AIDS and the transition to adulthood of young seropositive women in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)

Since the early 1990s, the means of attaining adult status have undergone a transformation due to a variety of socioeconomic changes. Exploring the status of youth', in this context, through the prism of AIDS sheds light on how a pathology can reveal social change in the youth' category undergoing the process of transition to adulthood. The data for this article are drawn from an anthropological study carried out between 2006 and 2008 in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) based on 21 single young women (16 to 28 years old) infected with HIV. The data analysis highlighted issues of relationship to self (biographical disruption and jeopardized female identity) and to others (weakening of social ties in situations of dependency and of pursuit of social advancement) that arise after they discover their seropositive status. The different forms of vulnerability (identity-related, relational and situational) engendered by their status as seropositive women in a context of socioeconomic change, where there are a variety of issues at stake, raise the question of how these young women manage the risk of HIV transmission, and lead to a re-examination of the problem of the vulnerability of youth dealing with HIV.