The Nabbagereka of Buganda, Sylvia Nagginda, recently launched the Go Getters club at Makerere University Business School, a group that mobilises girls against cross generational sex by instilling in them confidence to pursue their dreams.
In the same breath, Kampala city boasts of a number of billboards beckoning the public to be vigilant in the fight against sexual exploitation of younger girls by older men, a phenomenon that renders them vulnerable to HIV/AIDS compared to their male contemporaries.
According to the recent Ministry of Health Sero–survey, the HIV prevalence among women aged 15 to 24 years was 4% yet it was only 1% for the men in the same age group.
Perhaps, the vulnerability of girls and women to HIV/AIDS has its roots in the African patriarchal traditions.
These are still valued even in Uganda whereby men still hold the power, authority, control and privileges, both in private and public spheres and the low status accorded to women.
Whereas the men are socialised to be aggressive and controlling, the women are supposed to be submissive, service oriented and self sacrificial.
They grow up knowing that they are duty bound to impress men at all costs and whatever men say should be acceptable. As a result of these traditions, many women are more informed about their inadequacies that they are about their potential and abilities.
Despite the women’s liberation movement, many girls are made to believe that they cannot achieve anything unless they tag themselves on to a man.
So when a stranger lavishes attention on them, they may not take time off to assess whether it is genuine or it is just a ploy to appease his lust.
The gender inequality spelled out by these traditions is synonymous with the gender inequality of the pandemic.
Many youth rush into marriage in a bid to escape societal stigma associated with being unmarried, only to be rudely awakened to the reality that they were just among the scores of women that their partners had deliberately set out to infect with HIV.
Consequently, many HIV-positive women contracted the virus in their marital bedrooms or because they were victims of rape, defilement, polygamy, incest and a myriad of other factors whose cause is deeply entrenched in patriarchal deformities.
Although women are more affected and infected by HIV/AIDS across the spectrum, many HIV/AIDS interventions have not addressed the critical gender issues.
These issues include gendered and unfair division of labour in looking after the AIDS patients, unequal access to resources, including health care and services, women’s powerlessness, low social worth and the inability to make decisions even about their own lives.
HIV/AIDS has added burdens to an already burdened, powerless, victimised, oppressed and undervalued group.
Uganda has been globally hailed for combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic from an average 18% prevalence to about 6%.
The prevalence rates have stagnated over the last six years as a result of complacency depicted by the increase in the incidence of sexually transmitted infections.
It is time visionary people and traditional leaders started re-examining how boys and girls in the past have been socialised and the values that have been passed or not passed on to them.
It is not a coincidence that the most patriarchal societies are the those where the HIV/AIDS pandemic is ravaging humanity with the greatest impact.
Political leaders should create a legal framework that gives women an opportunity to resist the virus before the nation is depopulated of its mothers.
Source: The New Vision, Uganda, 20 August 2008