Women, aids, and power in heterosexual sex: a discourse analysis

A survey of black and white South African women university students, aged 21-25, using Hollway's interpretative discourse analysis to find the role of sexual difference in introducing safe sex practices, revealed that women were hesitant to introduce the topic to their partners out of fear of angering them because AIDS is associated with homosexuality. Black women resisted this through ideas derived from anti-apartheid movements, and white women through the influence of feminism. Power differences between the sexes exists because men detach themselves from the emotional aspect and women have to take responsibility.