Learning Lab 43: Morality, Structural Inequalities and HIV in Nigeria

Abstract

Structural inequalities contribute significantly to the context of HIV risk in many settings around the world. Further, these inequalities are created and manifest themselves in moral as well as material ways. Using examples from long-term ethnographic research in Nigeria, focused specifically on gendered inequalities, this webinar explores how morality shapes people’s understandings of and behavioural responses to the AIDS epidemic. Drawing on two studies – one examining unmarried young people and premarital sex, and the other on marriage and extramarital sex – the presentation shows how so-called risky behaviour is influenced by people’s efforts to live up to gendered moral expectations. It concludes by drawing some lessons for public health policy and programmes