Academic article: Caring for People with HIV: state policies and their dependence on women's unpaid work

Women's unpaid care work is a feature of life in sub-Saharan countries, where nearly 67% of PLWHA live and where 75% of all AIDS deaths occurred in 2007. Women comprise 58% of adult HIV infections and tend to be more adversely affected because of their primary caregiving role.

Increasing reliance on home-based care to supplement an overstretched health system fails to acknowledge the cost on the patient, the carer and the wider family, including financial resources, time resources, and opportunity costs. For women, this means time taken away from paid work, unpaid household chores, and agriculture. For girl children, caregiving is at the expense of school work, leisure activities and important social development activities - including HIV prevention activities. In many cases, particularly when heading a family as a result of being orphaned, many girls cannot go to school at all, renouncing their right to education - affecting their potential income and career choices, and ability to play a role in wider society.

Policies should be developed to recognise these effects and take into consideration the needs of women and girl children carers, including the right to education. An option might be to see care work as a professional career option which would allow girls, women and workers to progress and develop. This would create a pool of trained, qualified professionals who are adequately compensated. Finally, challenging the assumption and strong cultural traditions that mean caring is women's work, not men's, would lay the foundation for a more equal sharing of care responsibilities.

Citation: Makina, A. (2009) Caring for People with HIV: state policies and their dependence on women's unpaid work, in Gender and Development, Vol 17, No. 2, July 2009 pp309-319

Summary by Laura.