“The Ball was Always in His Court”: An Exploratory Analysis of Relationship Scripts, Sexual Scripts, and Condom Use among African American Women

This qualitative study explored the association between African American women's interpersonal relationship and sexual scripts and condom use with primary partners. Participants were 14 lower to middle-income women between the ages of 22 and 39 involved in emotionally and sexually intimate hete...

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Published inPsychology of women quarterly Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 70 - 82
Main Authors Bowleg, Lisa, Lucas, Kenya J., Tschann, Jeanne M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.03.2004
Blackwell Publishing, Inc
Blackwell Publishing
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Acceptance
African Americans
AIDS
Black American people
Condoms
Courts
Ethnicity
Females
Feminism
Feminist psychology
Heterosexual relationships
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus
Infidelity
Interpersonal relations
Interpersonal Relationship
Interpersonal relationships
Interpersonal scripts
Personal relationships
Psychology
Qualitative research
Questionnaires
Race
Scripts
Sexual behavior
Sexual behaviour
Sexual relationships
Sexuality
Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Sociocultural factors
U.S.A
Women
Women's health
Womens studies
Young women
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Summary:This qualitative study explored the association between African American women's interpersonal relationship and sexual scripts and condom use with primary partners. Participants were 14 lower to middle-income women between the ages of 22 and 39 involved in emotionally and sexually intimate heterosexual relationships. Relationship types included those that were: stable, emotionally committed; casual, primarily sexual; and unstable, emotionally imbalanced and/or conflict-ridden. Respondents completed a semi-structured interview and a questionnaire about their relationships, sexual, and condom use behaviors. Data analyses identified 3 interpersonal relationship scripts (i.e., men control relationships, women sustain relationships, infidelity is normative) and 2 interpersonal sexual scripts (i.e., men control sexual activity; women want to use condoms, but men control condom use) that may indirectly or directly decrease African American women's condom use with primary partners, and in turn increase their HIV risk. We discuss these interpersonal scripts within the context of sociocultural factors relevant to African American women, heterosexual relationships, and communities.
Bibliography:This study was supported by a grant to Lisa Bowleg from the Collaborative HIV Prevention Research in Minority Communities Program, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California, San Francisco (National Institutes of Mental Health Grant 5P50 MH42459). We acknowledge the support of the Women's Collective, Washington, DC. We are also grateful for the support of our graduate research assistants Amy Black, Kelly Brooks, Mindy Craig, and Jennifer Huang, our undergraduate research assistant April Pascal, and the study's interviewers, Diane Jones and Ora White. Last, but not least, we are especially grateful to the women who generously shared their most intimate relationship and sexual experiences with us so that we could learn from their voices about the context of HIV/AIDS for African American women.
Lisa Bowleg, Department of Psychology, University of Rhode Island; Kenya Johari Lucas, Department of Sociology, Brown University; Jeanne M. Tschann, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco.
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ISSN:0361-6843
1471-6402
DOI:10.1111/j.1471-6402.2004.00124.x