Forced Sex Blamed for High STD/HIV Transmissions

July 24, 2005 – (Zimbabwe Standard) Lack of power by women and girls to broker for safe sex within relationships and marriages raises their risk of getting HIV infection and being infected by Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), a research conducted by a United States based organisation has shown.

In its recent publication entitled, Non-consensual Sex, Family Health International (FHI), which specialises in reproductive health issues, says "cultural customs and gender norms" can lock girls and women into relationships where non-consensual sex is inescapable.
In many parts of the world, societal gender norms support the notion that marriage entitles men to sex with their wives and this makes it difficult for women to refuse sex, notes FHI.

Also practices such as child marriages means that young girls are forced into sex at an early age and are likely to face subsequent forced sex in future within their marriages.

FHI says though the age of 18 has been deemed by most governments and several international agreements to be the minimum legal age for marriage, there is growing evidence that over the next decade more than 100 million girls in developing countries (excluding China) are expected to be married before age 18.

" Societal gender norms support the notion that marriage entitles men to sex with their wives. Even adult married women may be unable to escape forced sex within marriage," says FHI.

"The gender-power gap widens with child marriages, since wives tend to be much younger than their husbands. Research from 16 sub-Saharan African countries found that 15-19-year-old wives were, on average, at least 10 years younger than their husbands."

FHI says early marriages with older men or husbands explains in part why married adolescent girls have some of the highest HIV rates of any group.

"Data from Kenya and Zambia, for example, show that young married girls are more likely to be HIV positive than are their unmarried peers because they have sex more often, use condoms less often, are unable to refuse sex, and have partners who are more likely to be HIV positive," notes FHI.

FHI also observed that once married and lobola has been paid for one, women or girls were perceived "owned" by their husbands and may have "little control over sexual matters".

"Child marriage is also facilitated by the tradition of lobola . A young girl's high productive potential makes her especially valuable in such marital arrangements. Yet, once married, a young woman may have little control over sexual matters.

"Three quarters of some 1 000 women responding to a South African survey said that the prevailing view in their culture was that a man who had paid lobola owned his wife and could have sex with her whenever he chose," noted FHI.

Non-consensual sex also made special reference to traditions in Zimbabwe such as wife inheritance (kugara nhaka), virginity testing and child marriages as some of those "locking" cultural practices.

Said FHI: "In Zimbabwe, a widow passes to her deceased husband's brother in a traditional practice called "kugara nhaka", which may fuel HIV transmission if the woman's deceased husband was HIV infected, she has become HIV-infected, and she transmits the virus to her husband's brother."

The publication is a must-read for organisations dealing involved in reproductive health and HIV and Aids. Women's vulnerability to HIV infection because of gender inequality and cultural practices and traditions should not be underestimated, even the figures speak for themselves. Globally young women and girls are more susceptible to HIV than men and boys with studies showing they can be 2.5 times more likely to be HIV infected than their male counterparts.

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/200507250287.html