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Key Points

Property Rights and HIV/AIDS: Empowering Women to Save Lives Hema Swaminathan International Center for Research on Women June 7, 2005. Key Points. Women are now the global face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with enormous and direct implications for household food security and welfare

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Key Points

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  1. Property Rights and HIV/AIDS:Empowering Women to Save LivesHema SwaminathanInternational Center for Research on WomenJune 7, 2005

  2. Key Points • Women are now the global face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with enormous and direct implications for household food security and welfare • To ensure household food security and welfare, we must address women’s rights to own and control property • Ensuring women’s property rights is critical to reduce transmission of HIV and help households cope with the consequences of the epidemic

  3. An Increasingly Feminized Epidemic • Women are more vulnerable to HIV than men – due to their biology, their economic status, and prevailing gender inequalities • Since 2002, the number of women living with HIV has increased in every region • Today, nearly 50 percent of all adults living with HIV globally are women • In sub-Saharan Africa, that percentage is close to 60 percent, and 76 percent of young people (15-24 years) living with HIV are female

  4. Africa's HIV Gender Imbalance

  5. Women, Agriculture, and Food Security • Women contribute to all 3 pillars of food security: production, access, nutrition security • Produce 60–80 percent of the food • In sub-Saharan Africa women produce about 80 percent of household food, in Asia women do 50–90 percent of the work in rice fields • Women’s incomes are more strongly associated with improvements in children’s welfare/ nutrition • Women are the gatekeepers of household nutrition security

  6. Importance of Property Rights • Economic assets, instead of just income, provide: • Protection against economic shocks • Site of economic production • Economic risk-taking • Form of wealth with which to gain access to credit • Access to productive inputs and extension services • Greater bargaining power and decision making within the household

  7. Importance of Women’s Property Rights in Context of HIV/AIDS • Reduces vulnerability to HIV risk factors • Provides economic resources to HIV-affected households • Ensures future provision of care and adequate resources for children

  8. Denial of Women’s Property and Inheritance Rights has Consequences • Increased numbers of female-headed households who suffer substantial permanent loss of assets and “property grabbing” • Destitution may also increase women’s vulnerability to sexual harassment, exploitation, and transactional sex • Inter-generational poverty rises as household assets are fragmented and orphans are impoverished

  9. Current Status of Women’s Property Rights • Lack of sex-disaggregated data makes it difficult to be definitive • Women control land and productive assets less frequently than men do • In Brazil (2000), women owned 11 percent of land. • In Pakistan (2001), women owned less than 3 percent of the plots. • In Cameroon (1995), women held fewer than 10 percent of land certificates. • More women have access rights as compared to ownership rights

  10. The Response • Additional legislative reform • Documentation and evaluation • Using evidence for advocacy and policy change • Giving greater support and visibility to creative and innovative interventions by community-based organizations

  11. Key Points • Women are now the global face of the HIV/AIDS • We must address women’s rights to own and control property

  12. BECAUSE EMPOWERED WOMEN ARE KEY TO HALTING THE EPIDEMIC

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