HIV & AIDS-A Deep Human Concern

ing in these areas, and the woman following,
using her head alright, as much as she is
allowed to use her head, but not always allowed
to use it. The high expectations that
she will remain faithful to her partner, responding
to a man is her primary role. Yes
she can have sexual pleasure, but that’s not
the primary thing, her primary thing so many
women are taught, instructed, is to ensure
that the man has sexual pleasure, and hers
comes secondary to him. In other words
we have built in to this whole sexual area a
subordination of women
to men and that is not
right. That is not the way
it should be, and that
perspective is something
that helps very much to
bring the whole AIDS issue
or HIV so very, very
far forward.
So I think that one of
the things that has got
to be done in this area
is that there must be a
total transformation in
gender norms. We have
gone along too many
years with them. They are
dishonourable. They are
disempowering for women.
They are debasing
and destructive for men
as well as for women, and if our generation
does not set about changing these things,
and making them more human, then we are
going to have problems.
The end of last week or earlier this week, the
World Health Organisation produced a booklet:
“Sixteen Ideas for Dealing with Violence
Against Women”. It summed them up by
saying we must do something about changing
and transforming our gender norms and
our cultural norms. I believe this change is
required not just for dealing with HIV but so
that we respect women. We are not trying to
bring a change around here in order to keep
a disease under control. That’s important –
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“I have a dream that
that there is no more
that we are all one in
absolutely, very important, but much, much
more important is the dignity and the respect
that is due to a woman as a fellow human
being, and that we work for that and that we
try to achieve that, and in achieving that that
we do achieve something that will help us
also to overcome one big aspect of the HIV
epidemic.
A long time ago, 1995 I think it was, the
then director of what was known as the World
AIDS Programme, I think it was called, a man
called Jonathan Mann, he
was killed tragically in an
air crash. He said, “The
low status of women is
at the heart of the AIDS
epidemic”. The central
issue is not technological
or biological, it is the
inferior status and role of
women. When women’s
human rights and dignity
are not respected, society
creates and favours their
vulnerability to AIDS. My
friends, we are living at
a time when there are
changes coming about in
the relationship between
men and women and I
think what we should be
trying to do is to speed up
these changes, to bring
them forward more quickly, not just because
of AIDS but because of human dignity, because
of people, who they are. You might say
that’s very difficult, how are we to do that. I
do not know how we are to do it, but I know
that we must do it. Maybe the first part of the
how is that we are committed to doing it, no
matter how hard it may be. George Bernard
Shaw once said, you get it on a card in some
of the card shops, “Some look at things that
are and ask, ‘Why?’ I look at things that never
were and I ask, ‘Why not?’”
Equality between women and men. I look at
that and I ask, “Why not?” It never was. Hard
to achieve, but if we do not set our hearts on