The Women to Women Study of Relationships with male partners is a project dedicated to women who live in urban communities. It involves engaging in power and change.

The majority of women in the U.S. (80%) who are HIV infected were infected through unprotected sex with a male partner who had HIV.

The videos were developed as a research project that was funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Library of Medicine. Dr. Rachel Jones is the lead investigator of this research.

Our main goal was to create an urban soap opera video based on women’s real stories about their relationships with men. We explored reasons why women engaged in unprotected sex with male partners that they distrusted and even thought were having sex with other women, or men, or injecting drugs. Groups were held with women in two cities.

We listened and learned. We learned that having sex without using condoms is a usual practice to get a man, to hold on to a man, to show trust, and to get and stay close. Some women talked of "Having to Satisfy a Man" and accepting cheating because of "What He’s Doing for Me", and "As Long as He Comes Home to Me". Some women said that they were "Blinded by Love". We call these Lower Power Sex Scripts. Lower power means women have a lower awareness of themselves as women (seeing themselves and other women as Chicken Heads and Jump Offs), seeing few choices (Need Him, As long as He Comes Home to Me), and were going about their lives to “Do Whatever it Takes” to satisfy and hold onto a man who was cheating on them.

The problem with the strategy of unprotected sex to hold onto a man is that it never seems to work.The men leave anyway and the women end up unhappy and worse. Worse can mean feeling badly most of the time, it can mean financial problems, the baby’s father is gone, and it can also mean HIV infection.

We also heard Higher Power Sex Scripts from women who are aware of themselves as being worthy of respect and see themselves as having more choices in life and men and they went after their dreams, not allowing bad relationships to get in their way. We heard stories about Girl Power, Expecting Sex is Not All Right, Take the Power, and You Don’t Own Me. Women had a lot to say about the good relationships that helped them to meet their own needs.

So we wanted to share women’s Higher Power Sex Scripts by connecting these to stories about Lower Power Sex Scripts. At the end of each story, the HIV risk reduction message is communicated as the heroine revisits each high-risk scene and, this time, reenacts the scene with power, making different choices and actualizing her potential. The viewer becomes involved in the characters’ dilemmas and how they transition to higher power sex scripts. By grounding the stories in urban women’s own experience, through the soap opera, women identify with the heroine’s emotionally charged process of change.

Consistent with the aims of this study, the video was pilot tested on hand held computers. Hand held computers offer the advantages of privacy and mobility. We conducted a research study and found the videos to be very effective; women enjoyed the videos. Here are some things women said after watching the video:

"You could REALLY relate to this."

"I’m definitely going to use condoms, you never know."

"This opened my eyes."

"It's nice to see how things would have been done differently."

"This happened to me! A lot of people need to see this!"

"This changed my thinking!"