Feminist Organizing in HIV Nursing: What Professional Societies Can Learn from the Philippines

Article information

Cleofas, J. V., & Calaguas, N. P. (2026). Feminist organizing in HIV nursing professional societies: A case study from the Philippines. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1097/JNC.0000000000000614

What this paper is about

Nursing professional societies are often seen as groups that support nurses through continuing education, conferences, standards, and professional networking. This paper argues that they can also do something more political and transformative: they can help lead movements for health equity. 

The focus is HIV nursing. HIV care is never only clinical. It is shaped by stigma, sexuality, gender, poverty, law, religion, drug policy, migration, violence, and public health systems. People most affected by HIV—such as LGBTQIA+ communities, sex workers, people who use drugs, young people, and other marginalized groups—often face multiple forms of exclusion from healthcare. 

The paper asks: How can nursing professional societies organize themselves so they can respond to these injustices, not just provide clinical updates?

The authors answer through the idea of feminist organizing.

What is feminist organizing?

In this paper, feminism is not treated simply as “women’s issues.” It is understood as a way of analyzing power and transforming institutions. Feminist organizing asks who is included, who is excluded, whose voices count, who carries care work, and how systems can become more just. 

The paper identifies several feminist organizing principles that are especially useful for HIV nursing professional societies:

• human dignity and rights;
• intersectionality;
• democratic, egalitarian, and accountable structures;
• collective leadership and solidarity;
• reflexivity and responsiveness;
• self-care and collective care. 

In simple terms, feminist organizing helps a professional society ask: Are we only representing nurses, or are we also transforming the conditions that harm patients, communities, and nurses themselves?

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Why this matters for HIV nursing

HIV is deeply shaped by social injustice. Stigma can prevent people from testing, disclosing, accessing treatment, or staying in care. Laws, religious conservatism, inadequate sexuality education, criminalization, and discrimination can make HIV prevention and treatment harder. 

Nurses working in HIV care therefore need more than technical competence. They need ethical courage, cultural humility, advocacy skills, coalition-building capacity, and political awareness.

The article argues that nursing professional societies can help build these capacities. They can create training programs, issue position papers, advocate for policy, build coalitions, support members, and amplify the voices of affected communities.

The case exemplar: PSORHN

The paper uses the Philippine Society of Sexual and Reproductive Health Nurses Inc., or PSORHN, as a case exemplar.

PSORHN was established in 2017 as a legally incorporated nonprofit organization that advances sexual and reproductive health nursing in the Philippines through education, research, advocacy, and service. 

The paper draws from interviews with PSORHN leaders and analysis of the society’s operations manual, strategic plan, and advocacy outputs. It uses PSORHN to show how a nursing professional society can embody feminist organizing in practice. 

PSORHN’s work is especially important in the Philippine context, where sexual and reproductive health remains contested by persistent gender-based violence, adolescent pregnancy, resistance to comprehensive sexuality education, HIV stigma, and moral conservatism. 

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What the paper shows

1) Feminist organizing starts from dignity and rights

PSORHN approaches sexual and reproductive health as a human right, not a privilege. This matters because HIV care is often shaped by moral judgment. People living with HIV, LGBTQIA+ people, young people, and other marginalized groups may be treated as irresponsible, immoral, or undeserving. 

A rights-based nursing society rejects that framing. It insists that people deserve accurate information, safe care, legal protection, dignity, and access to services regardless of sexuality, gender, HIV status, age, class, or ability.

This is feminist organizing because it refuses to separate care from justice.

2) Intersectionality helps the society see overlapping inequities

The paper emphasizes intersectionality, or the idea that people experience health and injustice through overlapping systems of power. A person may be affected by HIV stigma, gender inequality, poverty, disability, age, sexuality, and lack of access to education at the same time.

PSORHN’s programs reflect this intersectional orientation. The paper notes examples such as work related to people living with HIV, sexual and reproductive health rights, family planning during disasters, access to SRH services for deaf Filipinos, and cultural safety for LGBTQIA+ older adults. 

This matters because HIV care cannot be one-size-fits-all. A feminist professional society must ask: Which groups are being missed by our programs? Which barriers are we not yet seeing?

3) Feminist leadership should be democratic and accountable

The paper argues that nursing professional societies must also look inward. It is not enough to advocate for justice outside the organization while reproducing hierarchy, exclusion, and opacity inside it.

PSORHN models participatory and accountable governance through systems of transparency, general assemblies, ethical commitments, open communication, and attention to leadership diversity. 

This is important because feminist organizing is not only about what an organization says. It is also about how it makes decisions, distributes power, handles disagreement, supports members, and prepares future leaders.

4) Coalition-building expands nursing influence

HIV work requires coalitions. A nursing society cannot transform HIV care alone. It must work with community-based organizations, advocates, patients, policymakers, educators, other professional groups, and international partners.

The paper shows PSORHN’s participation in coalition-building and policy advocacy. This includes public advocacy, position papers, lobbying for sexual and reproductive health bills, and digital campaigns that affirm SRH rights and counter stigma. 

This is one of the paper’s most practical insights: a professional society becomes more powerful when it moves from professional networking to movement-building.

5) Care must include nurses and advocates too

The paper’s feminist lens also highlights self-care and collective care. HIV advocacy can be emotionally demanding. Nurses and advocates may carry heavy workloads, stigma-related stress, volunteer labor, and burnout risk. 

Feminist organizing treats care as both a practice and a political act. It asks organizations to build cultures where rest, reflection, mutual support, mental health resources, and peer connection are part of the work—not afterthoughts. 

This is a crucial reminder: organizations that fight for care must also care for their own members.

6) Challenges remain

The paper does not romanticize PSORHN. It identifies real challenges: limited resources, reliance on volunteer labor, financial sustainability concerns, low or uneven member engagement, and subtle resistance to feminist or rights-based framing. 

These are common problems for many justice-oriented professional organizations. Advocacy work needs money, time, people, infrastructure, and organizational stability.

The paper argues that PSORHN can deepen its feminist alignment by refining governance, expanding outreach to marginalized communities, strengthening leadership development, formalizing feminist commitments, and sustaining research and mentorship. 

Bottom line

This paper shows that feminist organizing can help nursing professional societies become more than professional associations. It can help them become platforms for justice, care, leadership, and health systems transformation. 

For HIV nursing, this means confronting stigma, defending sexual and reproductive rights, centering marginalized communities, building coalitions, caring for advocates, and organizing nursing work around equity and human dignity.

The key message is simple: professional nursing societies can become feminist infrastructures for HIV justice.

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Policy/practice recommendations

1. Integrate feminist organizing into nursing society governance
   Nursing societies can review their bylaws, manuals, leadership structures, and decision-making processes to ensure transparency, accountability, inclusion, and shared leadership.
2. Build formal coalitions with HIV and SRH organizations
   Professional societies should partner with community-based organizations, patient advocates, youth groups, LGBTQIA+ organizations, and public health agencies to strengthen HIV and SRH advocacy. 
3. Teach feminist organizing in nursing education
   Nursing curricula should include advocacy, social justice, feminist leadership, intersectionality, and community organizing as part of professional formation. 
4. Support nurses as advocates, not only clinicians
   Continuing professional development should include policy writing, public communication, lobbying, coalition-building, and rights-based health advocacy.
5. Make intersectionality operational
   Societies should not only mention intersectionality. They should use it in program planning, membership outreach, research priorities, training design, and evaluation.
6. Create structures for collective care
   Justice work needs sustainable care. Nursing societies can provide peer support, mentorship, reflection spaces, trauma-informed training, and burnout prevention.
7. Secure financial sustainability without losing values
   Professional societies need diversified funding, ethical partnerships, paid training, social enterprise models, and donor relationships aligned with feminist and rights-based commitments.

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Glossary of key terms

• Nursing professional society / NPS — An organization that supports nurses through education, standards, networking, advocacy, leadership, and professional development.
• Feminist organizing — A justice-oriented way of organizing that examines power, centers marginalized voices, builds collective leadership, and works to transform inequitable systems.
• HIV nursing — Nursing practice, education, advocacy, and leadership related to HIV prevention, testing, treatment, care, and support.
• PSORHN — Philippine Society of Sexual and Reproductive Health Nurses Inc., the case exemplar in the paper.
• Sexual and reproductive health / SRH — Health and rights related to sexuality, reproduction, contraception, pregnancy, sexual education, bodily autonomy, and related services.
• Justice-centered HIV care — HIV care that addresses not only clinical needs but also stigma, rights, structural inequities, and social determinants of health.
• Intersectionality — A framework for understanding how overlapping systems such as gender, sexuality, class, disability, age, race, and HIV status shape people’s experiences.
• Human dignity — The principle that every person has inherent worth and deserves respectful, non-discriminatory care.
• Collective leadership — Leadership shared across members and communities rather than concentrated in one person or hierarchy.
• Participatory governance — Decision-making that includes members, stakeholders, and affected communities.
• Relational leadership — Leadership grounded in trust, communication, care, accountability, and mutual responsibility.
• Coalition-building — Forming alliances across organizations and sectors to pursue shared goals.
• Collective care — Organizational practices that support the well-being of members, advocates, workers, and communities.
• Care ethics — A feminist ethical perspective that emphasizes relationships, responsibility, context, and interdependence.
• Structural injustice — Inequity produced by social, legal, economic, cultural, and institutional systems rather than only individual prejudice.
• Cisheteronormativity — The assumption that being cisgender and heterosexual is normal, preferred, or universal.
• Rights-based care — Care grounded in human rights, dignity, informed choice, equity, and accountability.
• Transformative leadership — Leadership that aims not only to manage organizations but to change unjust systems.
• Professional advocacy — Collective action by professionals to influence policy, practice, rights, and systems.
• Social movement work — Organized collective action aimed at changing social conditions, laws, institutions, and public values.