Gender Across Borders

Nadja Benaissa Photograph courtesy of Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Nadja Benaissa, of the popular German all-girl pop group No Angels, has been charged in criminal court with grievous bodily harm and attempted aggravated assault. Her crime? Having unprotected sex with three men without informing them of her HIV-positive status. One of the men has since become HIV-positive as well. (The other two tested negative for the virus.) Although the singer is now 28, she was tried in juvenile court because her crimes allegedly began when she was only 17, the age at which she became infected with the virus. She faced a prison sentence of between six months and 10 years, but was given a two-year suspended sentence and 300 hours of community service working with those who are HIV-positive. Has this case educated the public to take strides against infection or further increased the stigma against HIV-positive people?

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Women in Papau New Guinea

Earlier this week, Papau New Guinea apologized before CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) for its inaction against the torture and murder of women suspected of witchcraft. Government officials did not deny that those alleged to practice witchcraft have been tortured and killed. According to the Center for Independent Studies, more than 500 women have been attacked. In 2009, there were more than 50 murders of those accused of practicing black magic, including one woman who was burned alive. Why are the people of this South Pacific island nation accusing women, and some men, of practicing black magic? They are blamed for the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, which is devastating the country’s population. Read the rest of this entry →

Image courtesy of unaidstoday.org

The International AIDS Conference was held last week in Vienna. Among the topics discussed was the intersection of disability and HIV. Specifically, a session led by Health Canada and Global Partnership for Disability and Development investigated the integration of disability issues in HIV support programs. Since organizations that focus on HIV do not frequently cater to the needs of people with disabilities, and organizations that focus on disability do not frequently cater to the needs of people living with HIV, people with disabilities who are also HIV-positive lack a strong community of support. People with disabilities comprise approximately 10% of the world’s population — a staggering number of people to lack adequate accessibility to HIV prevention, testing and treatment resources.

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Image via Eventpress

June is LGBT Pride Month in the United States and, all around the world, parades and other Pride events are taking place. This past Saturday, Christopher Street Day was held in Berlin. Unfortunately, what should have been a fun and festive occasion for the city’s LGBT population was turned ugly for one HIV-positive man who may face criminal charges due to his status.

Harald Fassanelli, a former cast member on Big Brother Germany, was on one of the floats in the Christopher Street Day parade. During the parade, he was reportedly assaulted by a group of other men. Put into a headlock and unable to breathe, Fassanelli defended himself by biting his attackers, injuring between six and eight people. Fassanelli was arrested and quickly released but, because of his HIV status, he is now being investigated by the police for “assault causing serious bodily injury.”

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Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Walking skeletons, stacks of bodies in morgues, mountains of newly turned earth in cemeteries.

According to a recent New York Times article, “At Front Lines, AIDS War is Falling Apart,” this will soon be the reality in most of Africa and other countries like Haiti, Guyana and Cambodia.

For those of us in developed nations, AIDS often seems like a thing of the past; a challenge that we’ve overcome. (However, the reality, here too, is that it’s not. Did you know that every 35 minutes an American woman tests positive for HIV? Women and girls of color—especially black women and girls—bear a disproportionately heavy burden of HIV/AIDS in the United States.)

Globally, HIV/AIDS is still an epidemic of unsettling proportions. There are currently 33 million people infected with HIV/AIDS; 14 million are immuno-compromised enough to need drugs yet fewer than four million are on treatment. Globally, 7,400 people are infected every day.

As the global AIDS crisis persists, there is an increasing shift among donors to focus health initiatives on “cost effective interventions.” For example, under its new Global Health Initiative, the Obama administration has announced plans to shift its focus to mother-and-child health—emphasizing investment in “diseases that cost less to fight, including pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and fatal birth complications” rather than “expensive” AIDS interventions.

I, like other feminists, have been thrilled to witness more and more attention on global maternal and reproductive health in the past year. However, I can’t help but question the motivations. Is a mathematical “bigger bang for our buck” approach valid when we are considering human lives? Furthermore, human beings—and the diseases that impact them—don’t exist in isolation from one another, or from their societal context. Is it effective to confront health initiatives as if they do? Read the rest of this entry →

Over here at GAB, we’re excited about an upcoming conference called Women Deliver, which several of us will be attending and covering, from the feminist beat.  It’s a big international women’s health and rights meeting planned for June 7-9 in Washington, DC, and that’s just a few weeks before the world’s G8/G20 Summits in Canada, where maternal health has also been marked a priority.

This is turning out to be a big year for issues of global women’s health and rights, at least within the global policy context.  Over the past year, there has been more and more attention to the issues of global maternal and reproductive health within the context of foreign policy. The UN has also made these issues a priority.

Her Madame Awesomeness Hillary Clinton has repeatedly stated that

Photo: Lynsey Addario

1) reproductive rights are human rights and 2) investing in women’s health and rights is a smart security and economic strategy, and the bedrock of her foreign policy.

The health and empowerment of a country’s women is a pretty accurate litmus test for the health and stability of that country overall.

Women produce the majority of food, transport the majority of goods, and provide the majority of labor in the developing world.  Without their freedom, rights, and health, communities — and economies — fall apart.

In honor of all the razamatazz going on, GAB will be posting a series of related posts – on everything from contraceptives, maternal mortality, gender equity, and the importance of girls’ education – over the next month through the conference.  We will also be liveblogging from the conference, reporting on what speakers like  Nick Kristof, Michele Bachelet, Nafis Sadik, Melinda Gates, Fred Sai, Dr. Ruth and  others have to say…and then listening to what YOU have to say.

Here are the posts that ran leading up to the Women Deliver conference:

• Happy Mother’s Day/Pill’s 50th Anniversary by Roxanne Samer
• Reproductive Health and Environmental Dangers by Colleen Hodgetts
• Who will pay for accessible contraceptives in developing countries? by Kyle Bachan
• Afghan Girls Are Being Poisoned in Their Schools. Or Maybe They’re Just Hysterical. by Erin Rickard
• Drop in Global Maternal Death Rates by Colleen Hodgetts
• Canada pulls a blanket over the abortion debate by Kyle Bachan
• What Will Afghanistan’s Peace Jirga Mean for Girls’ Education, and What Will Girls’ Education Mean for the Country? by Erin Rickard

HIV/AIDs affects more women than it affects men. My professional life lies in HIV/AIDS research and it was only until recently that the particular research project that I work for decided to include a gender section of the research report.

I’ve been reading various articles about women, HIV/AIDS, and specifically Western Africa, and I was not surprised to see the direct correlation with HIV/AIDS and domestic violence. One WHO report states:

The biological risk of HIV transmission will be affected by the type of sexual exposure, the presence of STDs, exposure to vaginal excretions or blood and the degree of trauma. When sexual intercourse is forced, abrasions and cuts are most likely to appear. In addition, condom use in such situations is unlikely. There is a need for discussion on the reality on a range of sexually coercive behaviours–including statutory rape, attempted rape, and rape. Read the rest of this entry →

This post is a part of the Blog for International Women’s Day BLOG

One women dies every minute of every day because of complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. About 75 million children who should be in primary school are not, and at least 55 percent of those – nearly 41 million children – are girls (all statistics via CARE). In the U.S., HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women aged 25-34 years (via cdc.gov). Around the world, women and children are more susceptible to HIV/AIDS than men (via thebody.com). Women are more poor than men in most parts of the world (via globalissues.org).

Those are just a handful of issues of why women are still not equal to men. Many people in the U.S. think that women are already equal to men, especially in developed countries in the U.S. But this is not so. As Jessica Valenti writes in the Washington Post, “For women in America, equality is still an illusion:” Read the rest of this entry →

Back in November 2009, Gender Across Borders published a series of articles on circumcision. We talked about the ethics of neonatal circumcision, to the culture of circumcision in Judaism, as well as ethics and history of female circumcision. If you didn’t get a chance to check out our series on circumcision (male & female) back in November, click here to read those articles.

Circumcision continues to flood the news headlines from day to day, week to week, and month to month. Since November, I’ve come across a few articles as a follow-up to our circumcision series.

I’m hoping that people will take a look at these articles, and will perhaps elicit more discussion surrounding the deeply-heated debate:

• Circumcision or not? Parents, you’re on your own from MSNBC
• KENYA: The fringe benefits of male circumcision rollout from PlusNews.org
• To Circumcise or Not? from EmpowHER
• Circumcision changes penis bacteria from UPI
• Uganda: ‘Sensitise Public On Female Circumcision Law’ from AllAfrica.com and a related article:
• Uganda bans female circumcision from CNN
• Female Genital Mutilation Targeted In Several Countries from SexGenderBody
• RIGHTS-TANZANIA: ‘I Feel Like Less of a Woman’ from IPS News, a personal account of a woman who was circumcised in Tanzania

Below are two polls about male and female circumcision. Voice your opinion now! Read the rest of this entry →

Credit: Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce

Thanks to Clint Eastwood’s most recent film, Invictus, millions of people around the world – many of whom, both in and outside of South Africa, were previously unaware of and/or indifferent to the 1995 Rugby World Cup – now know the story of how Nelson Mandela harnessed the universal language of sport to preach transformation and potential to a racially and economically divided post-apartheid South Africa. Fifteen years later, South African President Jacob Zuma is attempting to do the same, this time with soccer.

The opportunity to host the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup–the world’s most watched sporting event–is seen by many, including the South African President, as the greatest marketing opportunity for South Africa since 1995. A month’s worth of soccer games is predicted to draw 400,000 visitors and create 160,000 new jobs, the equivalent of an economic miracle in a country where 48% of the population lives below the poverty line.

The question is: who will reap the benefits?

Although large-scale sporting events have proven themselves to be a catalyst for positive transformation, they are also often ripe with troubling effects. With the start of the World Cup games now six months away, there are increasing reports of crackdowns on the urban poor throughout South Africa (This is not unique to either the World Cup or to South Africa. One report estimates that the Olympic Games have displaced more than two million people in the last twenty years.) Even more regularly referenced are concerns about trafficking, sex worker abuse and public health issues, the latter being particularly vexing in a country where an estimated 50% of sex workers are infected with HIV/AIDS. Apparently the widely accepted reality is that with soccer comes sex. Read the rest of this entry →