Women and HIV

Women and HIV

A distressing characteristic of the impact of HIV has been its exposure of the unequal gender relations and the threat of domestic violence that exist in many developing countries. By the end of 2008, more than half of all adults living with HIV were women. The virus has no sympathy for the weak position of young women to negotiate safe sex or no sex.

Married women are exposed to the infidelities of their husbands, especially those whose work takes them away from home. In many countries, fear of exclusion and violence deters women from testing their HIV status. As if these relational risks were not enough, women are much more susceptible than men to transmission of the virus during sex with an infected partner.

As a result, in the 15-24 age group in southern Africa, 75% of those living with HIV are women. This profile and its underlying causes have galvanised the efforts of international women's groups. They stress the importance of education for girls and also the integration of HIV programmes with those related to reproductive health services and violence against women.

In consequence a controversial morality dimension unsettles the humanitarian fight against AIDS. Its most extreme manifestation is the continued refusal of the Roman Catholic church to countenance the use of condoms, restated during the Pope’s 2009 visit to Cameroon.

Until the inauguration of President Obama in January 2009, the success of US PEPFAR funding was blunted by conditions imposed by religious conservatives. The alignment of prevention programmes with abstinence rather than safe sex naively superimposed the cultural ideology of one continent on another.