Gender and HIV/AIDS in Eastern and Southern Africa: Rethinking Men and HIV/AIDS Mitigation Uganda and Rwanda

Abstract

This paper explores the neglected role of men in HIV/AIDS mitigation. Much of the efforts to combat HIV/AIDS widely acknowledge that the gender dimensions of the AIDS pandemic is critical both for the understanding of its impact and for successful implementation of prevention and amelioration campaigns. It is argued in the paper that for a long time there has been little effort to understand the gender roles and social pressures on men and the relationship with HIV spread. Men are represented as obstacles to efforts to fight HIV/AIDS; they resist using condoms, resist change, molesters of women and carriers of disease. The paper argues that for successful fight against HIV/AIDS, there is a need for a more balanced understanding of gender on a set of structures created by and affecting both men and women. This paper largely relies on existing literature and policy documents for analysis and augmenting men’s role in HIV/AIDS mitigation in Uganda and Rwanda. The paper extensively reviews and analyses data in the existing scholarly sources to develop arguments and to make conclusions. We argue in this paper that new strategies which positively look at men’s contribution are needed to fight HIV/AIDS. Based on the arguments we make we suggest that men as well as women contribute each in their rights as social categories of people during the fight against HIV/AIDS. Drawing examples from Uganda and Rwanda we look at the evolving approaches to HIV/AIDS and the positioning of men into these programs. The paper concludes that involving men and observing their positive contributions has contributed greatly to the success of these programs and ultimately to the progress in mitigating HIV/AIDS spread in Rwanda and Uganda.

Key words; Gender, HIV/AIDS, Masculinity