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Women and Girls Bear the
Burden in ZIMBABWE
By Lewis Machipisa
http://www.betweensistersfoundation.org/
HARARE, ZIMBABWE. When Mariah’s husband died last year
of AIDS, she decided not to tell anyone, for fear of isolation.
“I first knew of my HIV status when my husband got ill. We both went for HIV
testing and we were counseled and given our results. We were both found HIV
positive,” recalls the 35-year-old mother of three. “My husband got worse
and finally died late last year. His relatives insisted that I should be
inherited by one of his brothers. This is when I decided to tell them that I
was HIV positive and that my husband had died of AIDS.”
Then all hell broke loose.
“My in-laws started accusing me of having killed their son and they told me
that I should leave their family and go back to my own relatives,” Mariah
adds. She was kicked out of her rural Mutoko home, 200 kilometres from the
capital city Harare, and separated from her three young children. Mariah’s
story is a common one in this Southern African nation. Family members do not
usually have a constructive attitude towards HIV positive individuals,
especially when they are female. In fact, due to gender specific roles,
women and young girls are more likely than men to bear the negative
consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, according to a community-based study
conducted by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in
Zimbabwe.
Unequal burden of care
Women and young girls are becoming the primary caregivers of other relatives
who have HIV, and are the ones who assume the responsibility of caring for
the orphans left behind when both parents die of AIDS.
Due to the increased number of AIDS patients in Zimbabwean hospital wards
and the cost of caring for them, hospital authorities have resorted to
discharging these patients and encouraging Home-Based Care (HBC).
Women once again find themselves in a dilemma of taking care of these
terminally ill patients. “The majority of care givers are women in child
bearing ages who have no previous experience in caring for patients with
AIDS, and usually experience practical nursing problems with their patients
due to inadequate information on HBC,” the UNIFEM study points out.
Zimbabwe is severely affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. One in four sexu-ally
active adults are infected.
The UNIFEM study was carried out in the five Zimbabwean provinces of
Mashonaland East, Manicaland, Midlands, Matabeleland South and Mashonaland
Central. It found that even young children, 76 percent of whom are young
girls, are being taken out of school to look after sick relatives or
children orphaned by AIDS.
“Of the orphans, the hardest hit is the girl child,” says Martha Mahonde,
pro-gramme officer, UNIFEM Southern Africa Regional Office. “She takes over
after the parents die. The girl drops out of school and takes over the
responsibilities of the family, even if she is younger than the boy child.”
This scenario perpetuates the long-standing educational imbalance between
boys and girls, which in turn jeopardizes the girls’ opportunities in life,
thus expos-ing them to greater economic exploitation and a higher risk of
infection.
Mahonde was shocked to find out that some traditional practices which were
thought to be dying survive. “In Plumtree (a town in southern Zimbabwe near
the South African border) truck drivers have sex with young girls in the
belief that it minimizes their chances of being involved in an accident!”
Rural areas hardest hit
To address the issues related to HIV/AIDS and gender, UNIFEM conducted a
two-year (1999-2001) global pilot project titled “Gender Focused
Interventions to Address the Challenges of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic.” In
addition to Zimbabwe, UNIFEM did community-based studies in Barbados, India,
Mexico, Senegal and Viet Nam.
“When I went out into the rural areas, what really touched me was, that
despite being the poorest of the poor, women are going out of their way to
make a difference,” says Mahonde. She believes that while there is quite a
lot of money for HIV/AIDS, it is not reaching the remote areas where it is
needed most. “Maybe we are spending too much time strategizing on how to do
the work, meet-ings and conferences. It’s time to make that bold move to the
rural areas where people are desperate for our help,” she says.
The aim of the pilot project is to build the capacity of women’s
organizations to zero in on the new emerging challenges of HIV/AIDS in a
gender-responsive man-ner, and to expose the legal and social issues that
hinder adoption of preventative measures in matrimonial settings. The
project is core funded by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and
the United Nations Population Fund.
The UNIFEM study recommends that the Zimbabwean Government develop
gender-sensitive, multi-sectoral programmes and strategies to empower women
and girls and enable men to assume their responsibility to prevent HIV/AIDS.
“Of paramount importance is the need to disseminate, and translate into
vernacu-larlanguages, the vast amount of information so far gathered in
different researches on HIV/AIDS,” the study urges.
Breaking the dependence mould But even if women had the knowledge about
HIV/AIDS, strategies to lessen their economic dependence on men are key
because without economic indepen-dence, the majority of women would still
not be able to use this knowledge, the study stresses.
“This highlights the helplessness expressed by most women, who admitted that
due to their economic dependence on men, they are unable to negotiate safe
sex.”
The study’s conclusion: “A gender-sensitive approach to addressing HIV /
AIDS will allow the safeguarding of women’s interests, enhance their rights,
thus creating an enabling environment within which women will effectively
con-tribute in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
Lewis Machipisa is a correspondent with
Inter Press Service (IPS) based in
Zimbabwe. This edited article appeared earlier
this year in SHAAN, an independent
publication of IPS, with support from
UNIFEM.
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