Is HIV fight empowering women? :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: Is HIV fight empowering women?

Posted by admin on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - 01:14 AM

When historians reflect on the global battle against the HIV epidemic, one possible bright spot could be women's empowerment in the developing world, specialists say.
The accelerating feminization of the HIV pandemic is gaining ever wider recognition as public health experts chart the global response. Many experts say that women's rights will need to be an important element of the fight if the world is to succeed in the long-term. While just under half of the 38 million people infected worldwide are women, 75 percent of infected young people between 15 and 24 are women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa. In many other areas where the AIDS disaster is at an earlier stage, infected women increasingly outnumber men. Condoms are the cornerstone of prevention strategies, but are proving an unrealistic option for many women, who often don't have the power to insist their lovers wear them. Advocates argue that the world's fight to tame the virus will fail unless women's needs are tackled and serious progress is made in the struggle for women's rights. While AIDS has certainly raised the level of discussion about women's emancipation in the developing world, it remains to be seen whether humanity's worst scourge can be a powerful enough motivator to change women's lives in poor countries. "AIDS is a challenge the likes of which we have never seen, and in order to make any progress, we are going to have to address these issues in ways that we haven't in the last centuries," said Sandy Thurman, president of the International AIDS Trust, a nonprofit policy group. "The silver lining in the cloud of this hideous pandemic could be that it's the turning point in the empowerment of women around the world," Thurman told The Associated Press at the International AIDS Conference, held this week in the Thai capital. "I'm not sure that we can do it, but I see hopeful signs." Experts at the conference said there have been pockets of progress in some countries, with more education for girls, more opportunities to work outside the home, loan programs aimed at helping women set up businesses, and legislation designed to protect them from violence. And the people fighting for women's rights in the developing world have learned lessons from the West, according to Thoraya Obaid, chief of the United Nations Population Fund. "In the past, we have isolated the men outside the women's movement, but bringing them on board is beginning now with HIV," she said. Other experts are less optimistic. Tim Brown, an authority on AIDS in Asia, said the AIDS fight itself is unlikely to accomplish the emancipation of women in the developing world because women's rights will not be the focus of the programs most urgently needed. "In Asia, the way to protect women is to keep their husbands from getting infected in the first place," said Brown, a researcher at the Hawaii-based East-West Center. "Then it doesn't matter what the gender role is within that relationship in terms of HIV infection. In Asia at least, which is becoming the epicenter of the pandemic, the focus should be on prevention programs for prostitutes and their clients, Brown said. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan's special envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, is even more skeptical that the AIDS issue could further women's rights. "It may be that historians 100 years hence will see over a period of time that this was a watershed event, but I frankly doubt it," said Lewis, who has worked in Africa for 45 years. "You could argue that gender is the most difficult issue on the face of the earth, and I just don't think AIDS is going to be the breakthrough." If anything, AIDS is likely to have a role in women's rights of women by providing them with tools to protect themselves from HIV infection, such as HIV-killing vaginal gels, or microbicides, and similar products that give women control over whether they get infected. "If you look at the birth control pill and what it has done for women's empowerment in our countries, I think new technologies to come from the AIDS epidemic could play a very important role," said Dr. Joep Lange, president of the International AIDS Society.

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