Paper: Resilience among women with HIV: Impact of silencing the self and socioeconomic factors
Reference:
Dale, S. K., Cohen, M. H., Kelso, G. A., Cruise, R. C., Weber, K. M., Watson, C., ... & Brody, L. R. (2014). Resilience among women with HIV: Impact of silencing the self and socioeconomic factors. Sex roles, 70(5-6), 221-231.
Abstract
In the U.S., women account for over a quarter of the approximately 50,000 annual new HIV diagnoses and face intersecting and ubiquitous adversities including gender inequities, sexism, poverty, violence, and limited access to quality education and employment. Women are also subjected to prescribed gender roles such as silencing their needs in interpersonal relationships, which may lessen their ability to be resilient and function adaptively following adversity. Previous studies have often highlighted the struggles encountered by women with HIV without focusing on their strengths. The present cross-sectional study investigated the relationships of silencing the self and socioeconomic factors (education, employment, and income) with resilience in a sample of women with HIV. The sample consisted of 85 women with HIV, diverse ethnic/racial groups, aged 24 – 65 enrolled at the Chicago site of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study in the midwestern region of the United States. Measures included the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale -10 item and the Silencing the Self Scale (STSS). Participants showed high levels of resilience. Women with lower scores on the STSS (lower self-silencing) reported significantly higher resilience compared to women with higher STSS scores. Although employment significantly related to higher resilience, silencing the self tended to predict resilience over and above the contributions of employment, income, and education. Results suggest that intervention and prevention efforts aimed at decreasing silencing the self and increasing employment opportunities may improve resilience.
Conclusions
Despite the noted limitations, there were many strengths of the present study. We investigated resilience and silencing the self among women with HIV, a population whose strengths are often disregarded, and found that lower silencing the self was significantly associated with higher resilience. We also examined the contribution of silencing the self to resilience above and beyond important sociodemograhic factors (i.e., income, education, and employment) to better understand what unique contributions silencing the self made to resilience. Our results indicate that silencing the self tended to contribute to resilience over and above education, income, and employment, perhaps good news because self-advocacy (the opposite of silencing) can be learned (Wingood et al., 2004). Prevention and intervention strategies for women with HIV should promote more self-advocacy and policies should address the gender inequities and environments that give rise to unequal employment, educational, and income-generating opportunities for women, thereby increasing the possibility that women can be resilient. However, given that self-advocacy in interpersonal relationships may meet resistance from others and result in negative consequences such as abuse by partners, intervention efforts should take these potential adverse consequences into consideration.
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