Mandisa Mbali, "Women in South African AIDS Activism: Towards a Feminist Economic and Political Agenda to Address the Epidemic"
(page 7 of 8)

4) Impact of the recession on women's rights work

As we have seen, because of sexism, women in South Africa are disproportionately represented among the ranks of the unemployed and experience various kinds of educational disadvantages. Similarly, in the absence of universal access to H.I.V. treatment, women disproportionately bear the burden of caring for those who are ill with AIDS. The global economic recession has already had an adverse impact on international development aid, including funds to broaden access to H.I.V. treatment and combat violence against women. The recession is also worsening the related economic marginalization of poor women in developing countries.

For instance, the Global AIDS Alliance has argued that President Barack Obama has already faltered in his campaign promise to fully fund the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (Gharib and Lobe 2009). Instead, AIDS activists have critiqued his new Global Health Initiative (GHI) as having extended the project for a year while only providing $3 billion in its final year, which represents a substantial cut in funding across the period for which it is provided (Gharib and Lobe 2009). The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria remains severely underfunded, a crisis which is only being exacerbated by the recession (Pilitza 2009).

Universal access to H.I.V. treatment is a critical women's rights issue and a goal that appears to be receding into the distance in the context of the recession. At the time of writing, it is certainly clear that the commitment of the G8 countries to working toward universal access to treatment by 2010 will not be met. The TAC recently experienced delays in the dispersal of foreign donor funding because of the recession, and had to let go a substantial proportion of the treatment literacy staff who educate members of the public about H.I.V. treatment, which is vital to dispel common myths about antiretrovirals and ensure adequate adherence to the drugs (Rank 2008). Similarly, the programs, and the very existence, of more traditional women's-rights organizations, which are underfinanced even in times of economic growth, are being threatened as never before. For instance, Rape Crisis Cape Town already fears that its foreign donor funding will be cut (Womankind 2009: 5).

A fraction of the vast sums that have been used to bail out banks in the United States and United Kingdom would go a long way to ensuring adequate funds to halt new H.I.V. infections and ensure universal access to treatment for those living with the virus globally. As AIDS activists have eloquently argued, while there may have been a slowdown in economic growth in many countries, the same cannot be said in relation to the growing numbers of new H.I.V. and TB infections (TAC 2009). Moreover, the social and economic burden of even short- to medium-term reductions in the funding of programs to combat these diseases will be disproportionately borne by a group that can least afford to shoulder it: poor women in developing countries.

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