Workable sisterhood: A study of the political participation of stigmatized women with HIV/AIDS.

Abstract

The dissertation examines sixteen women who are HIV-positive and are former lawbreakers (activities including sex work and crack cocaine use). These women are politically active in Detroit. These women represent populations (i.e. women of color, low-income women, drug-using prostitutes) which are among the fastest growing groups in the country with HIV/AIDS. These women with HIV/AIDS are highly stigmatized because of their former lifestyles. The questions this research explores are: How does such a severely stigmatized group of women participate? Why do they participate? What types of activities constitute participation for the women? I analyze their experiences using qualitative methods. Intersectional stigma is a theoretical framework composed of intersectionality (or race, class and gender subordination as interlocking forms of oppression), and stigma (or the ways in which people become socially defined as other). Using the framework of intersectional stigma it is demonstrated that the HIV/AIDS virus dramatically added to and combined with their existing social marginality. Their political participation is experiential based, often Black female led, and community focused. Their participation challenges traditional political science conceptions about who can be a political actor, and also what activities constitute politics. Marginalized women's modes of participation (both conventional and unconventional) have remained unexplored within political science. Alternative conceptualizations of politics and participation, drawing on the importance of intersectionality and intersectional stigma are needed to understand their mobilization. They embarked on a process called life reconstruction. Life reconstruction consists of the specific ways in which women re-negotiated areas of stigma which enabled them to deal with the HIV/AIDS virus. This process enabled them to develop a public voice about being a woman with HIV; and second, it allowed them to develop untraditional resources which would build the foundation for their later political activities including: spirituality, substance abuse treatment, therapeutic work on early sexual trauma, a reliance on female peers, and an introduction to concepts of advocacy, and activism.