AIDS/HIV: A Woman's Issue rooted in Patriarchy + Capitalism

I really would like to share some information I received in my women’s studies class this morning. We had a speaker come to our class to talk to us about HIV/AIDS and women, which are disproportionately affected by this disease. Now, to be clear, my sexual education some 9 years ago did not really go into detail about HIV/AIDS. The teachers would just say “You can get STIs and/or HIV/AIDS if you don’t wear protection”, but they never went into details as to the reality of the disease.

The reason I am sharing what I learned today is because I don’t want more people to be in the dark like I was, about the reality of HIV/AIDS for women worldwide. The speaker really opened my eyes to why this is a women’s issue and how we can help change it.

During class, she told us some alarming facts and statistics:

• There are 15.7 million women world-wide living with HIV/AIDS
• 33.4 people world-wide live with HIV/AIDS
• There are 8000 infections daily
• In Canada, there are 26% of new infections yearly in women (this is an 8% increase from 1998 to 2008)
• 58% of women aged 15-19 are tested positive in Canada
• 35% of heterosexuals are undiagnosed in Canada
  

• HIV/AIDS is the leading killer of women aged 15-49 worldwide. Making it a definite issue for women
• In the United States African American women are affected the most by HIV/AIDS
• The two main components in HIV/AIDS in women worldwide are

1) Power imbalances in societies world-wide

2) Gender inequality

• The age group in Canada that is being affected the fastest is between 15-24 years old
• In Alberta, Canada 41% of HIV diagnosis in women is in the aboriginal community. 31% in the black community and 21% in the white community.
• Women who have cross-generational sex (sex with someone much older) have a higher risk of contracting HIV.
• Women have a greater surface area of mucous membranes then men, putting them at higher risk.
• Insertive (PIV) sex either in the vagina or anus almost always causes trauma in the membranes (cuts or tears) which increases the possibility of transmission

(AIDS Calgary Awareness Association, 2010)

She then informed us about possible ways to transmit the illness. I always just assumed I knew all the ways in which HIV/AIDS could be transmitted, but I was wrong. HIV/AIDS can be transmitted through fluids exchanged during sex, as well as other mucous membranes including the foreskin, male urethra, vagina, anus, mouth, eyes and nose. It can also obviously be transmitted via needles and blood products. What I never considered, however, were the instances of medical transmission. Since so many countries are living in extreme poverty, there is a lack of medical services and knowledge surrounding sharing needles. I never even considered how all of these factors played in to transmission of the disease. Another way that it can be transmitted is through birth and breast milk. The scary thing here is since HIV is asymptomatic; symptoms will not appear for about 10 years. She actually told us a story about a young boy who, when he turned 18 got ill and tested positive for HIV/AIDS. He was a virgin.

Obviously HIV/AIDS is seen a lot in African countries because of the obvious poverty in those regions. Pathetically enough, the treatment options available in the developed nations do not ever reach people in developing regions. The pharmaceutical companies charge disgusting amounts, approximately $20,000 (CA dollars) a year for daily medicine to prolong the life of people living with HIV/AIDS. Since Canada has public health care, the government provides, but this isn’t the case in America or in developing countries. Since a lot of families are living in poverty in developing nations, they may take only a bit of their medication to reduce costs. The problem here is that if you only take part of the drug or some of the dose, you can easily become resistant. The big pharmacy folks don’t care, the more they charge the more millions they get to keep for themselves. I don’t know how these people sleep at night, or how people can actually believe capitalism doesn’t kill.

It made me so upset to think about the reality of HIV/AIDS. She told us alarming statistics about our city and about testing. At the beginning of class she asked “Who here thinks they are at risk?” and a few women raised their hands. I did not, since I don’t have PIV and never have. What scared me and a few other students was the fact that our health system does not automatically test for HIV when they check for other STIs. Most of the women assumed that this would be included or that it could be tested for automatically during a yearly physical exam. Apparently, in Canada (I’m not sure about the rest of the world) a patient needs to explicitly ask for the HIV blood test or they will not perform it in your regular blood work. This is bad news for anyone who doesn’t want to ask for such a test because of the enormous stigma attached to the disease. Women aren’t socially accepted to be sexually active or have more than one sexual partner, so testing is “taboo” to a lot of us because of the way society perceives our sexuality. This is making it more and more difficult for people to even know they carry the illness, which is causing numbers to climb in cases.

In terms of why this is happening and why it is happening so often to young women has to do with capitalism, patriarchy and social constructions influenced by both. Capitalism allows huge companies that make and sell drugs to exclude those without money. They are literally killing people for being poor or just not having extreme amounts of extra cash for medication. Capitalism also sustains women’s lower class in society which plays a huge role in why we are disproportionately affected by this disease. If everyone was able to get decent health care, the spread would eventually stop because people would be aware they carried the disease and could receive treatment to prolong life. It hurts me on a personal level, too since my uncle passed away from AIDS in the late 1980s, before any real stable treatments for the disease were available. If he could have made it 10 more years, maybe he could have got the treatment and maybe he could still be alive today. It hurts to know so many people make money off the misery of others.

Patriarchy plays a major role here, too. Women are subordinate in every single patriarchal society (which, lets face it, is almost all societies right now) and this lower status allows us to become more vulnerable to violence and thus more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. In many countries there are few laws surrounding rape which leads to women being infected by force. Also, women are not meant to be sexually assertive, we are told to be passive and subordinate when a man doesn’t feel like putting on a condom. Its “unacceptable” to challenge a man who does not want to wear protection. This isn’t something that randomly occurs in non-western nations only, this happens everywhere. I always hear about young women who have boyfriends who use threats and anything else you can think of to get their girlfriends to go along with unprotected sex. According to the speaker, the most at-risk group (at least in my province) is heterosexual women. I must admit, I was not surprised when I found this out. Why? Because many heterosexual relationships struggle with power, thus women lose power and men gain it. When men gain power they make decisions for us and our sexuality. This is patriarchy in practice. This is patriarchy in private that greatly affects the public. Women are dying because men do not want their privilege challenged. If a woman carries condoms in her purse, she’s a slut. If a man does it (keyword: if) he’s a champ – he fucks lots of women and thus is rewarded by his male friends. A woman requesting a condom just isn’t living in the moment. Not to mention how many men downright lie about how many sexual partners they have.

So, what can be done? Well, education, for one. If I was not educated today, I wouldn’t be able to share the information with my readers. Education is tricky, however, because so many principles of patriarchy, capitalism and the like are ingrained deep into the roots of our culture. Trying to reconstruct institutions of oppression are difficult – how are you supposed to get a Christian minister on board with teaching kids about safe sex? How are you supposed to get a devoted group of Roman Catholics to teach their kids about condom use? It’s not so cut and dry. Things need to change on a global and policy level. Laws need to be made; the government needs to wake up.

It saddens me that we are left to work within systems like capitalism and religion that have oppressed people for so long. I wish we could overhaul it all and start again, but that’s just the idealist in me.

Please, share what you can amongst friends – this disease is a woman’s issue…it has everything to do with our struggle and ending oppression is the first step in finding a way to save lives.