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Gender bias is a factor in women's infection


August 14, 2006
Women in field
Women in sub-Saharan Africa continue to be hard-hit by AIDS, yet their voices and those of other women living with AIDS are not given enough weight in discussions about how to halt the disease’s spread.
Photo courtesy of Mikkel Oestergaard, Panos Pictures.
Twenty-five years ago, doctors and researchers puzzled over a mysterious disease affecting gay men in the United States and Europe. The disease with no name became AIDS and now, decades after it was first identified, it has devastated parts of Africa and is increasingly wearing a female face worldwide.

As the 16th International AIDS Conference runs this week in Toronto, we know so much more about the disease, its prevention and social effects. But the missing part of the puzzle is how to ensure that the people who bear the brunt of the pandemic —  women and girls in the developing world — have a voice in deciding how to tackle this global health crisis.

According to global agency UNAIDS, almost half of the people currently living with AIDS are female. In sub-Saharan Africa, 57 percent of people with HIV ages15 and older are women, and young women 15-24 years in that region are three times as likely to be infected as men of comparable age.

Years before this infection disparity became so apparent, HIV-positive women sounded the alarm. As early as the 1992 AIDS conference in Amsterdam, they spoke about the gender discrimination that increases the chances they’ll be exposed to the virus, affects their treatment in clinics and society, and automatically designates them as caregivers for AIDS patients or orphans.  

The HIV-positive women who spoke out in Amsterdam helped form the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW) and continue to tell the world that we cannot divorce AIDS from women’s status in society. In societies where women have little autonomy, women often can’t negotiate condom use with a husband or partner; even less able to protect themselves against infection are women and girls who are victims of domestic and sexual violence.

Discrimination against HIV-positive women by health-care providers still occurs in various countries. In some countries, HIV-positive women who have unwanted pregnancies have no access to safe, legal abortions; in others, women are only granted legal abortions if they “agree” to be sterilized. Those who do choose to become pregnant after knowing their positive HIV status are stigmatized. And regardless of how they became pregnant, some HIV-positive women are still turned away from hospitals when they are about to give birth.

Some progress has been made — through the efforts of associations like ICW and agencies that recognize that HIV/AIDS programs must link with broader health services for women. In countries where drug therapy was once only available for the wealthiest AIDS patients, antiretroviral treatment (ART) is now widely available to pregnant women, greatly reducing the chances of transmitting HIV to their infants.

But too much remains undone. While far fewer children are born HIV-positive, few mothers receive needed drugs to ensure their own survival. HIV-positive women also face increased risks of cervical cancer, but few know about cancer screening or have access to Pap smears.  And for those women who want to prevent pregnancy, there is little information about what effect any drug treatment might have on contraceptives.

HIV-positive women are still sidelined in the global AIDS dialogue. At the Toronto conference, Ipas will offer a workshop with ICW trainers to help HIV-positive women understand their rights.

Ipas will also present findings about how HIV-positive women face health-care discrimination in 11 countries from Argentina to Swaziland. Not surprisingly, our research found that women living with HIV/AIDS are often trotted out at meetings to tell their stories. But their insights continue to be marginalized or simply not considered in the policymaking that drives international responses to AIDS.

If the policymakers, activists and scientists meeting in Toronto hope to turn the tide on AIDS, women must be a part of finding the solutions; their lives depend upon it.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258