Gender and AIDS in Africa
By Jennifer Davis, Washington Office on Africa
Gender equity is a cross-cutting theme in the relief and development work of Lutheran World Relief, one of the Stand With Africa partners. Gender equity is rooted in the affirmation that all people are created in the image of God and that every child, woman and man receives dignity and worth from God. This theme also shapes Stand With Africa’s understanding of and response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In order to understand what will work in Africa we need to understand how gender issues impact the reality of the disease. We have asked Jennifer Davis, a member of the Board of the Washington Office on Africa, and former Executive Director of the American Committee on Africa, to help us understand how women are uniquely affected by HIV/AIDS in the African setting. The language is direct and explicit because there has been so much misunderstanding, not only of the basic biological aspects, but also the social and economic aspects of the disease.
All across Africa women living with HIV/AIDS have shown extraordinary courage, great initiative and an ability to confront the pandemic with almost no resources.
Tanzania’s Amelia Jacob is one such woman. She was awarded The Hunger Project’s Africa Prize for Leadership last October. Accepting the prize, she talked briefly about her life, her work and her dreams.
I have five children... My husband had several wives. When he became sick, he was told he had HIV. But he never told me. He decided to leave us to go back to the place of his birth. He left behind a letter telling me to go see a doctor. My husband soon died. I was not allowed to attend the burial ceremony, as his family believed I had bewitched him for his wealth.
In 1993 I was tested, and I learned that I am HIV positive... in my culture when a woman admits in public that she has HIV, people assume she is a prostitute. I was afraid I would die, but my counselor said to me, ‘You must not die. You must live, and live positively with HIV.’
That same year I met 15 people also living with HIV/AIDS ... after a great deal of struggle we were registered as a legal organization (that supports people who are HIV positive and helps them live positively...)”
She explains that her own desire to go public was driven by the desire to enable people to be open about their HIV status.
I wanted to change people’s minds. Before I tested positive I thought I was a superwoman – nothing could stop me. I was strong and powerful. I am here now. I am positive, but I have decided to speak in public – not only on television, but also to the members of the community in schools (and) churches.
I want people to change their behavior. I don’t want anybody else to test positive. And I want to stop the spread of the disease.
... We have opened 25 branches all over Tanzania. We provide them with training in counseling, home-based care, peer education and women’s empowerment. I believe that if I had kept my HIV status secret, none of this would have happened.
Allies in death dealing: the HIV virus, poverty and inequality
There are now more women than men living with the virus in Sub-Saharan Africa, where fifty-five percent of all HIV-positive adults are women. Twenty years ago, early in the HIV/AIDS epidemic, women rarely figured among the infected. But as the pandemic explodes, it is increasingly clear that women are being infected and are dying because they are women.
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