The Circle’s Contribution to HIV Discourse on the Global Level

HIV is a global pandemic. While sub-Saharan Africa continues to bear an inordinate share of the global HIV burden, cases are found in all the regions of the world. According to current statistics, 33.4 million people are living with HIV and more than 25 million have died worldwide since the first case was reported in 1981. Around the globe, women constitute more than half of all the people living with HIV. While in Sub-Saharan Africa, women constitute 59 percent of all people living with HIV, the proportion of HIV among women in the United States has more than tripled since 1985. African Americans and Hispanics represent 26 percent of all women in the US but account for 82 percent of HIV cases among women. This reality of the prevalence of HIV in the world could mean that the discourse on HIV should also be global. I am grateful for the contribution of The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (the Circle) to the global conversation on HIV as represented by lead-in article by Isabel Phiri and Sarojini Nadar.

Isabel and Sarojini highlight ways in which the Circle contributes to knowledge production on HIV in Africa by injecting a critical gendered perspective into the discourse. Reflecting on the Circle’s decade-long experiences of doing research on HIV, Sarojini and Isabel identify four paradigm shifts that emerge “in the ways in which knowledge on HIV is produced and taken up as a means of prevention and care” (124). Recognizing that supporting women’s health in the context of HIV means looking not just at disease but at social and religious contexts and influences, the Circle employs tools and methodologies specific to the complexities of religion and culture in Africa with its history of imperialism. While the Circle addresses the Christian tradition primarily, its members are aware of the need to attend also to African traditional religions and Islam. The Circle shares some of the concerns of the enculturation project of African male theologians, but African women also have had to challenge that project. To do so effectively, they have developed cultural hermeneutics as both a framework and a tool to interrogate African patriarchy.

The second paradigm shift Sarojini and Isabel discuss is a greater emphasis on particularities of context in HIV research in Africa. As often seems to be the case about everything African, the West often views HIV in Africa in monolithic terms. In the case of knowledge production on HIV and how that knowledge is utilized, particularity of context is a matter of life and death. The context-specific nature of the Circle’s research serves to enable meaningful discourse on HIV in Africa on the global level. The research work of the Circle concretizes the importance of context in dialogue about HIV more generally.

Many variables contribute to the fact that women are more vulnerable than men to HIV infection in Africa. Often when gender issues in the HIV epidemic are discussed, it is the culturally and socioeconomically underprivileged position of women, not the constructions of masculinity and their meaning in the HIV context, that are highlighted. This gap has resulted in minimal participation by African men in the fight against HIV. Therefore, the third paradigm shift is the focus on masculinities, which leads to the inclusion of African male theologians as conversation partners in the context of HIV discourse. Deliberate inclusion of male theologians in the Circle’s conversations not only gives voice to one half of the community but also provides opportunities for women and men to work together to solve a problem with far-reaching implications for the culturally and socioeconomically underprivileged position of women in Africa. Focus on the constructions of masculinity in the context of HIV opens up dialogue on how views of manhood and male power in African patriarchy are oppressive and abusive to women. The hope is that such dialogue will foster a male critique of patriarchy that may lead to greater dignity and respect for women.

A major barrier that limits meaningful discourse on global...