While economic hardships, power differentials, victimization, and societal norms play a major role in limiting options for women to assert their sexual rights, it is amply clear that it may be dangerous to assume unitary responses in all heterosexually-related sexual encounters. The study clearly underscores the need to recognize women’s agency in resisting violence and/or forced sex from men, either sexual clients or husbands, as well as women’s attempts to safeguard their own health. This study sought to explore if higher degrees of acceptance of traditional gender norms would negatively influence women’s abilities to control the outcomes of their efforts at sexual negotiation and therefore increase their vulnerability to HIV infection. It explored sex workers’ and socio-economically disadvantaged women’s vulnerability to HIV in the context of client/partner violence, alcohol use, male partner’s high-risk behaviors, and women’s perceptions of lack of control in their intimate relationships. Ethnographic data were collected from 32 women and 38 men in India as part of an ongoing National Institute of Mental Health study. Figure, references, notes