Untangling HIV, GBV and Cultural Practice
by Petronella Mugoni
Petronella Mugoni
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The most well-intentioned efforts to manage the HIV pandemic and lower HIV transmission rates cannot be addressed unless the role played by harmful cultural practices and gender-based violence, particularly violence against women, is being addressed. This is a growing realisation among those implementing programmers and providing services in the humanitarian and developmental sectors.
Because in Southern Africa, unprotected, heterosexual sex is the major mode of HIV transmission, women remain disproportionately affected by the epidemic. Research indicates that up to 60 percent of all HIV-positive adults in the region are women, and that women between the ages of 15 and 24 years are three times more likely to be infected with HIV than men of the same age range.
As well as having high HIV prevalence rates, countries in southern Africa have some of the highest incidences of violence against women in the world. Some experts hence speak of the ‘twin epidemics’ when talking about violence against women and HIV. The ‘twin epidemics’ are further exacerbated by the fact that in many communities, violence against women, and especially domestic violence, is sanctioned and seen as acceptable by most community members, because it is seen as being ‘cultural’.
In Zambia for instance, studies have found that 80 percent of wives find it acceptable to be beaten by their husbands as a form of ‘chastisement’, while in Zimbabwe, 60 percent of the murder cases which make it into the courts are a result of escalated domestic violence.
Research undertaken by the Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS) has uncovered that there are intimate linkages between a woman’s experience of violence, harmful cultural practices and her heightened susceptibility to contracting HIV.
Women who experience domestic violence, for example, are at greater risk of becoming infected with HIV, in part due to their lack of power to negotiate for safe sex. What makes matters worse is that domestic violence is often triggered by negotiations for safe sex, especially if the suggestion to use a condom is made by a married woman to her husband. The fear of or the threat of violence often leads to an environment for risky sex because even though women know or fear that their partners are not faithful and could be HIV-positive, they cannot act to protect themselves.
In addition to being a consequence of violence, an HIV-positive status can also be a cause of violence: HIV-positive women are far more likely to experience partner violence than HIV-negative women. The very act of disclosing one’s HIV-positive status to an intimate partner or other family members can precipitate violence, because women who disclose that they are HIV-positive are often seen as having ‘brought HIV into the home’. This is an important point to consider since, in the region, women often know of their HIV status first, generally through HIV testing services provided during antenatal care.
It is important to consider that violence against women contributes to high HIV prevalence among women and is sustained by complex, often culturally-based beliefs and practices that continue to systematically disempower women. For instance, forced widow inheritance, in which a deceased man’s brother takes the widow as his wife, is a risky cultural practice that occurs in many Southern African countries, because generally, none of the parties tests for HIV before the widow is being remarried.
While it cannot be denied that the practice used to be traditionally relevant and useful to stabilise families – by allowing a young widow to stay within her married family with her children as well as by providing a breadwinner for the widow and her children – in the context of HIV, this practice carries the risk of infection with the virus. A further cause of concern is that the deceased’s brother who marries the widow might already have one or more wives, which could potentially lead to a large number of new infections should any one of the people in the group be HIV-positive.
To reduce HIV infection rates, it is important to simultaneously take actions to end violence against women and phase out cultural practices harmful to women. To achieve this, both men and women need to be supported to critically think about the linkages between HIV, violence against women and certain cultural practices to help them understand how they are placed at risk of contracting HIV.
Programmes and interventions aimed at reducing HIV prevalence rates and at ending incidences of violence against women need to begin by unlocking the (culturally-based) beliefs that promote power and gender imbalances between men and women and by locating these within the socio-cultural environments in which they occur.
(END/2009)
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