‘It’s really complicated’: How Canadian university women students navigate gendered risk and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine decision-making

Abstract

In this article I examine how a group of female university students in Ontario, Canada navigated the notion of ‘gendered risk’ that underpins the current promotion of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. In 2010, I interviewed 24 female university students from across the province of Ontario focussing on their experiences of making decisions about whether or not to have the HPV vaccine. I found that each student’s vaccine decision – whether it was to forgo vaccination, to wait to make a decision or to vaccinate – involved the consideration of notions of gender, negotiation of sexual health issues and management of the uncertainty of a relatively new vaccine. These considerations created a complex situation and produced a complex decision-making context, one that required the women to reflect on the ways in which they exercised their ethical agency. As a result, the women in my sample practiced identity-based vaccine decision-making that was driven by their developing sense of self as a young woman emerging into adulthood.

Keywords:

• Risk
• gendered risk
• identity-driven decision-making
• HPV vaccine
• sexual health negotiation
• Canada
• women university students
• ethical agency

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for funding in the form of a Doctoral Research Award and the Faculty of Health at York University (Toronto) for support as a Postdoctoral Fellow. I would also like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers and Andy Alaszewski for their kind and patient guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Faculty of Health at York University (Toronto).