‘Take your mat and go!’: Rural Malawian women's strategies in the HIV/AIDS era

Abstract

In much of HIV/AIDS prevention literature, women are depicted as passive and ill‐equipped to confront the epidemic without external support to enhance their status, autonomy, and negotiation skills. This paper critically evaluates this depiction, using data from in‐depth interviews conducted with married couples in rural Malawi. It focuses on the extent to which married women perceive that they have the ability to protect themselves from infection and on the prevention strategies that they employ. Interview data suggest that women have identified a range of contextually appropriate ways to resist exposure to HIV. These strategies include sitting and discussing the dangers of HIV/AIDS with their husbands; utilizing social networks for advice and as advocates; publicly confronting husbands' girlfriends; and divorcing men who do not adopt safer practices. These locally‐formulated strategies are not likely to be followed consistently, and they may not be the most effective strategies in preventing husbands from straying or protecting women from contracting HIV/AIDS. Their existence, however, demonstrates that rural Malawian women believe that they have some agency to protect themselves; and, they are in fact using locally appropriate strategies to do so.