Today is World AIDS Day
I have a few friends who work with some NGO’s on HIV/AIDS issues. Through my discussions with these friends I have found out many interesting things. Two in particular have caught my attention. The first HIV/AIDS and TB co-infection that I have covered a lot in the past and seems to slowly be getting more coverage in mainstream press. The second one is a lot more uncomfortable for people, gender inequality and HIV/AIDS. This seems to be largely neglected by the popular press, it is this I am going to write a little about today.
Women now account for more then half the people living with of HIV. This in its self is alarming but in sub-Saharan Africa young women(15-24 years) are 3 times more likely then young men to contract HIV. I find this very alarming. How can it be that high?
There are 3 factors leading to the higher rates according to the WHO
# Women are probably more susceptible than men to infection from HIV in any given heterosexual encounter, due to biological factors – the greater area of mucous membrane exposed during sex in women than in men; the greater quantity of fluids transferred from men to women; the higher viral content of male sexual fluids; and the microtears that can occur in vaginal (or rectal) tissue from sexual penetration. Young women may be especially susceptible to infection.
# Gender norms may also have an impact on HIV transmission. For example, in many places, gender norms allow men to have more sexual partners than women, and encourage older men to have sexual relations with much younger women. In combination with the biological factors cited above, this means that, in most places where heterosexual sex is the main mode of HIV transmission, infection rates are much higher among young women than among young men.
# Forced sex, which all too many women (and some men) experience at some point in their lives, can make HIV transmission even more likely, since it may result in more trauma and tissue tearing.
I don’t see that there is much we can do about the first biological cause. The other two though are able to be worked on.
Globablly 6-47% of women in different countries have reported being sexually assaulted by intimate partners. It is primarily by people who are known to them that women are assaulted. There are many more statistic regarding this and other violence against women. These other forms of violence include physical, emotional and economical, I am not going to quote them here, but trust me they are not pretty. In fact they are unacceptable to me, and show to me a clear need for change.
One of my friends as part of her HIV/AIDS work is doing gender sensitivity workshops with men and women. The goal of these workshops is to challenge the linking of sex(physical) and gender(the cultural roles of men and women). This is an interesting way to work at trying to bring change and encouraging equality between sexes. This in turn will hopefully reduce violence, and bring empowerment to women. These workshops are of course is only a small part of the work being done and that needs to be done.
This brings me to one of the big criticism I have heard of the Millenium Development Goals(MDGs) is their failure to adaquately address gender issues. Some people on the basis of this suggest that the MDGs are just a big distraction. The argument is that failure to address gender issues means that most of the goals would fail. I think though the problem is just in how the goals are used. I think that the goals should be seen as integrated and inseperable. I don’t think any one of them can truly be achieved in isolation.
I don’t know what this means exactly when it comes to advocacy and the MDGs. I think that from what I’ve seen when I was back in Australia there was a tendency towards believing that you could focus on each goal in isolation. I also think that Goal 3 (premote Gender Equality and Emowering Women) is often neglected. I think part of it is that it requires challenges to other cultures, and even some religious practices which is seen as very difficult politically. I believe though few people today would say female infanticide is acceptable. So I don’t see why we should accept other forms of violence against women.