ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on several aspects of the relationship between gender and vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in Peru based on the experiences of adult and young women and men, as well as the transgender population. In the field of public health, gender perspectives have shown that health problems, particularly sexual health problems, should be analyzed not only from a biomedical perspective but also from a broader sociocultural standpoint allowing for the study of diverse health practices, differences, and inequity in access to services. The behavioral theories based on a rational approach of individual decision-making that initially guided prevention programs are now applied together with structural approaches that consider sociocultural norms and, above all, the power relations that influence social and sexual interactions and regulate the ability to control one's individual behavior. Vulnerability is an indicator of social and gender inequity that warrants attention from within the perimeter of the sociopolitical structure.
