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Media releases > Abstinence is not enough
New report from VSO highlights weakness of HIV work that ignores gender
(17 November 2003)
On the eve of President Bush's visit to the UK, international development charity VSO releases a new report showing that unless HIV and AIDS interventions take into account inequalities between women and men, they are likely to fail.
The report, Gendering AIDS, part of the new AIDS Agenda campaign, demonstrates that measures such as abstinence, a key focus of President Bush's new $15 billion package of AIDS assistance, are meaningless in the face of rape and the threat of violence that confronts many men and women in the world today. Even condoms, the preferred prevention method of many organisations, are ineffective if women are not able to negotiate their use during sex.
Policies pushed by international governments must be based on the realities of men's and women's lives in the developing world,
says Miranda Lewis, author of Gendering AIDS.
Current beliefs about male and female sexuality, together with women's lack of economic power, can make discussing even monogamy difficult, let alone abstinence. Inequalities between women and men are at the heart of the AIDS epidemic. Our research concludes that unless these are tackled effectively the world will not be able to stop HIV and AIDS.
Just one of the practices uncovered in Gendering AIDS that highlights the depth of the problem is 'tournaments' or 'hunting' among young men in Namibia. Schoolboys group together and, as a result of peer pressure, gang rape girls. In some cases, to join a gang, a boy must let the rest of the group rape his girlfriend. Given the high prevalence of HIV in Namibia, this often leads to HIV transmission.
However, there is room for optimism. Gendering AIDS concludes that vital to addressing these dangerous inequalities is supporting groups that engage men instead of simply condemning and vilifying them. It points to the pioneering groups that are engaging men in a realistic, constructive way. Men for Change, a VSO partner working in townships in South Africa, is working to break down stereotypes of men's behavior. Gathering men together in places such as bars, football pitches and churches to discuss violence, AIDS and what it means to be a man often provides the first opportunity these men have to talk about these issues and start to challenge their own beliefs.
Gendering AIDS concludes that although there are scores of national and international policies to protect the rights of women, in reality that these rights are not yet realized at the grass roots. Furthermore, although it is vital to support women's groups, donors that fail to include men in working towards solutions in gender violence and the spread of HIV are excluding the very group they most need to reach.
VSO is calling on the US Government and other funders to take a more realistic view of women's and men's lives in developing countries, and urges them to take gender inequalities into account in their HIV and AIDS assistance. Supporting men's groups and protecting women's rights must lie at the heart of the battle against HIV and AIDS. Without this, the projects funded by the billions of dollars being poured into fighting the global HIV and AIDS epidemic, could be doomed to fail.
Editors' notes- Miranda Lewis, author of Gendering AIDS, and Ken Bluestone, Senior Policy Adviser at VSO are both available for interview
- Gendering AIDS will be formally launched at an event on the 19 November, 9am-12pm, Royal Commonwealth Club, 18 Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5BJ
- For further details contact us
HIV & AIDS and women around the world- Nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide have HIV & AIDS
- 58% of people infected in sub-Saharan Africa are women
- In India the only sexual context contact 75% of HIV positive women have had is with their husbands (Positive Women's Network)
- Only 25% of beds in AIDS care centres in India are taken by women, yet 39% of those living with HIV are women
- In South Africa the prevalence rate of HIV in young women aged 15 - 24 is almost twice that of boys and young men of the same age
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