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This paper builds upon the theoretical framework advanced by the growing literature on vulnerability. The paper explores how vulnerability to HIV/AIDS applies to young women living in the slum areas of New Delhi and Hyderabad. This circumscription of scope is based on a study on AIDS awareness levels in these two Indian cities conducted during summer of 2006. Using a qualitative approach, the paper offers insightful narratives from a sample of 26 women about their cultural and socio-economic circumstances with reference to HIV/AIDS. The excerpts from these women give a poignant view of their precarious circumstances with reference to lack of female autonomy, economic vulnerability, low AIDS awareness, and lack of access to pertinent information about HIV. The female youth were highly susceptible to the double bind of age and gender based hierarchies present in the patriarchal Indian social …