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  • Title: Our biggest challenge.
    Author: Mcfadden P, Ray S.
    Journal: South Afr Polit Econ Mon; 1994 Jun; 7(9):13-4. PubMed ID: 12287759.
    Abstract:
    An AIDS activist in Zimbabwe answered questions about the nature of the current AIDS campaign, the way of handling sexuality issues, the impact on men of women's discourse about AIDS, outreach strategies, the accuracy of information, women's status and the difficulties of women responding to the AIDS crisis. The Women and AIDS Support Network (WASN) was organized in 1989 with the aim of informing women about AIDS transmission and prevention. Information was transmitted through other organizations, because there was the lack of facility and resources to develop a grassroots effort. The request was that any meeting on women's health, development, or other issues discuss AIDS. One problem was how to teach women to overcome the obstacles to asking their husbands to use safer sex. Couples generally did not discuss sexual issues, and attempts to discuss condom use with husbands were met by the husbands' anger that their sexual behavior has been exposed at women's meetings. The concern was raised that when men feel a loss of control, violence against women is possible. A university team has been put together to work on sexuality education at schools and within the university. WASN women have found that an important source of information transmission is from mothers to daughters in an understanding, rather than a punitive, way. WASN has worked hard to show women working together instead of blaming each other. Men have actively sought to separate women from each other. WASN women desire to keep the family intact without having to sacrifice themselves in the process by accepting a subservient position to men and not having decision-making power. There is a myth that men are heads of households. Most women are running their own families and even towns, because men have chosen not to be there or because of commitments to more than one family. African women are valued so strongly for their reproductive capacity that it would almost impossible to instill in women the notion of womanhood without children. Women do not believe they have child-bearing choices. Differential AIDS mortality for women will decrease the young female population, which will increase pressure on women to bear children. The greatest challenge is to make women feel valued and believe in themselves.
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