Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015;27(11):1367-74.
doi: 10.1080/09540121.2015.1093592. Epub 2015 Nov 29.

It's harder for boys? Children's representations of their HIV/AIDS-affected peers in Zimbabwe

Emily LeRoux-Rutledge  1 , Madeleine A Guerlain  1 , Louise B Andersen  1 , Claudius Madanhire  2 , Alice Mutsikiwa  2 , Constance Nyamukapa  2   3 , Morten Skovdal  4 , Simon Gregson  2   3 , Catherine Campbell  1
Affiliations

It's harder for boys? Children's representations of their HIV/AIDS-affected peers in Zimbabwe

Emily LeRoux-Rutledge et al. AIDS Care. 2015.

Abstract

This study examines whether children in rural Zimbabwe have differing representations of their HIV/AIDS-affected peers based on the gender of those peers. A group of 128 children (58 boys, 70 girls) aged 10-14 participated in a draw-and-write exercise, in which they were asked to tell the story of either an HIV/AIDS-affected girl child, or an HIV/AIDS-affected boy child. Stories were inductively thematically coded, and then a post hoc statistical analysis was conducted to see if there were differences in the themes that emerged in stories about girls versus stories about boys. The results showed that boys were more often depicted as materially deprived, without adult and teacher support, and heavily burdened with household duties. Further research is needed to determine whether the perceptions of the children in this study point to a series of overlooked challenges facing HIV/AIDS-affected boys, or to a culture of gender inequality facing HIV/AIDS-affected girls - which pays more attention to male suffering than to female suffering.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS; Zimbabwe; children; coping; gender; suffering.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Type of support received from teacher and/or school, by gender.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Alabi T., Bahah M., Alabi S. O. The girl-child: A sociological view on the problems of girl-child education in Nigeria. Global Research Journal of Education. 2013;(2):57–65.
    1. Andrews G., Skinner D., Zuma K. Paper presented at the OVC roundtable at the 7th AIDS Impact Conference, Cape Town, April, 2005. AIDS Care. 2006:269–276. doi: 10.1080/09540120500471861. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Attride-Stirling J. Thematic networks: An analytic tool for qualitative research. Qualitative Research. 2001:385–405. doi: 10.1177/146879410100100307. - DOI
    1. Becker S. Global perspectives on children's unpaid caregiving in the family: Research and policy on ‘Young Carers’ in the UK, Australia, the USA and Sub Saharan Africa. Global Social Policy. 2007:23–50. doi: 10.1177/1468018107073892. - DOI
    1. Campbell C., Andersen L., Mutsikiwa A., Madanhire C., Skovdal M., Nyamukapa C., Gregson S. Children's representations of school support for HIV affected peers in rural Zimbabwe. BMC Public Health. 2014:402. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-14-402. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms