Zimbabwe‘s national responds to HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa is commendable and has become an envy to many countries in the region.
But do Zimbabwean women have a reason to celebrate as gender discrimination in our societies and their lower position continue to negatively affect them when it comes to the fight against HIV and AIDS?
HIV and AIDS affect women and men differently in terms of vulnerability and impact.
In Zimbabwe HIV and AIDS has a woman’s face, the pandemic has led to child headed families or rather ‘girl child headed’ and ‘granny headed’ families. Being a young girl in charge of a family means that girl will have to forgo education to look after other family members.
HIV pandemic has increased the burden for women. Poor household adjust by shifting more of the care into the household and on the shoulders on women and girls.
In our society we have a cultural tradition of extended families; if somebody gets sick with HIV and AIDS they are returned to their homes to the care giver who is usually a mother or the grandmother. If the person with HIV dies the orphans are left in the hands of the grandmothers or aunts or sisters.
In the end it’s the woman or girl who bears the burden of HIV and also poverty without any help from other extended members of the society or government.
Women and Aids Support Network (WASN) Communications Manager Evince Mugumbate said: “The work that women carry out, paid or unrecognised, is more easily disrupted by AIDS. This is due to the fact that the burden of caring for HIV infected family and community members falls more on women and girls; this diminishes income generating and schooling possibilities.”
Other factors are that of inheritance, custody and support laws, which spell doom for women living with HIV and AIDS who would have lost partners.
Some women are abandoned and consequently deprived of economic opportunities simply because of the stigma that is associated with HIV and AIDS.
This thus leaves them shunned and marginalised subsequently increasing the pressure on them to survive.
Girls under the age 15 are engaging in sexual activity, many through coercion, and society ignores them because they are not important. This is despite the obvious fact that they have limited knowledge of sexual and reproductive health and more vulnerable to HIV and AIDS.
Gender based violence both physical and verbal, which is rooted in Zimbabwe’s traditional practices, increases women’s vulnerability to HIV as women fear to question their male partners’ extramarital sexual behaviour or negotiate for safer sex.
Sexual violence against women is also another factor that contributes to women’s vulnerability to HIV. According to an adult rape clinic, of the rape survivors who attended to at the clinic in 2010, 11 tested positive for HIV and were referred to the opportunistic infections clinic at Parerinyatwa Hospital in Harare.
As a result of these gender inequalities, women lack the choice and power to control their sexual and reproductive health.
Again women living with disabilities have a disadvantage in terms of access to information on HIV and access to services such as treatment.
The Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMCTC) programme, whcih was introduced to fight the pandemic, has got its challenges. In as much as clinics now offer counselling and testing to every pregnant women not all of them accept it while others fail to return to receive their results due to lack of integration of services, cost, and other social factors. Most men still believe that PMCTC is a woman’s concern.
According to the UN, women in Zimbabwe still face several hurdles in removing the inequalities and discrimination that impede on women’s health rights. The limited access to health services is cited as one of the reasons for women and girls’ vulnerability to HIV.
The Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) found that 81% of women age 15-49 know that consistent use of condom is a means of preventing the spread of HIV although they face a challenge of accessing the female condom.
Self- protection of women against HIV is not legally enshrined. The National Family Planning Act does not have a mandate to assist women in self-protection initiatives against HIV infections.
According to the UNAIDS’ Know your epidemic-know your response 2010 report, Zimbabwe’s gender policy, which was approved in 2004, does not provide adequate guidelines for addressing the gendered and development dimensions of HIV and AIDS. Neither does it mention the gender issues that increase women’s risk of HIV infection.
The Ministry of Women Affairs Gender and Community Development has the overall mandate for the mainstreaming of gender to contribute to the Zimbabwe’s HIV response but is under-resourced and so is unable to fulfil this critical mandate and has not made much headway in supporting initiatives that seek to address the HIV epidemic among women.
Organisation such as the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council must provide information and materials to facilitate the ability of women to protect themselves against HIV infection.
The effort that is being done on the male circumcision (MC) campaign that was launched in October 2009 should also involve women as they have strong influence when it comes to the circumcision of their sons.
In addition, the Ministry of Finance should make sure that HIV budgets take into consideration the needs of the varying categories of women.
great article