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Condom use in marital relationships and other stable relationships
Womens Action Group (WAG)
November 05, 2010

Women's Action Group is a women's rights organisation whose grounding is feminist and therefore, its work on women's rights endeavours to improve the conditions of women particularly in the area of sexual and reproductive health rights. Through its experience of working with women for over 25 years, WAG continues to identify and challenge societal norms and values that hinder women from practicing and fully enjoying their sexual rights. The right to safe sex being a fundamental one, in the context of HIV and AIDS.

The year 2010, has seen a number of researches taking place in the HIV and AIDS arena, as the need to understand local epidemics and map out local responses has become a key programming concern. The know your epidemic-know your response (KYE-KYR) model has influenced research into the modes of HIV transmission in Zimbabwe. The current review of the Zimbabwe National HIV and AIDS Strategic Plan (ZNASP 1) will also be influenced to an extent by the KYE-KYR approach. This is to ensure that the nation builds on the gains that it has made, in reversing a mature epidemic particularly the positive contribution of the National Behaviour Change Strategy.

As a women's rights activist organisation, WAG is concerned with some of these research findings that have identified married women as a high risk group in terms of HIV transmission, however, condom use in marital relationships and other stable relationships is as low as 4%. This evidence, when juxtaposed against the reality of concurrent sexual partnerships, intimate partner violence targeting women and the low levels of economic security, presents a serious challenge for programmers and other practitioners to come up with interventions that ensure that married women can be better protected and empowered to prevent HIV infection.

UNAIDS (2009) notes that for every two people placed on treatment in the world, five more are getting infected, and these reality are even more visible at the very local level. Therefore efforts on treatment are being outpaced by new infections. Despite, the much celebrated decline of HIV prevalence at national level, women still constitute the majority of people living with HIV, with up to 60% of people living with HIV being women. Marriage is no longer a safe haven for women, hence the need to initiate and sustain dialogue on promotion of condom use in marital relationships as well as other stable relationships.

There is need for a conscious effort to address the vulnerability of married women at programming level and policy level. In addition there is an even greater need for increased dialogue as community level on empowering married women to prevent HIV. Gender sensitive programmes will be the key to responding adequately to the epidemic in the KYE-KYR mode. To emphasise the need to reflect on the status of married women with regard to HIV and AIDS, Melinda Gates aptly capture the essence of WAG's viewpoint on women's sexual rights when she asserted, "A woman does not have to seek permission from her partner in order to save her own life."

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