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Experts blame male egos for AIDS
The Age, Australia
September 28, 2003

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/28/1064687653540.html

Experts blame male egos for Africa's AIDS pandemic, but changing them is a task that would have made Hercules himself throw up his hands in despair.

That is the opinion of many experts at the ICASA AIDS conference in Nairobi, where the typical African male was described almost as a walking HIV risk.

Their typical thumbnail sketch was of a man ignorant or scornful of safe sex, highly promiscuous and often forcing his wife or girlfriend into having intercourse.

The biggest risk groups of all are migrant workers and truck drivers who are lonely and far from home, flushed with cash and alcohol, and tempted into unprotected sex with prostitutes - "Money and missing my honey," as the saying goes.

Such men are the silent bringers of death.

They bring the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) into their homes, infect their wives and eventually orphan their children.

Altering attitudes so that African men become more aware and more responsible is a mighty task, according to the latest studies.

"It's the male ego," is the blunt verdict of Cary Alan Johnson, the representative in Zimbabwe for Africare, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes health and AIDS awareness.

A South African program, Men as Partners, enrolled 139 men in three-month workshops to encourage them to change their behaviour.

The volunteers came from the military, from the workplace, unemployed men in Soweto, church groups, youth groups and prisons, and were interviewed both before and after the workshops.

Before, 56 per cent of the recruits said that they were the ones to decide when to use a condom in a relationship; after, this figure fell, but only slightly -- to 48 per cent.

Before the workshop, 56 per cent believed that when a woman says no to sex "she doesn't really mean it," and this fell afterwards to a still-high 41 per cent.

Seventy-nine per cent before the workshop believed it was better to be a man than a woman, and 66 per cent maintained this belief three months later.

There were some successes though: more men agreed that a woman could refuse to have unprotected sex; fewer (from 36 to 18 per cent) agreed that "women who dress sexily want to be raped"; and more said they would decide jointly with their partner whether to use contraception.

How can male attitudes be hauled out of the trench of machismo?

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