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Spousal notification and HIV/AIDS
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
Extracted from Human Rights Bulletin, March 2006: Number 39
March 2006

Introduction
As the World commemorates International Women’s Day on 8 March, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum takes this opportunity to discuss some rights that relate to women and some challenges that face women in Zimbabwe in the context of HIV and AIDS.

International Women's Day officially established by the U.N. in 1977, provides an opportunity to celebrate the progress made to advance equality for women and to assess the challenges that remain. It is the story of ordinary women as makers of history, it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. The United Nations General Assembly, composed of delegates from every Member State, celebrates International Women's Day on 8 March to recognize that peace and social progress require the active participation and equality of women, and to acknowledge the contribution of women to international peace and security. For the women of the world, the Day is an occasion to review how far they have come in their struggle for equality, peace and development.

Background to International Women’s Day
The International Women’s Day was conceived at a time of great social turbulence and crisis. In the years before 1910, from the turn of the 20th century, women in industrially developed nations were beginning to enter paid work in some numbers. Their jobs were however sex-segregated and confined mainly to textiles, manufacturing and domestic services where conditions were wretched and wages worse than dismal. It was a time when trade unions were developing with industrial disputes breaking out. In 1908, on the last Sunday of February, socialist women in the United States initiated the first Women's Day when large demonstrations took place calling for the vote and the political and economic rights of women. The following year, 2,000 people attended a Women's Day rally in Manhattan.

In 1910, Women's Day was taken up by socialists and feminists throughout the country. Later that year delegates went to the second International Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen with the intention of proposing that Women's Day become an international event. Inspired by the actions of US women workers and their socialist sisters, a proposal was framed and put to the conference of socialist women that women throughout the world should focus on a particular day each year to press for their demands. The conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, representing unions, socialist parties, working women's clubs, and including the first three women elected to the Finnish parliament, greeted the suggestion with unanimous approval and International Women's Day was the result. That conference also reasserted the importance of women's right to vote, dissociated itself from voting systems based on property rights and called for universal suffrage - the right to vote for all adult women and men.

From the time that International Women’s Day was established as an international day, there is now general understanding that until men and women work together to secure the rights and full potential of women, lasting solutions to the world's most serious social, economic and political problems are unlikely to be found.

Notably, in recent years there has been much progress in the recognition of women’s rights. Women now have to some extent, increased access to education, health care and they now participate in paid labour even though there are still glaring differences in opportunities available for women and men. For instance, the United Nations notes that the majority of the world's 1.3 billion absolute poor are women. On average, women receive between 30 and 40 per cent less pay than men earn for the same work and everywhere, women continue to be victims of violence, with rape and domestic violence listed as significant causes of disability and death among women of reproductive age worldwide,.

Despite the challenges facing women, nations have taken notable strides to improve the status of women and Zimbabwe is no exception. Zimbabwe is actively participating in the promotion of women’s rights and is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination and the Gender SADC Declaration. As the nation celebrates another International Women’s Day, the Forum seeks to discuss some possible policies that can improve women’s rights especially around reproductive health and in the context of HIV/AIDS. This is based on the principle of "Spousal Notification" in the event that a partner in a union finds out he/she is infected with the HIV virus.

The Case for Spousal Notification
The United Nations has recorded that since the AIDS epidemic was first acknowledged, the number of AIDS related deaths is escalating with women constituting a large proportion of this figure. In 2000 alone, 11.5 million people died in Sub-Saharan Africa which represented 80% of the world’s death toll.

It was argued in 1995 that there is a systematic disadvantage to women across a range of capabilities from being well nourished, enjoying good health, self esteem etc. Individually and collectively these factors bear on women and increase their vulnerability. Women’s poor access to education and other resources impacts negatively on them with the result being that of dependence on men for subsistence. Such dependence is often expressed both within and outside marriage through the exploitation of sexual relations. Even where a woman would not engage in a sexual relationship with a partner especially if she suspects or knows her partner could be HIV positive, if she is bound to that partner and dependant on him, her bargaining powers are limited. In trusted relations, women’s ability to negotiate for safer sex is limited where as in casual or straight forward commercial relations there seems to be some element of power to bargain.

Health practitioners such as counsellors, medical doctors, social workers and psychologists are privileged with confidential information each time a client visits their consulting rooms. But when one of the spouses from a union is HIV positive, should the practitioner inform the other partner or withhold information and hope the infected spouse will share this information with the "affected". Who should bear the burden of breaking the silence?

Given the increasing scale at which AIDS is spreading, it should become imperative that spousal notification becomes a requirement on the part of health practitioners. The benefits associated with spousal notification include:

Positive Living
Once the partners know that one of them is infected, it creates a ground in which they can share information on how they can deal with the situation without the other becoming infected as well. Issues of sexual intimacy are dealt with in a manner which will safeguard the other partner.

Planning for the future
Planning for the future may include writing a will, preparing burial insurance and saving for the future especially if there are minors still needing to be looked after.

Accepted norm
Once it is established that practitioners are obliged to share such information, it becomes an accepted routine and standard procedure to disclose the information to the other party. Resistance, even by health practitioners is possible but with sensitization on the positive factors associated with spousal notification this might be overcome.

There are positives and negatives associated with spousal notification. The negatives include:

Denial
Health workers argue that nothing is as difficult as to fight the denial that shadows the AIDS. Denial which is accompanied by fatalism is by far the biggest obstacle to health workers in containing the disease.

Possible Break-up of the union
The relationship may become strained leading to a break up of the union especially if it was based on perceived trust and honesty.

Infection of others
In anger, a possible reaction is to respond by engaging in promiscuous sexual behaviour aimed at infecting as many people as possible. Undoubtedly, this behaviour is irrational, destructive and totally unfair on the unsuspecting partners. But to the infected person this is a way of getting back at the other sex for a world perceived as unfair.

As another International Women’s Day is being celebrated, it is imperative that each individual reflects on how they can make the life of a single woman better. It is through this conscious and deliberate effort on the part of society that women can also become recognized players in the development arena. The case for spousal notification is a start. With the ever increasing statistics of women becoming infected by HIV, it is vital that all sectors of society embrace the concept of spousal notification for the protection of the current and future generations.

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