AFRICA: Gender discrimination and HIV/AIDS

NEW YORK, 25 June (IRIN) - On World AIDS Day in 1998, a brave South African woman Gugu Dhlamini announced her HIV-positive status. Soon after, she was stoned to death by a group of young men in her community.

Women are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Biology and gender inequality conspire to drive the spread of the disease, and forces women to bear the brunt of the social and economic costs, according to a UNIFEM briefing paper. Dhlamini's murder was made possible by societal norms that discriminate and rob women of power, and fail to protect the rights of men and women living with HIV/AIDS.

Although few women were among those infected in the early years of the epidemic, by the end of 2000, 55 percent of HIV infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa were women. UNIFEM points out that for teenage girls in some of Africa's hardest hit regions, the reality is even bleaker: They are infected at a rate five or six times higher than teenage boys.

Gender roles make it hard for women to protect themselves. In a study in Zambia, less than 25 percent of the women interviewed believed that a married woman could refuse to have sex with her husband, even if she knew he had been unfaithful and was infected. Only 11 percent thought that a woman could ask her husband to use a condom. A UNAIDS survey found that women who fall sick from any cause are less likely than men to be admitted to a hospital or to have access to family resources. Poverty further disadvantages women in terms of HIV/AIDS infection, and in circumstances of conflict, the combined impact is devastating.

"In spite of the now universally recognised cause-and-effect relationship between women's low social status and HIV transmission, concrete solutions are absent from international resolutions and national strategic plans that address HIV/AIDS. Twenty years into the pandemic, it is not enough to acknowledge its deadly gender dimensions," the UNIFEM report noted. "Policy makers and society at large must find ways to share power and autonomy with women."

Speaking at a panel discussion on gender ahead of this week's UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS, Ugandan AIDS activist Beatrice Were stressed that governments were guilty of denial over the problem of discrimination. "Denial sets back all our efforts," said Were, the coordinator of the National Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS. She called for enlightened political leadership and advocacy to encourage the empowerment of women.

UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer was no less blunt: "Unless governments are accountable and funds are allocated at the international and national level in order to address gender inequality, unless the relationship between gender inequality and the HIV/AIDS pandemic is fully appreciated, we at UNIFEM are seriously concerned that efforts to reverse the pandemic will be futile."

Heyzer told the panel that as an urgent call to action, gender equality had to be the "guiding principal" of the global response to HIV/AIDS for every plan, programme, campaign and allocation. Those actions had to be targeted to ensure that "specific efforts are undertaken to address the particular needs and special circumstances of women and girls." She added that the connection between violence and HIV/AIDS must also be recognised.

"Wherever a woman lives with conflict and upheaval - in a violent home or a country at war - the threat of infection from HIV/AIDS and the effects of its damage are multiplied," Heyzer said. "Our responses must recognise this deadly alliance, and put special measures in place to protect women in already violent circumstances - in refugee camps, in militarised zones, in communities that condone marital rape and subordination of women - from the added threat of HIV/AIDS."