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The Women’s HIV/AIDS Epidemic
Facing the Facts
Center for Women Policy Studies
August 2009

Throughout the world, HIV/AIDS is a women’s epidemic.

  • Half of the 30.8 million people living with HIV/AIDS globally are women; more than 15.4 million women in the world are HIV positive.1
  • A Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected region in the global AIDS epidemic.  Women are 61 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (13.7 million of the 22.5 million infected).2  

In the United States, HIV/AIDS is increasingly a women’s epidemic.

  • In 2009, women are more than 25 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States.3
  • Although women were only 8 percent of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 19854, in 2006 women accounted for 27 percent of new diagnoses.5
  • Women of color continue to be most affected.  In 2007, African American women accounted for two thirds (65 percent) of all new AIDS diagnoses and Latinas were 15 percent.6
  • From the beginning of the epidemic through 2005, an estimated 85,844 women in the United States have died as a result of AIDS.7

The co-factors of HIV infection for women are women’s inequality and oppression, violations of women’s human rights, patriarchal traditions of male dominance, and the related epidemic of sexual violence against women.

  • Laws and customs that prevent women from owning their own land or property deny them the opportunity to be economically independent.  In fact, women own less than 15 percent of the world’s land.8
  • Reinforcing this vulnerability is the lack of education and access to educational opportunities that women and girls face all over the world – demonstrated by the fact that women are two thirds of the world’s 960 million illiterate adults.9
  • Trapped in poverty and at the mercy of their husbands’ financial generosity, many married women are in no position to negotiate for safe sex or abstinence.10 

Young women between the ages of 13 and 25 are at extremely high risk of HIV/AIDS.

  • Girls are 55 percent of all children worldwide who have never received any schooling.11
  • For many girls, poverty keeps them out of school, as they cannot afford school fees.  Many of these desperate young girls are forced to accept financial enticements from older men in exchange for sex – and the girls cannot insist on condom use in these circumstances.12
  • But education can and does make a difference.  In fact, the rate of HIV/AIDS infection among girls with “even some” schooling is nearly half that of uneducated girls around the world.13
  • In 2006, teen women represented 39 percent of teens between the ages of 13 and 19 in the United States living with AIDS.14
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, the prevalence rate for HIV among women between the ages 15 and 24 is three times that of men the same age.15

Women’s most basic human rights – the right to bodily integrity and freedom from violence – are violated every day in every part of the world, mercilessly increasing their risk of HIV infection.

  • Intimate partners commit 40 to 70 percent of homicides of women worldwide.16
  • Women whose partners rape or batter them often have limited access to the law, even where laws are on the books to make battering a crime; for these women, negotiating or demanding condom use is a virtual impossibility.17 
  • Women who must exchange sex for survival as a way of life are least able to negotiate condom use.  While such exchanges include commercial sex work, they also include the economic and social realities of poverty that many women face and the patriarchal norms that give men control over women’s lives.18

Women worldwide lack access to woman-centered health care and treatment for HIV/AIDS – and often face extreme stigma and violence when they seek care.

  • Women in the United States with HIV are less likely to receive combination therapy and have less access to treatment than men.19
  • Even when treatment is available, many women and girls do not take advantage of it because of the legitimate fear of stigma and ridicule and the lack of confidentiality that makes acceptance of treatment tantamount to a public declaration of HIV positive status.20
  • In many sub-Saharan African countries, the stigma is so powerful and so pervasive that many pregnant women forgo treatment that would prevent HIV transmission to the fetus.21

HIV prevention strategies cannot succeed unless they respond to the realities of women’s lives and are controlled by women.

  • Since the beginning of the epidemic, the co-factors of the HIV/AIDS epidemic for women have been racism, sexism, poverty, patriarchy, sexual violence and homophobia.22 
  • Women are infected with HIV/AIDS by men they love, trust, fear – or need for economic security.  In fact, throughout the world, HIV is spreading through heterosexual sex.  In the United States, heterosexual sex accounts for 83 percent of new HIV diagnoses for African American women and Latinas and 70 percent of new HIV diagnoses for white women.23 
  • To protect women from HIV infection, global HIV prevention programs and methods must be designed with women’s needs at their heart – not as an “add on” to existing male-centered efforts.  Such initiatives must also work towards shifting cultural traditions and beliefs about HIV/AIDS in order to protect future generations of women.24 
  • In short, woman-controlled methods, particularly microbicides, are urgently needed.  A microbicide – in the form of a gel, cream, film suppository or vaginal ring, for example – is a method of protection that a woman can use without the knowledge or consent of her partner.25 

1 UNAIDS & World Health Organization. (2007, November 19). 07 AIDS Epidemic Update. Retrieved June 2, 2009 from http://data.unaids.org/pub/EPISlides/2007/2007_epiupdate_en.pdf  
2 UNAIDS & World Health Organization. (2007, November 19). 07 AIDS Epidemic Update. Retrieved June 2, 2009 from http://data.unaids.org/pub/EPISlides/2007/2007_epiupdate_en.pdf
3 Kaiser Family Foundation. (2009, February 18). The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States. HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 2, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3029_10.pdf
4 Kaiser Family Foundation (2005, November). The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States. HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved August 13, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3029-06.pdf
5 Kaiser Family Foundation (2009, February 18). The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States. HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 2, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3029_10.pdf
6 Kaiser Family Foundation (2009, February 18). The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States. HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 2, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3029_10.pdf
7 Centers for Disease Control. (2008, August 3). HIV/AIDS among Women. CDC HIV/AIDS Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 2, 2009 from http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/women/resources/factsheets/pdf/women.pdf
8 UNFPA. (2007). Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth. State of the World Population 2007. Retrieved June 3, 2009 from http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2007/presskit/pdf/sowp2007_eng.pdf
9 UNFPA. (2008). Reaching Common Ground: Culture, Gender, Human Rights. State of the World Population 2008. Retrieved June 3, 2009 from http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/816_filename_en-swop08-report.pdf
10 UNFPA, UNIFEM & Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues. (2005, March). Combating Gender-Based Violence: A Key to Achieving the MDGS. Retrieved July 9, 2009 from http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/531_filename_combating_gbv_en.pdf
11 UN. (2008, August). The Millennium Development Goals Report. Retrieved June 3, 2009 from  http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2008highlevel/pdf/newsroom/mdg%20reports/MDG_Report_2008_ENGLISH.pdf
12 UNAIDS, UNFPA & UNIFEM. (2004). Women and HIV/AIDS: Confronting the Crisis. Retrieved from http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/308_filename_women_aids1.pdf
13 UNFPA. (2005, October). The promise of Equality: Gender Equity, Reproductive Health & the Millennium Development Goals. State of the World Population 2005. Retrieved from http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2005/english/ch1/index.htm
14 Kaiser Family Foundation (2009, February 18). The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States. HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 2, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3029_10.pdf
15 Kaiser Family Foundation. (2009, April). The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic. U.S. Global Health Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 4, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/3030-13.pdf
16 World Health Organization Regional Office for South-East Asia. Intimate Partner Violence. Retrieved June 4, 2009 from http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/Disability,_Injury_Prevention_&_Rehabilitation_partner.pdf
17 UNFPA, UNIFEM & Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues. (2005, March). Combating Gender-Based Violence: A Key to Achieving the MDGS. Retrieved July 9, 2009 from http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/531_filename_combating_gbv_en.pdf
18 World Health Organization. (2004). Women’s Human Rights Related to Health-Care Services in the Context of HIV/AIDS. Health and Human Rights Working Paper Series No. 5. Retrieved July 9, 2009 from http://www.who.int/hhr/working_paper5_womenshealthcare.pdf
19 Kaiser Family Foundation. (2008, October). Women and HIV/AIDS in the United States. HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 4, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/6092-061.pdf
20 UNAIDS, UNFPA & UNIFEM. (2004). Women and HIV/AIDS: Confronting the Crisis. Retrieved from http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/308_filename_women_aids1.pdf .
21 Rosenberg, T. (2006, August). When A Pill Is Not Enough. The New York Times Magazine p. 42-59. Retrieved August 18, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/magazine/06aids.html
22 Center for Women Policy Studies. (1999). Building a national policy agenda: Ten principles for woman-focused HIV/AIDS prevention. Washington, DC: Author.
23 Kaiser Family Foundation. (2008, October). Women and HIV/AIDS in the United States. HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet. Retrieved June 4, 2009 from http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/6092-061.pdf
24 UNFPA, UNIFEM & Office of the Special Advisor on Gender Issues. (2005, March). Combating Gender-Based Violence: A Key to Achieving the MDGS. Retrieved July 9, 2009 from http://www.unfpa.org/upload/lib_pub_file/531_filename_combating_gbv_en.pdf
25 The Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. (2006). Increase Women’s Control over HIV Prevention Fight AIDS.  Issue #4. Retrieved from http://data.unaids.org/pub/BriefingNote/2006/20060530_FS_Women%27s%20HIV%20Prevention%20Control_en.pdf