Why is it important to look at issues for HIV positive women separately from HIV positive men?
Women often fall off people’s agendas anyway – in decision making, for example. Women are the main carers and home-makers around the world, so when others fall sick women are the ones who have to double up on what they are already doing to take care of the sick also. So they often have little time for political meetings. This then means that others assume that women don’t have a place in political meetings and that “a woman’s place is in the home…” For HIV positive women the challenges are even greater – coping with their own illnesses as well, facing up to the prejudice of others around them, including other women, who think that somehow we only have ourselves to blame. Yet the great majority of our members never thought themselves to be at risk of HIV. Those that did, felt themselves powerless to protect themselves from the virus. Women also often find it much harder to access treatment of any kind, whether they have HIV or TB, malaria or other conditions, because they put themselves
