By Anooshey Ikhlas, C’2024
Source: https://www.womenshealth.gov/hiv-and-aids/women-and-hiv
The book Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues by Paul Farmer touches on a very important subject regarding the topic of women with AIDS. Chapter 3 “Invisible Women: Class, Gender and HIV” takes place in the 1980s. Paul Farmer set up a new clinic at a village in Haiti’s Central Plateau, and was surprised to see the amount of young women who showed up at the clinic with AIDS.
When he made a trip back to the United States, he searched a computerized AIDS database revealing 100,000 references, but when adding “women” to the search, only 2,000 showed up. When adding the word “poverty”, a whopping zero references appeared. AIDS was recognized as a clinical syndrome in 1981, known to be inhabited by mostly young, gay men. However, little was documented regarding women, especially those in poverty. This has impacted the way that people view the relationship between AIDS and how it has affected women to this day.
Part of the problem may be from a 1985 cover story in Discover, a science magazine many people trusted at the time. It spoke of the vagina as very durable, designed for wear and tear and therefore would not be impacted by AIDS. It was claimed that the only way AIDS could be contracted was through anal intercourse. Within the next couple of years, however, cases among women were rising rapidly. Millions of women who had partners who were not drug users or bisexual were contracting HIV.
By 1991, AIDS was a leading killer in young women in larger cities. Why, many wondered, did it take a decade to realize the threat AIDS poses to women? The answers are tied to the issues of elitism, racism and sexism, each successfully drowning out the voice of these women. One story of a woman in the chapter is about Guylene, the daughter of a peasant in Haiti who contracted HIV through her heterosexual partner. Due to her family’s lower socioeconomic status, she was unable to be fully educated about HIV or access treatment, similar to many women around the world who do not have the privilege of being from a wealthy family and having easy access to medical assistance.
AIDS was a leading killer in young women in larger cities. Why, many wondered, did it take a decade to realize the threat AIDS poses to women? The answers are tied to the issues of elitism, racism and sexism, each successfully drowning out the voice of these women.
The chapter also discusses other stories, one of a woman named Darlene, an African American from Harlem who contracted HIV through needle sharing and had many of her children and family die because of it. Due to a lack of education and inherent racism of the drug industry, Darlene suffered this awful fate. The last story is of Lata, a girl from a rural Indian Village sold into prostitution, who spoke up to educate other prostitutes on HIV even though she had already contracted it herself. This prostitution was the result of patriarchal control in society and the sexism involved, causing the many HIV related troubles of Lata and women in similar communities around the world.
By the late 1990s, the threat AIDS posed to women was recognized, but by that point it was too late for many. In the United States and Latin America, the amount of new cases for HIV were increasing more than for any other group, and AIDS was the leading cause of death among African Americans in the United States.
These stories highlight the struggles of women, women of color in poverty in particular, who were unable to obtain the right treatment or resources necessary to help them in their battles against HIV. HIV affects women in different ways than it affects men, different treatment methods are sometimes necessary, and other considerations such as race are necessary as well.
Biomedical literature often ignores that factors such as gender inequality and poverty increase the risk of exposure to HIV, although progress has been made in recent years. Making more of an effort to recognize this amongst communities and tailor treatments more effectively has helped lessen the increasing rate of HIV in women. Today, many of the risks of HIV particular to women are being researched and treatments are being made. However, knowing the history and recognizing why this progress has been slow is important to our understanding of the intersection between HIV and women today.