Women and HIV

I was reading an article in the June 5th Newsweek entitled "What Women Really Need" by Melinda Gates. Its main topic was the need to empower women in order to help curb the contraction of AIDS. Currently, there is no real way for women, particularly married women, to help themselves from contracting the virus: "80 percent of women newly infected with HIV are practicing monogamy within a marriage or a long-term relationship." "In many countries, sexual inequality compounds the hazard by making it difficult, if not impossible, for women to enforce their choices about whom they have sex with, or to insist that men wear condoms. But one of the deadliest problems is that women simply don’t have the tools to protect themselves." "For millions of married women, abstinence is unrealistic, being faithful insufficient and the use of condoms is not under their control."

The problem is evident- in the culture that I now live, women and girls frequently take the submissive role: they clean, they cook, they take care of the children- many of their husbands don’t work- in fact many of their husbands don’t do much of anything. A prime example of this situation is Portia. Portia is in grade 7. She comes to my house everyday to do the cleaning in order to make some extra money for her family. Her twin brother, Lucky, spends his afternoon playing soccer. No one questions this arrangement: why she works while he plays, just as women often don’t question whether or not they really want to be having sex with their partner- they do it to hold onto their boyfriends/husbands or because "everyone else is doing it."

Most women have never been taught that they have a say; can play a role in their sexual relations, because women are never taught about sex. Families don’t discuss it with their children, schools tell the facts of HIV but don’t empower children to have the self-confidence to stand up for themselves; to make choices regarding their own sexuality. The church only preaches abstinence which is not always realistic, specifically in a society where people are often older when they marry since they have to raise the money to pay "bride price" to the family of the woman whom they are marrying.

We need to focus on women to help solve the AIDS epidemic- give them the tools to protect their own health so they don’t have to worry about relying only on convincing their husbands to act or behave in specific ways (namely using condoms) when cultures can be prohibitive towards such ideas.

"Ten years ago, 1 percent of women in South Africa had contracted HIV; today the number is 25 percent. [] We need to develop prevention tools that can give women a chance to defend themselves."