TITLE:
I Just Trust Him: The Notion of Consideration as a Barrier to Condom Use amongst Women Who Inject Drugs in Central Java
AUTHORS:
Antonia Morita Iswari Saktiawati, Heather Worth, Elan Lazuardi, Catherine Spooner, Yanri Wijayanti Subronto, Retna Siwi Padmawati
KEYWORDS:
Central Java; Condom Use; Drug Use; Cultural Concept
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of AIDS,
Vol.3 No.4,
December
4,
2013
ABSTRACT: The HIV epidemic in Indonesia has risen
sharply since 2004, from 2682 cases in 2004 to 19,973 in 2009. The main
transmission route of HIV in Indonesia is injecting drug use. There is little
research on women who inject drugs in Indonesia. In-depth interviews were
carried out with 19 women who injected drugs in three small cities in central Java. The interviews explored the
living conditions of the women and the context of HIV risk. The transcripts
were coded and the data were thematically analyzed. In this paper we report on condom use with
regular partners. Condom use was very low with their regular partners, even
though both they and their partners were injecting drug users. The reasons
women gave were that they trusted their partners (although they realised this
trust was shaky). The women used traditional Javanese cultural concepts of
consideration to explain why they did not use condoms. This was heightened by
other cultural norms of women’s place in Javanese society. Although the women
in the study were marginalized because of their drug use, they still hold to
many Indonesian cultural precepts—of consideration and care for the
other above oneself in their relationships with their regular partners which
impede condom use. While notions of consideration and harmony were used to
explain non-condom use, the same notions could also be used in couple-counseling
to assist.