What role does transactional sex play in the HIV/STI and reproductive health risk behaviour among high-tier entertainment centre workers in China?

Abstract

China’s rapid economic growth over the last three decades has led to increased population wealth and the proliferation of entertainment centres where people can conduct business, relax and meet new people. Little is known about the sexual risk behaviours of employees at high-tier entertainment centres. This paper addresses this gap in knowledge by comparing HIV risk perception and sexual and reproductive health behaviours among female and male employees at three high-tier entertainment centres in two cities in China, comparing those who report a history of transactional sex to those who do not. In both cities, participants who reported a history of transactional sex were more likely than those without a history of transactional sex to report multiple sexual partnerships, more lifetime sexual partners, a history of STIs, having anal sex and/or recent abortions, and were more likely to perceive themselves to be at risk for STIs/HIV. However, risk behaviour was also high among those with no history of transactional sex. These findings highlight the need for targeted sexual and reproductive health initiatives for employees in these work settings.

Sexual Behaviour of Men and Women within Age-Disparate Partnerships in South Africa: Implications for Young Women's HIV Risk

“…Regardless of the mechanism underlying the geographic variation, our findings suggest greater sexual risk for young women in age-disparate partnerships in urban areas as transactional sex has been linked to high risk behaviours including unprotected sex [ 14 ] and anal sex [ 54 , 55 ], as well as intimate-partner violence [ 56 – 58 ]. Gender differences in perceptions about motivations and intentions within partnerships in South Africa [ 56 , 59 , 60 ] align with our findings that men are more likely to perceive a transactional element in partnerships than women.…”

High-resolution mapping of reproductive tract infections among women of childbearing age in Bangladesh: a spatial-temporal analysis of the demographic and health survey

“…To obtain more accurate estimates of RTI risk, we made full use of available data from multiple sources, such as DHS, MODIS/Terra, WorldClim, SEDAC, SWBD and WorldPop (Table S1, Additional file 1 ). However, other potential influencing factors, such as social attitudes [ 50 ] and the number of sexual partners [ 51 , 52 ], are not available at sub-national level, thus cannot be included in our analyses. In addition, as we did not obtain data at high spatial resolution for wealth of household, we used district-level data for risk prediction, by assuming levels of wealth within districts were similar, which may lead to spatial misalignment issue and result in bias.…”