Health Action AIDS
AIDS Protection for
Women & Girls
The rate of HIV infection among women and girls is rising dramatically in
much of the developing world, and has reached an alarmingly high level in
sub-Saharan Africa where almost 60% of HIV-positive adults are women, and young
women aged 15 to 24 are about three times more likely than young men to be
infected. In Sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls already make up almost 60% of
adults living with HIV. Women and girls are particularly at risk of HIV
infection due to a number of factors including:
- Rape and domestic violence
- Marriage to older HIV-infected men
- Lack of education generally and about HIV prevention
specifically
- Sex trafficking
- Poverty, discrimination in property and inheritance,
and lack of access to formal employment, leading to a high rate of
transactional sex
- Lack of power to negotiate condom use or abstinence
with partners
- Harmful norms about the submissiveness of women to men
- Lack of female-controlled prevention methods such as
the female condom and microbicides
- Women and girls are also more likely to bear the burden
of care for those suffering from AIDS, and to suffer disproportionate
stigma and discrimination themselves when their HIV positive status
becomes known
- Biological factors increase a woman's susceptibility to
infection
Recommendations
- Increase girls' access to primary and secondary
education. One way to do so is through the elimination of primary and
secondary school fees. Government officials and local partners should also
increase girls' safety on the way to and from school and during school
hours
- Increase HIV prevention education for women and girls,
including partner negotiation skills
- Provide women with access to services that combine
attention to HIV, reproductive health, general health, and domestic
violence
- Provide boys and men as well as girls and women with
education on women's rights, including to safety and family and community
decision-making
- Bring to fruition and make available female-controlled
prevention methods, such as microbicides
- Through government policies and attention to cultural
norms, improve women's human rights generally, with specific attention to
property and inheritance, education, marriage, and legal accountability
for rape and other forms of violence
- Increase minimum age for marriage
- Promote joint, voluntary, confidential HIV testing and
counseling for couples