Women Empowerment: Africa's AIDS Vaccine?

With 55% of those who are HIV-positive in sub-Saharan Africa being women, all the funding, treatment, information, care and support interventions imaginable will be of little effect in reversing the spread of HIV infection and resultant disease implications, unless women are empowered with equal status, both socially and economically. This argument is not new, but Samantha Willan's seminar presentation held on 18 October 2002, hosted by the Gender Studies Department at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Durban campus, put the statistics, scenarios and strategy recommendations into clear and compelling perspective.

In her paper, Willan, a researcher at the University's Health Economics AIDS Research Divison (HEARD), sets out the figures and reasons, both biological and socio-economic, for women's particular vulnerability to infection with HIV. She also outlines the effects of the epidemic that typically increase this vulnerability and further disempower women in daily life - for instance, by shifting an even greater load than usual in caregiving to female family members, and denying girls access to education, which ultimately further decreases their potential for future financial independence.

In short, Willan's paper robustly explains how women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa "...have become the caregivers, the 'hospice workers', the 'social workers', the foster parents - with no pay, no recognition, no future - and have a greater likelihood of being infected with HIV/AIDS than their male counterparts."

There are "best practice" models in place in other countries that offer promising, if not perfect, solutions to these problems. For example, formal protective measures enabling commercial sex-workers to exert some control over their sexual relations and reproductive health have been established successfully through state policy in Thailand and Senegal, and these have markedly reduced or at least contained the epidemic in those countries.

The introduction of the Femidom (female condom), increasing women's access to resources and services for treatment, care and support, and enhancing the status of women and girls in communities by engaging men in addressing traditional power imbalances are some of the recommendations outlined in Willan's paper. Specifying schools as vitally important fora for attitudinal change programmes, both for boys and girls, Willan asserts that discussion of sex, sexuality and HIV/AIDS, along with more general openness about violence against women and the dangers of the stigma surrounding HIV-status, is crucial for creating a social and cultural environment conducive to positive living, whether one is infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.

Contributions from the floor included the comment that the private sector, in particular, should assist in targeting everyone, through employee and consumer bases of all races and sectors, in changing the face of business and society in terms of gender equality and human rights in general. Another put forward the view that men are more likely not to disclose their status, whereas women's organisations are becoming more visible and powerful; so, despite having to bear the burden of homebased care and other gender-related disadvantages, women still find time and energy to involve themselves in civil leadership.

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