ABSTRACT
The Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) statistics show that African-American women are 16 times more likely to get AIDS than Euro-American women and that over 54 percent of HIV-positive women in the United States are of African-American heritage. This chapter examines sociocultural, relational, and individual factors that help or hinder the practice of safer sex, including the women's financial conditions, attitudes toward condoms, issues of trust and gender roles within relationships, and compliance-gaining strategies. Individual sexual behaviors are best understood as sexual scripts, and sexual scripts exist at three levels: cultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic. African-American women's safer sex practices are thus best understood by considering the cultural/social, relational, and individual factors. The chapter focuses mainly on safer sex negotiation with main partners because studies show that the greatest HIV risk a woman faces is from having unprotected sex with her main partner, a man with whom she is having a steady relationship.
