WTF AIDS debate
I've been busy the last couple of days covering a USAID meeting. A big chunk of it was on AIDS, featuring a truly bizarre discussion about whether international policy was now focused too much on condom use or abstinence. I say bizarre because of the following graphic, shown at the end of one of the presentations.
"Coercive sex" to me means rape. A third of women in Rakai have been raped. When women have that little control over what happens to them, how can anyone realistically expect them to negotiate abstinence, condom use, or just about anything else? Doesn't the first step have to be giving women some goddamn power?
To their credit, the panelists acknowledged that need. But, they said, it's very, very difficult.
Shit, look at our own country. Women's empowerment hasn't come easily here either.
[I will put in a link to the graphic source above when it's posted online.]
"Coercive sex" to me means rape. A third of women in Rakai have been raped. When women have that little control over what happens to them, how can anyone realistically expect them to negotiate abstinence, condom use, or just about anything else? Doesn't the first step have to be giving women some goddamn power?
To their credit, the panelists acknowledged that need. But, they said, it's very, very difficult.
Shit, look at our own country. Women's empowerment hasn't come easily here either.
[I will put in a link to the graphic source above when it's posted online.]
posted by Antid Oto @ 1:21 PM
3 Comments:
At 4:42 PM,
Anonymous said…
These figures aren't actually all that much higher than results from western studies (as opposed to reported rapes, which tend to be far lower)
At 5:16 PM,
Antid Oto said…
Interesting. Do you have links to any relevant western studies?
At 11:51 AM,
Solomon Grundy said…
Yeah, I have heard the "one in three" stat (for the US) a million times (here, for instance), but I don't know the source.
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