title: Who wins in the status games? Violence, sexual violence, and an emerging single standard among adolescent women.
abstract: Throughout U.S. history, women have changed their sexual behaviors in response to, or as actors affecting, economic, political, and legal imperatives; to preserve health; to promote new relationship, identity or career paths; to assert a set of values; as a result of new reproductive technologies; or to gain status. In adjusting to pressures or goals, women have not always acted, or been able to act, in the interests of their own health, identity, or status. As this article will demonstrate, women, in the short or long run, may attempt to preserve status at the cost of other values such as health. This may occur through conscious and critical choice or through less conscious processes in reaction to relatively larger forces whose impact has not been critically analyzed. With the awareness in the 1980s in the United States of an emergent and incurable sexually transmissible infection, HIV, it would have been anticipated that a new sexual caution may have appeared. Yet, across several research projects in the late 1990s and into the 21st century, as our research team interviewed youth in a high HIV seroprevalence neighborhood in New York City about HIV prevention, we began to hear that a substantial minority of young women and men were participating in social settings for sexual behavior that (1) put youth at risk for HIV; (2) appeared to be motivated by acquisition of status ("props," "points"); and (3) offered few ways for women to win in these status games. We estimate from one random dwelling unit sample that about one in eight youth have been present in these settings and half of them have participated in risky sexual behavior in such settings. The settings are often characterized by men's publicly offhand attitudes toward sexual encounters, are organized around men's status maintenance, and evidence peer pressures that are poorly understood by both young men and women participants. To regain status, some women participants have adopted attitudes more characteristic of men.
authors.affiliation: Hunter College, Center for Community and Urban Health, 425 E. 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, USA. bkrauss@hunter.cuny.edu
authors.forename: Beatrice J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Krauss
authors.forename: Joanne
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: O'Day
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Godfrey
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Rente
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Freidin
authors.forename: Erica
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bratt
authors.forename: Nadia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Minian
authors.forename: Kraig
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Knibb
authors.forename: Christy
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Welch
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kaplan
authors.forename: Gauri
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Saxena
authors.forename: Shawn
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McGinniss
authors.forename: Jacqueline
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gilroy
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Nwakeze
authors.forename: Saundra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Curtain
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D012107:Research Design; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012747:Sexual Partners; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013179:Spouse Abuse / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology*; D013240:Stereotyping; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population; D016387:Women's Health