Young Mauritian women working in the industrial sector and their AIDS-related risk behaviour.
Int Conf AIDS 1993 Jun 6-11; 9:128 (abstract no. WS-D25-5) Oodit G, Schensul SL, Schensul JJ, Bhowon U; Mauritius Family Planning Association.
Over the past two decades, there has been a rapid increase in industrial, "export processing zones" (EPZs) in developing countries. In most countries, eighty percent of the workers in these zones are women, and the great majority of these women are young and never married. Reports from many regions indicate that these women are poorly paid, have no upward mobility, are socially marginalized and frequently sexually exploited. This paper will describe the results of a two-year research project which examined sexual and AIDS-related risk behaviour among young, never married women (15-25) working in the EPZ in Mauritius. The EPZ in Mauritius expanded from 10,000 workers in 1978 to 100,000 workers in 1992; ten percent of the total population of the island. Women constitute 78% of the EPZ and 41% of the country's total work force. For the first time, many of these women are leaving the household without supervision, having their own disposable income, and developing relationships with men outside the context of the family. These relationships provide the potential for increased risk of pregnancy and AIDS. A mix of methods were utilized by the project to understand the family context, peer relationships and work settings and their impact on women's knowledge, attitudes and behaviour with regard to sex and AIDS. These methods included: observation, key informant interviewing, open-ended, structured interviews, a pilot intervention and a quantitative survey of 600 randomly sampled women. Results of these methods will be integrated into a comprehensive picture of AIDS-risk in this population and approaches which can reduce this risk.
Keywords: AEGIS, Risk-Taking, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Work, Developing Countries, Social Behavior, Sjogren's Syndrome, Mauritius, Human, Female, Male, Pregnancy, ICA9 930606
WSD255
