US promotes women's empowerment in AIDS battle

Women currently make up an estimated 67 percent of HIV-positive adults in Botswana and should be given the means to break from traditional social roles to improve their circumstances, US undersecretary of state for global affairs, Paula Dobriansky, has said. Speaking at a recent conference in Washington on Botswana's strategy to combat HIV/AIDS, Dobriansky lauded the country's effort, making it the first in Africa to implement a national mother-to-child HIV prevention initiative in 1998. The undersecretary said that while the country was at the forefront in offering free antiretrovirals to HIV-positive people, stigma, discrimination, and the social inequality of women had limited the success of these initiatives. Dobriansky said in a statement: "Already, poor rural women and urban women in Botswana have begun mobilising for social change, but government also has a critical role to play by making legal reforms that outlaw discrimination against those with HIV/AIDS, as a first step toward reducing the stigma of the disease." She said legal reforms to protect the property rights of women and children, and outlaw domestic violence and marital rape were also necessary steps the government should take to help women improve their situation.