HIV and the Invisibility of Women: Is There a Need to Redefine AIDS?

Abstract

For the 'public' of Britain, HIV and AIDS have only recently become issues for women, due to the publicity about the increased numbers of women diagnosed with AIDS, plus the initial results of the anonymous testing of pregnant women in antenatal clinics. But HIV has acted as a spotlight, for over a decade, to expose all the inequalities that exist worldwide, including all the familiar women's issues. The images of women in relation to HIV (where women are visible at all) have reflected society's stereotypic roles: not being seen as people in their own right, but as carers or partners of others; bad women versus good women, and so on. Therefore, we have medical statistics about women based on 'partners of infected men', mothers of infected children (medically described as 'vectors of vertical transmission'), or sex workers blamed for infecting the heterosexual community, and the 'wives at home' as (passive) victims. HIV exposes all the inequalities of women's positions in society: poorer; less access to health care for themselves; little support in their roles as carers; in less powerful positions to negotiate relationships, including the sexual ('safer sex'). And we hear discussions by some medical professionals about the 'management' of transmission to children - that is, the management of the mothers - through obligatory testing, and termination of pregnancies in women who are HIV positive. HIV has exposed, also, the low priority given to research about women's health needs. Although, in many parts of the world, equal numbers of women and men are infected by HIV, research on how HIV affects women has been only a very recent concern. Even now, very few resources are being directed towards understanding the ways the disease affects women. Earlier research was directed towards the