Twenty-five years later: A critical commentary on HIV awareness posters targeting women

This commentary provides selected observations from 25 years of research in Canadian HIV awareness campaign representation. Earlier research by Hunter (2004) found that HIV awareness posters targeting women focused on messages of fear, rather than presenting women as proactive about safer sex. Although there has been some improvement in recent years, we remain quite troubled by many of the Canadian HIV awareness posters targeting women. We demonstrate that there has been little progress in portraying women's agency in communicating safer sex options with their partners. Further, posters tend to reinforce the stigma associated with HIV, rather than depicting support, to minimize stigma. Canadian HIV awareness posters targeting women are in great contrast to the community-based HIV awareness posters targeting men who have sex with men, where taking control of sexual health and the importance of communication are reinforced. This commentary offers a critical appraisal on the minimal progress of Canadian HIV awareness posters targeting women throughout the years, and makes the case for developing HIV awareness poster campaigns which focus on prevention through communication, and support around stigma.