Issues and challenges in female-controlled prevention

The issues and conditions that define the impact of HIV and AIDS on women have received increasing attentions through policy, research and program initiatives. The foregoing overview, however, suggests that prevention strategies show a continued strong portrayal of women in their roles as "mother" and sex workers despite the increasing involvement of women in program management and advocacy, as well as in care and service delivery. Female-controlled prevention--the determination of prevention activities and emphasis--appears to lie outside the areas in which women exercise most authority to direct action, that is, in women's program and agencies. These are characteristically small-scale and isolated from national AIDS control programs, and are not usually assured of local or international donor support on a sustained basis. The profile of the most vulnerable women in part provides a rationale for this result. An equally plausible explanation was that women were able to confront the limits to female control, which was not identified or articulated the need for women's views to take higher priority in decisions that affect the approaches adopted in combating HIV/AIDS among female populations. In view of the persistent paradigms that marginalize women's perspectives, there was a compelling argument for theirs to be decisive influence on the prevention process. Thus, female-controlled prevention, both now and in the 21st century, will require continued collective thinking and consensus-building among women in partnership with sensitive men, more shared decision-making, more resources allocated that were proposed by women for their own purposes

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