Economic policy and women’s rights are key to solving global AIDS epidemic

Economic policy and women’s rights are key to solving global AIDS epidemic
New studies examine AIDS, sexuality and economic development

BY RAJ MANKAD
Special to the Rice News

New studies published in the journal Feminist Economics show that economic policies and women’s rights are key to solving the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The journal, which is edited by Rice University’s Diana Strassmann, uses a special issue to explore such topics as the gendered nature of access to treatment, the complexity of risks faced by women, women’s unpaid work caring for people with HIV/AIDS, and migration and AIDS.

“AIDS research and the media concentrate on the search for a magic-bullet solution to the epidemic,” Strassmann said. “We need instead to examine the complex economic underpinnings of the AIDS epidemic that link decisions made in government and corporate boardrooms to decisions made in bedrooms.”

According to the World Health Organization, women account for 50 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS. The factors that affect vulnerability to the disease and its consequences are different for women than for men. Policies that appear gender-blind can have a different impact on men and women because women are disproportionately involved in unpaid or informal labor, such as child care, care for the sick or elderly, and sex work. These types of roles mean that women’s burden and exposure to the disease are often greater than men’s.

“A woman’s ability to demand that her partner wear a condom depends on her bargaining power,” said Cecilia Conrad, dean of faculty at Scripps College and one of two guest editors for the special issue. “The studies in this issue explore ways individuals can gain the economic means, legal rights and social support to make safer choices, like using a condom, so the virus isn’t spread in the first place.”

The articles in the special issue of Feminist Economics focus on developing countries, regions in Africa, Latin America and Asia and immigrants from Africa to Europe. In sub-Saharan Africa, women account for 61 percent of those infected, and that number is increasing. 

“Some of the consequences of the HIV/AIDS epidemic for women have remained largely invisible,” said Cheryl Doss, director of graduate studies in international relations at Yale University and co-editor of the issue. “Feminist economic analysis provides a means to make the invisible visible by examining how institutions and policies have a different impact on men and women.”

Strassmann, professor of the practice in humanities at Rice, said the special issue is designed to do more than provide facts and figures.

“The purpose of the special issue and the journal is not only to further the pursuit of economic knowledge but to influence policy and the quality of human lives,” she said. “We hope the special issue reaches as many people as possible, including advocates and policymakers.”

The issue will be available through the journal’s publisher, Routledge, in print Nov. 20 and online at http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=g905313370~db=all?jumptype=alert&alerttype=new_issue_alert,email&waited=0.

Consistently ranked among top women’s studies and economics journals, Feminist Economics is the official journal of the International Association for Feminist Economics. Now in its second decade, the journal has attained international recognition for the quality and importance of its scholarship.