies of the symbols used to signify AIDS. The Zulu interpretation of AIDS is shown to be intimately bound up with the overall socio-cultural construction of femininity, in which women are seem as both the sources and disseminators of the disease.