Implementing Multiple Gender Strategies to Improve HIV and ... - ICRW

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The public health and international development communities have known for nearly two decades
that gender—the way in which societies define acceptable roles, responsibilities, and behaviors of
women and men—strongly influences how HIV spreads and how people respond to the epidemic.
Because of the interrelated factors that contribute to HIV infection, there is growing recognition that
using multiple approaches in HIV/AIDS programming is more effective than single strategies.
That said, we know little about how implementers use gender-based programs to improve HIV
services, and even less about how programs integrate multiple gender strategies to mitigate women’s
and men’s vulnerability to infection.
To begin filling these gaps, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
AIDSTAR-One project created this compendium of selected HIV programs in sub-Saharan Africa that
integrate multiple gender strategies. Technical oversight in developing the compendium was provided
by the USAID AIDSTAR-One partner organization, the International Center for Research on Women
(ICRW). Featured programs address at least two of the following gender strategies: 1) reducing
violence and sexual coercion; 2) addressing male norms and behaviors; 3) increasing women’s legal
protection; and 4) increasing women’s access to income and productive resources. The compendium
describes each of the 31 selected programs, and synthesizes trends and findings to provide initial
insights on using multiple gender strategies in HIV programming, including how strategies are
employed together, where gaps exist, and what lessons and experiences are common across
programs. Though not meant to be exhaustive, the compendium represents the depth and breadth of
current HIV programming that includes multiple gender strategies.
Overall, we found that many innovative programs exist in sub-Saharan Africa and that implementers
are successfully integrating multiple gender approaches into HIV programs. Program implementers
report numerous benefits of combining gender strategies, including ensuring project salience and
relevance, extending project reach, and reflecting the multiple, interrelated needs of beneficiaries.
The overall findings summarize how people are integrating gender strategies, how the four specific
gender strategies are being used and are working, and how people are learning from and sharing their
experiences toward strengthening programs and expanding successes. A summary of findings follows:
• Community involvement is vital to programs that address multiple gender strategies because these
approaches often require changing interconnected and sensitive gender norms. National policy
and government involvement also are important to sustaining and scaling up combined approaches.
• Of the four gender strategies:
- Reducing gender-based violence was the most common.
- Increasing women’s legal protection was the least common.
- Programs often addressed male norms and behaviors in combination with gender-based
violence efforts, successfully engaging men with innovative approaches.
- Strategies to increase women’s income were combined with other strategies to sustain
women’s capacity to address a range of issues in their lives, including violence and HIV.
• Most programs lack rigorous data collection and evaluation, often because implementers do not
have sufficient resources or technical capacity. Though all the programs featured here are genderfocused
or have strong gender components, few collect findings related to gender outcomes.
Next, we will be conducting case studies from among the programs described here, delving more
deeply into program design and implementation to learn more about successes and challenges of
ix