Women in South African AIDS Activism

Part of Issue 7.3 | Summer 2009 — Toward a Vision of Sexual and Economic Justice in the Scholar & Feminist Online, this article highted the AIDs crises amongst women in South Africa. The country’s AIDS epidemic is fundamentally gendered as it has more women than men living with the virus. In particular, the 2005 Nelson Mandela/HSRC study estimated that 13.3 percent of South African women were then living with H.I.V., compared to 8.2 percent of South African men (Shisana et al. 2005: 33). Young women are particularly affected by the epidemic. Owing to widespread cultural stereotypes that women are “naturally” better at domestic tasks and child-rearing, women also bear the bulk of the burden of the largely unpaid work of caring for relatives and community members ill with AIDS, and for children orphaned by the disease.Additionally, there are challenges within AIDS organisation as female activists face various forms of sexism, so female centric concerns are less represented as plans are made to tackle the crises.