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conferenceseries
.com
September 25-26, 2017 | Atlanta, USA
2
nd
World Congress on
Medical Sociology & Community Health
Volume 7, Issue 4 (Suppl)
J Community Med Health Educ, an open access journal
ISSN:2161-0711
Medical Sociology 2017
September 25-26, 2017
THANKS GOD THAT I AM STILL LESBIAN AND HEALTHY: CIVIL SOCIETY AND SEXUAL
RIGHTS IN MOZAMBIQUE
Maria Judite Mario Chipenembe Ngale
a
a
Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique
T
his paper explores the influence of the global public health strategies in the course of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people’s activism in Mozambique. It explores how, within the homophobic inconsistency in the implementation of the bill of
rights, the health language reinforces “normative violence” that makes lesbian and bisexual women invisible in society. A Purposeful
and snowballing samplings were applied to select 117 participants who introduced themselves as heterosexuals or LGBT in ten Focus
Group Discussions (FGDs), 30 Semi-Structured Interview (SSI) and 16 in-depth interviews. Based on feminist post colonialism
and inter sectionality, some categories and sources of oppression are identified in the narratives of lesbian and bisexual women
participants such as compulsory marriage and corrective rape which, in turn, challenges the discriminatory notion of “key population
most at risk to HIV/AIDS”. The study suggests that, the use of the global public health language by activists and stakeholders of
civil society organization working in the field of sexual and reproductive health programs empowered them to speak more about
protecting the “key population most at risk” to HIV/AIDS. This perspective leaves no space to visualise lesbian and bisexual women’s
rights violation in the cities of Nampula and Maputo. Therefore, our findings suggest the need of an intersectional approach and
action in the public health strategies in order to link gender to diversity and to take into account the “harmful cultural practices” that
cover secret and discreet realities.
Biography
Maria Judite Mario Chipenembe Ngale is a lecturer at Eduardo Mondlane University - Mozambique since 2004. She holds a bachelors honours degree in
Anthropology and Master Degree in Sociology. She is interest in researching the health and wellbeing of the sexual minority groups in Mozambique.
mchipenembe@hotmail.comMaria Judite Mario Chipenembe Ngale, J Community Med Health Educ 2017, 7:4 (Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2161-0711-C1-027