Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. My research demonstrates that, contrary to typical expectations, money and gift transfers in sexual partnerships are part and parcel of the courting practices of young Malawian women and men.
The current HIV program prevention emphasis on protecting young women in sub-Saharan Africa from risk of infection is understandable. Throughout the region, recent data show that 4. To account for these disparities, explanations have typically highlighted age-discrepant relationships, inability to negotiate condom use in sexual relationships, or unequal access to key resources and the concomitant use of violence or coercion by men over women Gregson et al.
Despite notable exceptions e. Dunkle et al. Relatedly, many surveys include a question asking women if they had ever received money or gifts in exchange for sex e. MDHS Should we consider these women to be sex workers? Or are they solely victims of circumstance, unable to make choices other than engaging in sex for money? Alternatively, are there situations where money-sex exchange is less clear, the price and the timing of delivery unspecified?
Is there room for courtship as well as love and lust? And what about those who are not infected with HIV? In considering the case of Malawi— the site of the present work and where the epidemic began over two decades ago and—national estimates are that approximately 14 percent of women and men are infected, which means of course that 86 percent are not. Discourse within another body of literature—largely in anthropology—has provided alternative but not always distinct understandings of sex and money exchange.
This work has centered on, for instance, the social change brought about by modernity and globalization, which in turn is argued to have altered contemporary sexual relations between women and men Ankomah, ; Leclerc-Madlala, , or on the commanding roles women have over their sexuality e. Bujra, ; Cornwall, ; Wardlow, , or on the grey area characterizing sex and money linkages more generally Cole, ; Nyanzi et al.
