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How does HIV/AIDS affect girls and women?
United Education Children's Fund (UNICEF)
June 06, 2006

http://www.unicef.org/aids/index_hivaids_girls_women.html

Isabella Matambanadzo, Dir. of the Zimbabwe Women's Resources Network, addresses the vulnerability of girls and women

The new face of HIV/AIDS: Young and female
Girls and women are especially vulnerable to HIV infection and to the impact of AIDS. Globally, more than half of all people living with HIV are female -- a sharp contrast to the early stages of the epidemic when AIDS was thought of mainly as a disease striking at men.

Girls are at very high risk of infection. This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, the region hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. In this region, more than two out of three newly-infected 15-24-year olds are female.

For adolescents between the ages of 15 and 19, five or six girls are infected for every boy in worst-affected areas. This pattern – indicating ‘age mixing’ or sex between older men and younger women is also seen in other regions around the world. Even marriage, particularly for very young women, guarantees no protection from infection.

Vulnerable in many ways
Evidence also suggests that a large share of new HIV infections are due to gender-based violence in homes, schools, the workplace and other social arenas. Forced or coerced sex renders a woman even more vulnerable to infection, and the younger she is, the more likely it is that she will contract HIV.

Women and girls are physiologically more vulnerable to infection, and gender-based inequities compound their risks. They are more likely to be poor and powerless, have less education, less access to land, credit or cash, and to social services.

Grinding poverty, along with a lack of education and productive resources, multiplies the chances that girls and women will sell sex as their only economic option. In AIDS-affected communities, ‘survival sex’ has become common currency – traded for food, cash, and ‘shelter’ – even for education.

Conflicts – and the attendant violence and poverty – exacerbate these human rights abuses as communities disintegrate and basic services are destroyed. Rape is a well-known instrument of war. And women and children are often exposed to sexual violence in crowded, unsafe camps for refugees or the displaced.

Education is the best defense
While HIV/AIDs feeds off gender inequality, it also aggravates it. Take education. Before the pandemic, girls were already less likely than boys to get an education. Today, children are being pulled out of school to care for their AIDS-stricken families, and in Zimbabwe, for example, 70 per cent of these caregivers are girls.

Once out of school, a young girl’s vulnerability is compounded. She is cut off from the life saving information and skills, and doesn’t learn to fend for herself, economically or socially.

At the same time, schools are the best defence against HIV infection. Evidence suggests that girls who stay in school longer delay their first sexual experiences; they have more knowledge about HIV prevention and a greater understanding of HIV testing. And schools offer the best means to deliver HIV-prevention information, as well as the long-term social skills that help protect against infection.

But ensuring girls are in school isn't enough. They need access to the right kind of youth-friendly health services and they must grow up in environments that are protective and that safeguard them from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect.

Getting boys and men involved
In addition, legal protections for women must be strengthened, women's right to inherit property and other productive assets must be assured, violence against women and girls must be eliminated, and women and girls must have fair access to HIV treatment, care and prevention services.

But these inequities will never be adequately addressed unless men and boys are fully involved and take responsibility for their actions. Men and boys must not tolerate violence against women and girls, they must not engage in sexual behaviour that puts women and girls at risk. And men must be committed to educating their daughters.

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