Empowering Women in China

Worldwide, HIV has infected over 33 million people. Since its meteoric rise to infamy in the early 1980’s, AIDS has been responsible for over 22 million deaths. Close to 20 million of those currently infected are women. Some reports state that by the year 2010, an extra 50 to 75 million new cases will arise from five countries: India, Russia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and China. Each day, roughly 14,000 new cases of HIV are reported globally. With all the recent reports about AIDS funding and promising advances in AIDS treatments, these statistics paint a grim and realistic picture of how far spread AIDS is and how much further we need to go to combat it.

United Nations officials are advocating that politicians and health officials worldwide use their clout to empower women in the fight against AIDS. Nafis Sadik, a U.N. official in the Asia-Pacific region, stated at a recent conference discussing poverty issues that the virus was spreading at an alarming rate, largely due to the region’s tendency for males to show a lack of respect for females. The virus has spread across the region mainly due to the booming sex industry. In fact, approximately 75 million males are regular customers in the sex industry that “employs” roughly 10 million females.

Sadik stated, “”Gender-based violence and discrimination on grounds of gender drive the HIV and AIDS epidemic among women. Empowerment of women — equipping them with self-esteem, the knowledge, the ability to protect themselves — will be of critical importance in winning the battle. Women suffer doubly. First, from HIV and AIDS itself, and secondly from the stigma associated with the disease. Women are routinely blamed for infecting their husbands, though it is almost always the men who infect their wives. The results of male behavior can be seen in changing patterns of infection. Today, about one-third of all people living with HIV in China are women, compared with one in 10 in 1995.”

At the international AIDS conference held this year in Mexico, officials from the U.N. advised attendees that things were only going to get worse with the economy’s current downward spiral. While many females may have felt compelled to enter the sex industry to earn extra money or to purchase materialistic items, many more females may enter the sex industry now, just to make ends meet and to be able to buy bare necessities. With desperation like this, new cases of HIV are almost guaranteed to spike.
In China, almost three-quarters of a million people are currently infected with HIV/AIDS and the main transmitter is sex, especially those sexual encounters through the booming sex industry. Sadik is urging Chinese politicians and health officials to be more vocal in their promotion of safe sex. She stated, “China must enlist the support of its male leadership and men generally, encouraging them to adopt consistently responsible sexual behavior, and ensuring that they respect their partners, and all women, as equals.”