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Background Evidence shows that HIV prevalence among young women in sub-Saharan Africa increases almost five-fold between ages 15 and 24, with almost a quarter of young women infected by their early-to mid-20s. Transactional sex or material exchange for sex is a relationship dynamic that has been shown to have an association with HIV infection. Methods Using five focus group discussions and 19 in-depth interviews with young women enrolled in the HPTN 068 conditional cash transfer trial (2011–2015), this qualitative study explores young women’s perceptions of transactional sex within the structural and cultural context of rural South Africa. The analysis also considers the degree to which young women perceive themselves as active agents in such relationships and whether they recognise a link between transactional sex and HIV risk. Results Young women believe that securing their own financial resources will ultimately improve their bargaining position in their sexual relationships, and open doors to a more financially independent future. Findings suggest there is a nuanced relationship between sex, love and gifts: money has symbolic meaning, and money transfers, when framed as gifts, indicates a young woman’s value and commitment from the man. This illustrates the complexity of transactional sex; the way it is positioned in the HIV literature ignores that “exchanges” serve as fulcrums around which romantic relationships are organised. Finally, young women express agency in their choice of partner, but their agency weakens once they are in a relationship characterised by exchange, which may undermine their ability to translate perceived agency into STI and HIV risk reduction efforts. Conclusions This research underscores the need to recognise that transactional sex is embedded in adolescent romantic relationships, but that certain aspects make young women particularly vulnerable to HIV. This is especially true in situations of restricted choice and circumscribed employment opportunities. HIV prevention educational programmes could be coupled with income generation trainings, in order to leverage youth resilience and protective skills within the confines of difficult economic and social circumstances. This would provide young women with the knowledge and means to more successfully navigate safer sexual relationships.

Sexual need fulfillment in a relationship is associated with both partners’ sexual and relationship quality. In the current research, we explored what underlies two approaches to sexual need fulfillment—sexual communal norms (i.e., being motivated to meet a partner’s sexual needs) and sexual exchange norms (i.e., tracking and trading sexual benefits). People high in attachment avoidance are less responsive to their partner’s needs and distance themselves from intimacy. Sexuality is a domain in which partners aim to meet each other’s needs, but it may also heighten avoidantly attached partners’ concerns about intimacy. Across three studies ( N  = 711)—using cross-sectional, dyadic, daily experience, and longitudinal methods—endorsing sexual communal norms was associated with greater sexual and relationship quality, whereas endorsing sexual exchange norms was not associated with, or was linked to lower, sexual and relationship quality. People who were higher (compared to lower) in attachment avoidance were less sexually communal and more exchange-oriented, and their heightened endorsement of sexual exchange norms predicted lower relationship satisfaction over time. With two exceptions, the effects were largely consistent for men versus women. Findings from this research suggest that attachment avoidance underlies approaches to sexual need fulfillment in relationships.

Background ‘Transactional sex’, defined as a non-marital, non-commercial sexual relationship in which money or material goods are exchanged for sex, is associated with young women’s increased vulnerability to HIV infection. Existing research illustrates that the motivations for transactional sex are complex. The fulfilment of psycho-social needs such as the need to belong to a peer group are important factors underlying young women’s desires to obtain certain consumption items and thus engage in transactional sex. Methods We use a mixed-methods approach to explore the relationship between transactional sex and consumption patterns among young women in rural Mpumalanga province, South Africa. In the secondary analysis of 693 sexually active young women, we use factor analysis to group the different consumption items and we use multivariable logistic regression to demonstrate the relationship between transactional sex and consumption patterns. The qualitative study uses five focus group discussions and 19 in-depth interviews to explore further young women’s motivations for acquiring different consumption items. Results The quantitative results show that young women that engage in transactional sex have higher odds of consuming items for entertainment (e.g., movie tickets) than on practical items (e.g., food and groceries). The qualitative findings also revealed that young women’s perceptions of items that were considered a ‘need’ were strongly influenced by peer pressure and a desire for improved status. Further, there was a perception that emerged from the qualitative data that relationships with sugar daddies offered a way to acquire consumer goods associated with a ‘modern lifestyle’, such as items for personal enhancement and entertainment. However, young women seem aware of the risks associated with such relationships. More importantly, they also develop relationship with partners of similar age, albeit with the continued expectation of material exchange, despite engaging in the relationship for love. Conclusion This study shows that young women are willing to take certain risks in order to have a degree of financial independence. Interventions that provide alternative methods of attaining this independence, such as the provision of cash transfers may have potential in preventing them from engaging in transactional relationships. Further, the psycho-social reasons that drive young women’s motivations for consumption items resulting in risky sexual behaviours need to be better understood.

A poverty-HIV narrative has dominated many HIV prevention strategies in Africa despite epidemiological data showing higher prevalence of infection among educated and wealthier women in several African countries. This paper examines the perspectives of professional and entrepreneurial women on HIV risk and vulnerability based on their knowledge and lived experiences, comparing this to the HIV discourse evident in five strategic documents that shape intervention in Tanzania. The purpose is to uncover the confluence and dissonance between the discourses of government and those of professional women themselves. Qualitative research methods included critical discourse analysis of five strategic documents and thematic analysis of 37 in-depth interviews with women. The findings challenge fixed representations of women and notions of vulnerability embedded in the poverty-HIV discourse. Women described using their sexuality and sexual agency as a means to elevate their position in ways that made them vulnerable to sexual harassment and coercion. This is explored through two intersecting themes: non-marital sexual exchanges to gain an education or employment, and marriage. The intersecting social positions and constructions of female sexuality and agency expressed by the women in this study provide insights into other avenues and forms of HIV vulnerability.

Research has examined risk factors related to involvement in prostitution and sex trafficking using samples of adult prostitutes, runaway and homeless youth, and youth involved in the juvenile system. There is scant research that includes adolescents who cannot be categorized into these groups. Additionally, research is limited related to how parents affect the decision for adolescents to engage in sex for drugs or money. We examine risk factors concerning the exchange of sex for drugs or money from a nationally representative sample of adolescents. The data are structured where responses can be compared to a group of adolescents who indicated never exchanging sex for drugs or money. We used a negative binomial regression analysis to examine how the effects of parental and individual factors influence the exchange of sex for drugs or money among adolescents. Analyses revealed that individual factors were significant while parental factors were not significant; however, parental effects were significant when dimensions of parental involvement were examined.

Consideration of Jewish women's lives and experiences during the Holocaust became a priority only late in the 20th century. Scholars focused on women's roles as homemakers, wives, breadwinners, supporters and resistors, with little, if any, attention paid to their reproductive or sexual lives. Many considered that the Rassenschande laws shielded Jewish women from the worst horrors of rape and sexual abuse leading to little investigation of this issue. Women were reluctant to speak of such intimate events, and researchers were hesitant to ask about them for fear of causing further hurt. Concern for the sensationalizing of women's experiences also inhibited investigation of this aspect of women's lives. Significant acts of emotional, sexual and physical abuse of women, were, however, perpetrated by the Nazis and others against men and women, Jews and non-Jews, including humiliating nudity, rape and physical abuse. This article focuses on Jewish women's sexual experiences as expressed in diaries, memoirs and testimonies. It explores the variety of interactions that occurred, ranging from loving relationships that emerged despite extremely difficult living conditions, to sexualized humiliation, sexual exchange, rape and sexually related brutality. Recognizing the extent of women's adverse sexual experiences, and their aftermath, acknowledges their lives and honours their experiences.

Having a satisfying sex life is important to older adults. Thus, this study aimed to provide information about the sexual satisfaction of older adults in a relationship, using the Interpersonal Exchange Model of Sexual Satisfaction (IEMSS) as a theoretical framework. Participants were 187 sexually active individuals (98 men and 89 women) in a romantic relationship (age 65–75 years). They were recruited using Amazon's Mechanical-Turk, and completed the Interpersonal Exchange Model of Sexual Satisfaction Questionnaire and two open-ended questions asking what they enjoyed most and least about their sexual relationship. On average, participants were highly sexually satisfied. In keeping with the IEMSS, greater sexual satisfaction was predicted by a more favourable balance of sexual rewards to costs, greater equality of sexual costs and higher satisfaction with the non-sexual aspects of the relationship. Four themes emerged regarding what participants liked most and least about their sexual relationship: emotional aspects of the relationship, physical aspects of the relationship, dyadic aspects of the relationship and age-related aspects of being sexual. None of the four themes were specific to men or women, although some gender/sex differences were found. The results paint a positive picture of the sexual relationships of older adults and support the utility of the IEMSS as a framework to understand sexual satisfaction in older adults.

AbstractDuring the period when females are sexually attractive — but only then — males of certain species of primates, such as chimpanzees, allow females access to resources. Because males are usually dominant over females, such male 'tolerance' is explained as a special, reproductive strategy to gain access to females. In this paper a simpler hypothesis is proposed on the basis of an individual-based model (called DomWorld): male 'tolerance' towards females arises in 'despotic' artificial societies as a kind of 'respectful timidity', because sexual attraction automatically increases female dominance over males as a side-effect. The model consists in a homogeneous, virtual world with agents that group and perform dominance-interactions in which the effects of victory and defeat are self-reinforcing. The artificial sexes differ in that VirtualMales have a higher intensity of aggression, they start with a greater capacity to win conflicts than VirtualFemales and they are especially attracted to the opposite sex during certain periods, whereas VirtualFemales are not. I shall explain how the introduction into DomWorld of the attraction of VirtualMales by VirtualFemales leads to female dominance, why it does so only in despotic, but not in egalitarian societies, and how it leads to other phenomena that are relevant to the study of primate behaviour.

Une enquête conduite à Marrakech auprès de couples mixtes formés de Françaises et de Marocains nous renseigne sur l’évolution des dynamiques migratoires vers le Maroc depuis une vingtaine d’années. Les différents profils étudiés nous invitent à penser ces unions en termes d’échanges transactionnels gouvernés, quelque soit l’intensité des sentiments amoureux, par des logiques d’émancipation, notamment entrepreneuriales. Du fait de cette émancipation, à penser également en termes de marginalisation et de désolidarisation, on voit se former une communauté de couples mixtes active à créer un cadre normatif de la mixité, subordonné à la reproduction des classes sociales.

Pleasures and Perils follows a group of young girls living on Nevis, an island society in the Eastern Caribbean. In this provocative ethnography, Debra Curtis examines their sexuality in gripping detail: why do Nevisian girls engage in sexual activity at such young ages? Where is the line between coercion and consent? How does a desire for wealth affect a girl's sexual practices? Curtis shows that girls are often caught between conflicting discourses of Christian teachings about chastity, public health cautions about safe sex, and media enticements about consumer delights. Sexuality's contradictions are exposed: power and powerless¡ness, self-determination and cultural control, violence and pleasure. Pleasures and Perils illuminates the methodological and ethical issues anthropologists face when they conduct research on sex, especially among girls. The sexually explicit narratives conveyed in this book challenge not only the reader's own thoughts on sexuality but also the broader limits and possibilities of ethnography.