1999

The Female Condom in Zimbabwe:
The Interplay of Research, Advocacy, and Government Action

Women's Vulnerability

HIV/AIDS continues to have a devastating impact on Zimbabwe. With nearly 25 percent of the adult population infected, the country has among the highest total number of infections in sub-Saharan Africa (UNAIDS/WHO 1998). Projections for the year 2005 estimate that 1.2 million Zimbabweans will have died from the disease and that nearly one million children will lose one or both parents to it (NACP 1998).

Zimbabwean women have been struck especially hard. In the 15-to 19-year-old age group, six times more women than men are infected (NACP 1998). This gap is largely caused by cultural and gender norms that relegate most decision-making within relationships—including sexual relations—to men. Women are rarely able to refuse sex or to demand protective measures such as male condom use when they suspect their partners of infidelity (Ray et al. 1998). Female subordination is reinforced by a culture in which marriage defines a woman and her status in the community (Win 1998). Thus, women are often forced to risk “biological death” from AIDS to avoid the “social death” and poverty caused by divorce or abandonment (Bassett and Mhloyi 1991).

Given the scarcity of prevention efforts targeted to women other than sex workers, in the early 1990s women’s organizations began to develop educational programs to increase women’s knowledge about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and to provide support to enable them to protect themselves. In turn, women talked about their inability to discuss safer sex in their relationships. In a classic bottom-up approach, women who were being reached by such NGOs as Women’s Action Group (WAG) and Women and AIDS Support Network (WASN) consistently asked for something they could use to protect themselves if a partner was unwilling to use the male condom. An emerging new product—the female condom—had the potential to fill that need, but little research had been done on its viability.

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This page updated on
03 Jan 2009