Over the last three decades, the industrial zones (IZs) in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) have rapidly expanded as global corporations search for the lowest unit cost in production of garments and other products for high-income country markets. Globally, low skilled rural young women constitute 60-90% of the IZ workforce. For these rural, young women, emerging adulthood takes place in the context of long hours of difficult work, residence in deteriorated and crowded housing and in communities on the periphery of cities, where men represent both a means of temporary or permanent escape from life in the IZ, as well as a source of economic, physical and sexual risk. Among these risks is contracting HIV; studies in South and Southeast Asia, have shown that HIV prevalence is 10-12 times greater among migrants than non-migrants. The study population for this project are young women workers in an IZ in Hanoi, Vietnam with a workforce of 600,000, of which 70% are women. These unmarried women are particularly vulnerable to risk of HIV transmission as they deal with male supervisors and male peers at work, male landlords and shopkeepers and men in the community who seek their disposable income and sexual availability. These risks occur in a context of gender inequality, limited social supports, patriarchal norms, job insecurity and limited knowledge about safe sex. There have been few studies of HIV risk among IZ workers in Vietnam and as a result, they remain an unaddressed risk group. This R21 application seeks to investigate HIV prevalence and risk and generate results that can be the basis for reducing HIV risk among young women workers in the IZ.
The specific aims of this proposed exploratory project are to: 1) Conduct qualitative data collection using key informant and in-depth interviews to understand women's adaptations to the IZ and to develop a culturally relevant survey instrument administered to young women working in the IZ; 2) Estimate the prevalence of HIV among young women IZ workers through rapid HIV testing and survey administration to determine knowledge, attitude and behavioral HIV risk factors; 3) Assess the factors associated with serostatus including internal resources, social network composition, risk characteristics, and residential and community sexual violence and stigma. The project will be conducted by an interdisciplinary and international team of experienced Vietnamese and US researchers. Industrial zones have become a part of almost all LMICs and are a major component of production for global corporations and high-income economies. The results of this research can contribute to reducing HIV risk among women workers in Vietnam as well as IZ workers in other countries through empirically-generated results that can form the basis for identifying contributory factors to HIV and HIV risk that can be the targets of effective interventions.
The proposed research focuses HIV prevalence, HIV risk and its contributory factors among young women workers in an industrial zone in Hanoi, Vietnam. HIV risk is a major public health problem for women workers worldwide. This project proposes to the generate results that can contribute to the development of relevant and effective interventions to prevent HIV risk among women workers in Vietnam and globally.
