Doctoral Dissertation Research: Positive Living and Antiretroviral Therapy: Marriage, Divorce and the Life Course of HIV-Infected Women in Northern Nigeria

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Graduate student Kathryn A. Rhine, under the supervision of Dr. Daniel J. Smith, will investigate the marital trajectories of Muslim Hausa-speaking women in northern Nigeria, focusing on women who are enrolled in an ARV treatment program. As HIV transitions from a fatal to a chronic condition, HIV-infected women forge life courses that reveal not only their individual ambitions and the social and structural constraints they face, but also the most taken-for-granted dimensions of social life.The introduction of antiretroviral therapies (ARVs) in sub-Saharan Africa is transforming the HIV/AIDS epidemic. While HIV has long been considered a death sentence in poor countries like Nigeria, access to subsidized and free ARVs is enabling thousands of persons with HIV to live a temporally uncertain period of life without or with few symptoms. The prospect of living with the disease poses new challenges for them, particularly in navigating the powerful personal aspirations and cultural expectations surrounding marriage and reproduction. The researcher will use both standard ethnographic methods and an innovative case-control sampling framework. She will do participant observation within a residential setting, compile life history case studies, and carry out a series of semi-structured interviews with both divorced and widowed HIV-positive women who are recipients of ARVs and a matched sample of uninfected or sero-status unknown divorced and widowed women. This research will contribute to the education of a female social scientist. It also will further understanding of the complex association between HIV and the demographic processes of marriage, marital dissolutions, and fertility, and will be of use to public health efforts applied toward the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS.