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The majority of male IDU have non-injecting female sex partners. This preference may be a
result of social stigma attached to female injectors, a desire to have a more functional household
where only one partner is injecting, or increased financial support. Female non-injectors may
engage in partnerships with IDU for a variety of reasons but whatever the reasons for entering
and maintaining a partnership with an IDU, the impacts and risks imposed on the non-injecting
women because of this decision are significant.
Impacts of having an IDU partner
Potential impacts on the life of a non-injecting woman partnered with an IDU include: financial responsibility within the partnership, risk of acquiring HIV and other blood-borne diseases
through the injection and sexual risk behaviours of her partner both in and out of the relationship and risk of initiation to injection.
Women IDU partnered with male IDU
Female IDU social networks contain more female IDU and have a greater overlap between sexual and injection networks than those of male injectors. It has been hypothesised that women are
more entrenched in their injection networks because of the increased stigma attached to women’s drug use. Maintaining daily life and drug use, particularly how the couple divides labour in
order to obtain drugs, food and other necessities, impacts a dual injector partnership, especially
where both are substance dependent. It is common for female IDU to engage in sex work to
provide for their partner and/or family as part of the gendered division of labour. Further, some
female IDU report transactional sex relationships where the intimacy with their partner is tied
to shelter, food, drugs and/or protection. These relationships may leave the women in particularly
vulnerable positions because they are dependent upon these men and are therefore potentially in
a subordinate position and less capable of insisting on safe sex and injection behaviours.
Equalising drug use
One of the risks within dual IDU partnerships is the possibility of equalisation of drug use where