AIDS, Gender and Economic Development

This collection of essays, authored by experts across a wide range of disciplines, provides a gendered analysis of the economic choices and structures that contribute to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the impact of the epidemic on economic and social outcomes. Topics covered include:

• gender norms, perceptions of risk, and risk-taking behavior among specific populations of women, including sex workers in Nicaragua, African immigrants in France, and university students and urban migrant workers in China
• malnutrition and poverty as precursors to HIV infection
• gendered institutions and access to treatment
• the invisible cost of caregiving.

An introductory essay briefly surveys the social science literature on the gendered nature of the epidemic and identifies key constructs of feminist economic theory that might be productively applied to understanding HIV/AIDS.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Economics.