1. Transforming gender attitudes, behaviour and norms at multiple levels
2. Women's rights: A framework for positive change
In many places, women and girls are not able to enjoy even their most basic human rights. Not only does this reality put them at direct risk of contracting HIV, through rape for example, it also perpetuates the social devaluation of women and girls. This, in turn, aggravates socio-economic vulnerabilities at all levels, weakening the ability of women and girls to protect themselves from HIV. Securing human rights of women and girls, including their reproductive and sexual rights, is essential for reducing the increased vulnerability of women and girls to HIV and AIDS. Interventions that integrate gender and HIV and AIDS need to be rethought and redesigned using frameworks that promote the human rights of women and girls.
HIV and AIDS programmes that target women and girls can draw their rights-based content from a variety of already existing international declarations and agreements. These include: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), New York, 1979, which defines the idea of discrimination against women and sets an agenda for national action against it; the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 1994, which recognises the structural causes behind the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV and AIDS, addresses HIV prevention from the perspective of women’s vulnerability to HIV and AIDS, and provides key recommendations for addressing HIV through reproductive health services; and the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995, which explicitly recognises and reaffirms the right of all women to control all aspects of their health.
3. Material support
Women and girls consistently bear disproportionate levels of poverty, and many are economically and financially dependent on male partners. This dependence limits the degree to which they are able to take a stand in their relationships, sometimes forcing them to stay in abusive situations. That increases their chances of exposure to HIV. At times it may even lead them to trying to solve their economic problems through sex work, again increasing their HIV risk.
Raising the income-generating capacity of women and girls — and the ability to decide how to allocate earned resources — is therefore an important component of HIV/AIDS programming. This is the case even when programmes are more oriented toward changing gender-based attitudes and perceptions. We should not assume that a move on the part of male partners toward accepting more egalitarian ideas regarding gender or women will necessarily yield fairer distribution of income and resources for the women with whom they share their lives. There is also little point in creating a better social environment for women to negotiate safer sex, for example, if they cannot afford to purchase key prevention items like condoms.
