Sexual Health as a Social Problem: Meaning Reconstruction of Sexual Health among Married Women of Tabriz City

Sexual health is the state of physical, mental, and socio-cultural well-being with respect to all sexual experiences, which is regarded as one of the main indicators of human and sustainable development. This dimension of health, in contrast to others, requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality issues, and having a safe and satisfied sexual relationship without any coercion, discrimination, and violence. This paper, aims at investigating mental and meaning construction process involved in sexual health among Tabriz City’s married women. To this end, qualitative method and thematic analysis approach has been employed to analyze semi-structured in-depth interviews among 26 married women of age 20 to 45, following the rule of variation. Data, according to the existing standards, is analyzed by the use of a multi-phase inductive coding scheme to drive all common meanings with respect to sexual health. Results showed that mental meaning of sexual health among participants includes four axial codes, including; “sexual informational relationship”, “sexual emotional relationship”, “mutual and balanced physical sexual health”, and “sexual normative balance’ which all could be understood as an inclusive (selective) code of “sexual health as a social problem”.