Managing risk, claiming care: gender, shame, and the politics of human papillomavirus in Turkey

Abstract This article analyzes women’s experiences of human papillomavirus (HPV) in Turkey under gendered health governance, a lack of public vaccine coverage, and conservative moral norms. Interviews with twenty-three mostly urban, university-educated women show that the diagnosis is experienced as shame, anxiety, and individualized responsibility. The burden is deeply felt despite the high cultural capital of the sample, indicating that stigma and access barriers to vaccination are not mitigated by individual resources alone. After diagnosis, women perform extensive emotional and moral labor, arranging follow-ups, insisting on condom use or choosing abstinence, and calculating disclosure risks to partners and family. Men are largely absent from prevention and care. Clinical routines also produce moral judgment and turn medical risk into a disciplinary test of respectability through marital-status questioning, limited privacy, and admonishing talk. The case in Turkey aligns with global feminization and moralization of HPV yet is distinctive for increasing official familism, rising conservatism on sexuality, and a prolonged lack of HPV vaccine coverage, as well as related civil-society campaigns and pay-it-forward schemes. In such a context, assigning risk management to women creates a double burden of dealing with moral discourses and caring for their and others’ health. Even if free HPV vaccination begins, equitable uptake will require non-moralizing clinical communication, confidentiality, and partner-inclusive, de-gendered prevention.