Stigma of Being HIV Positive and its Impact on Women - Dissertation Example

As such, the research question at hand will fundamentally focus on how stigmas are represented, what impact they have, and how they can be overcome with the correct application of education and other tools. The methodology for attempting to answer this will be related by providing an insightful review of available literature alongside measurements of stigma and how these judgments have been proven to be impacted in various parts of the globe. Naturally, measurements of stigma and cultural norms will serve as a fundamental means of determining the way in which stigmas concerning HIV/AIDS amongst female populations can be ameliorated.

Finally, determinations from the existing literature and studies can be drawn that will focus upon the most impactful ways that education, support groups, and sponsored intervention within the lives of these stakeholders can promote a decreasing level of disparity and censure within the lives of these unfortunate individuals. By allowing the litany of research studies that will be discussed to serve as a springboard for determining inference with regard to stigma and how the prevalence of HIV/AIDS can be addressed in a gendered world, it is the hope of this author that the research analysis will be beneficial in crafting a synthesis of ideas that none of the previous sets of literature on the topic have thus far been able to effect.

As can relevantly be expected, much of the scholarship that has been performed on this particular topic has been concentric upon the issue of stigmatization and the power that this has over the way in which an individual self identifies or is identified by others within society. The majority of the scholarship that deals with this issue of stigmatization draw heavily upon the work of Erving Goffman; one of the most cited sociologists of the 20th century. Likewise, an understanding of stigma, negative conceptualizations of self, and the means by which Goffman’s theory is applicable in the case of women with HIV/AIDS are integral towards understanding the issue; as well as seeking to promote a paradigm by which this particular problem would be reduced via a new or alternative approach.