Women and Condoms: A Preliminary Study of Practice and Meaning

Abstract

Experiences of condom use and meaning among feminist women of an urban college area of southwestern United States in 1994 were explored through ethnographic interviews. Women's disposition to use condoms coincides with the targeting of female consumers as a market for condoms. However, constraints on women's condom use are related to the meanings of condoms in the context of particular relationships, and to the meanings of condoms vis-à-vis ideas of sexuality, and to macrolevel power relations of gender. For some women condom use is an important component of self-transformation.