My book

Vamps, Virgins and Victims: How can women fight AIDS? published, Cassell, 1996

Still available from online booksellers, my book was widely reviewed (inc this by the British Medical Journal) and set the tone for thinking about the impact of women at a time when women and girls were hardly affected by the epidemic.

Here are a couple of snippets from what others have said about it:

“This women-centred approach to analyzing the different impacts of the pandemic on women and men, and how HIV/AIDS function as a paradigm for other women’s issues. Questions addressed include: what is the relationship between AIDS and women’s health, sexuality and socio-economic status?; is there a feminist agenda on AIDS?; how have women been portrayed in discourse about the epidemic?; are women living with the virus treated differently from men?; and what activities put women at risk?”

“As head of health promotion at the Terrence Higgins Trust, Robin Gorna has lived with the AIDS epidemic through a decade of hard work and activism. Her analysis of the impact of AIDS on women is refreshing, direct, and passionate. Arguing that the spread of AIDS among women can be understood only in the context of the power inequalities between the sexes, she also dismisses the concept of AIDS as a heterosexual epidemic and, with it, the notion that everyone is equally at risk. AIDS, she asserts, is still a “queer disease,” and those infected with HIV are socially …”