Introduction

It is now clear that there is significant international concern about women in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Recent national and international AIDS conferences have had unprecedented numbers of presentations about women and AIDS, and there are many formal and informal projects for and sometimes by women at risk of contracting HIV. Once considered an issue marginal to the ‘rear’ thrust of the epidemic, raising the question of women at risk of contracting HIV is no longer controversial. But it is still not easy: getting women’s needs addressed is still not automatic because conflicting constructions of gender form the basis of the very logic through which science, the media, educators and policymakers operate.