ABSTRACT
AIDS is a stigmatizing disease and a disease of the already stigmatized. In the United States, the social construction of AIDS cast it as a gay man's disease. The resulting failure to associate women with HIV/AIDS rendered them invisible in the epidemic. Society at large has failed to identify women with HIV/AIDS to a large degree because women were virtually ignored in the scientific and educational literature for the first decade of the epidemic (Cline & McKenzie, 1996b). The resulting inattention has only added to the burden of women with the disease.
