HIV and AIDS

Overview

This book takes a look at the key challenges of HIV and AIDS from a gender perspective, and describes positive responses in areas of the world as diverse as Cambodia, South Africa, the UK, and Papua New Guinea. The impacts of HIV on women and men across the world are devastating and wide-ranging. Girls may have to drop out of school to look after sick relatives, boys to earn money. The death of working-age adults can mean that surviving family members struggle to get by, with grandparents shouldering the burden of looking after orphaned grandchildren, often in dire poverty. Young women may have to resort to sex work, and other risky survival strategies to support themselves and their families. Young men are growing up with ideas about masculinity that include violence and the sexual domination of women, and would be ostracised by peers if they acted otherwise, contributing to the spread of HIV. The contributors analyse these contexts, exploring the links between HIV, AIDS, gender inequality, and poverty. They present accounts of successful interventions, recording experience, describing good practice, and sharing information about resources. This book is essential reading for development practitioners and policy makers involved in responding to the HIV and AIDS crisis. Working in Gender & Development series bring together themed selections of the best articles from the Oxfam journal Gender & Development, supplemented with specially commissioned articles and material drawn from other Oxfam publications. Each title is edited by a key thinker in the field, and includes an up-to-the-minute overview of current thinking and thoughts on future policy responses.