Gender inequality, AIDS, war, and hunger form a net which ensnares sub-Saharan Africa in terrible suffering.
26 million people are HIV positive in the region, and 3 million new infections occurred in the last year. It is estimated that 2.4 million are dying each year, and it has left 12 million children orphaned. The average life expectancy is now 47, where it would have been 62 without AIDS. The numbers are staggering, and the situation is heart-wrenching. The economic, social, and human cost of the calamity must approach that of the Second World War, and the situation is not improving. Some nations and peoples within Africa are facing annihilation. In Swaziland, for example, over 42% of the population are HIV positive, and for pregnant women between the age of 25 and 29 the rate of infection is 56%.
This disaster is greatly exacerbated by war, political instability, and famine. It in turn weakens social structures and produces political instability; prevents victims and their carers from growing food; and creates an enormous financial drain on the medical system. In this way it is created by war and famine and in turn creates war and famine.
But if HIV is intimately entangled in war and hunger it gains its strength far more certainly from what is politely called gender inequality, and amounts in reality to abuse of African women on a horrifying scale. Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, mentions:
rape and sexual violence, including marital rape; domestic violence; no sexual autonomy; early marriage of girls to older men; forced marriage; harmful traditional practices, including wife inheritance, widow cleansing, polygamy and female genital mutilation; maternal mortality rates as high as they’ve ever been; sugar Daddies; illiteracy; lack of educational access [ ]; designation as legal minors; lack of economic and earning power; lack of rights to own and inherit land or property; lack of representation in parliaments and other elected and appointed bodies
The result of this is that already 58% of HIV cases are female, and in the worst affected areas 75% of new cases are young women. The litany of examples of relations between the status of women and HIV in sub-Saharan Africa is both varied and disgusting
- In many societies domestic violence prevents women from freely accessing HIV/AIDS information, from negotiating condom use, and from resisting unprotected sex with an HIV-positive partner
- Orphan girls are often sexually abused at the hands of their guardians, including family members and teachers.
- In some areas women who are divorced or separated or whose husband has died as well as girls whose father has died may have no right to hold property. They may be stripped of all posessions and made homeless, or become the property of their husbands brothers, or subject to ‘widow cleansing’ rape.
- The US is funding “abstinence-only” programs which are jeopardising progress in AIDS education. This is meaningless in situations where girls are forced to engage in survival sex. “…around here, people don’t buy this idea of abstinence, because in Uganda, many girls are using sex to buy their daily bread.” – Head teacher, Mbale
- Women and girls have responsibility for providing care for relatives affected by the disease, which pulls them out of school and work, increasing poverty. The inability of large numbers of women to till fields is leading to famine and the loss of agricultural skills in southern Africa. Poverty and famine then bring less power to protect themselves and more need for risky behaviours.
- Conflict and refugee situations are characterised by the prevalence of rape, and it is used as a weapon of genocide throughout the continent.
Governments in the region are beginning to take what action they can after years of difficulty caused by cultural taboos, but in poorer areas the situation has become such a catastrophe that they are in need of major international assistance if the tide is to be swept back. It is clear, however, that to be effective, the health issues must be dealt with in conjunction with political and social programs designed to change the status of women in African culture. This is not a situation where respect for cultural norms can be allowed to interfere – the very existence of the people and their culture is at stake in the worst cases.
Stephen Lewis and others have called for the establishment of a major UN agency to promote gender equality, along the lines of UNICEF or UNHCR, with funding of at least a billion dollars per annum, as a first step. The nexus between AIDS, gender, and poverty is clear, as is the magnitude of the suffering involved: the proposal is worthy of support.