Gender Equity for All: An Educator's Handbook on Mainstreaming in South Africa
HIV/AIDS and Gender
Preamble
Those working as Gender Focal Persons (GFPs) within the structures of the national and provincial departments of education are challenged by having to fulfill a set of ‘tasks’ with respect to mainstreaming:
- To continue to mainstream gender equity into education generally;
- To mainstream HIV/AIDS within gender equity programmes;
- To mainstream gender equity within HIV/AIDS programmes; and
- To support the strategic planning of other structures and groups within education who are also working to mainstream HIV/AIDS.
By looking at aspects such as curriculum, whole school development, and HIV/AIDS prevention programmes for learners, we hope to offer some useful ways of tackling these multiple tasks.
Gender-based violence & HIV/AIDS
- DID YOU KNOW THAT…
By 18 years of age, 20% of female youths and 13% of male youths reported a history of sexual abuse. - Out of around 4000 women interviewed in surveys conducted in 1998 to 2000, 2000 claimed that they had personally gone to a centre for help in a case of sexual abuse in the 11 months prior to the survey. This means that at least 13% of all women sought support each year, assuming conservatively that all who declined to answer did not do so.
- Incidences of rape and sexual assault put women in a high-risk situation for HIV/AIDS infection.
(Mitchell, C., (2001).
Changing a mindset: Who has the power?
Although Life Skills courses are attempting to give girls more power, we need to ask:
- Are young women who are being forced to engage in sex realistically in a position to negotiate a non-sexual relationship, or one in which the male partner uses a condom?
- Can we look at ‘negotiation’ and ‘assertiveness’ independently of male power, girls’ positions in society, the presence or absence of structures and policies that work for gender equity, and so on?
- How can our programmes highlight the rights of girls regarding free choice in sexual relations?
Extra challenges for HIV prevention arise from traditional expectations that men should take risks, have frequent sexual intercourse (often with more than one partner) and exercise authority over women. Among other things, these expectations encourage men to force sex on unwilling partners, to reject condom use and the search for safety as ‘unmanly’, and to view drug-injecting as a risk worth taking. Changing these commonly-held attitudes and behaviours must be part of the effort to curb the AIDS epidemic.
(Mitchell et al., 2000).
What the learners say
In workshops with learners on HIV/AIDS and gender in Mpumalanga, feedback from participants expressed an urgent need for information on and communication about issues such as:
- Sexuality Education
- Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs)
- HIV/AIDS, and how to break the silence about HIV/AIDS
- How to abstain from sex
- Condom and drug usage
- Counseling centers, to be made accessible to HIV positive victims
- Developing sensitivity towards HIV positive people
- How to lay a charge to the Police
- How to care for HIV positive people
These responses demonstrate a lack of knowledge about HIV/AIDS in general, and specifically a lack of knowledge on the gender dimension of HIV/AIDS. During a secondary school literacy project in 2000, a researcher recorded this exchange between a 12-year-old learner and teacher:
Female learner: Ma’am, you can get AIDS from lipstick, can’t you?
Teacher: AIDS from lipstick—how could that be?
Female learner: Ma’am, in order to get money to buy lipstick and sanitary napkins, we have sex.
The "AIDS from lipstick" exchange is only one of the many myths, stereotypes and assumptions that beg to be ‘unpacked’ by educators who are on the front line when it comes to working with young people and HIV/AIDS. Assuredly there is a strong need for educators to take the opportunity to mainstream gender into HIV/AIDS prevention programmes, and one way of ensuring this happens is to have everyone involved.
Working Together
Where there are dedicated ?desks? in provincial and district structures given over to HIV/AIDS, it is vital that there is a structure in place for the gender focal person and the person responsible for HIV/AIDS to work together. Gender focal persons are a valuable resource with much knowledge and experience in this area. Indeed, a good performance indicator of a successful educational manager is that he or she makes sure that there is a complementarity and collaboration in HIV/AIDS and gender programming.
Gendering the ABCs of HIV/AIDS Prevention
(Source: Mlamleli et al, (2001))
How did learners spell prevention? A,B,C
Africans Be Careful
Alcoholic Boys don’t Condomise
Abstain, Be Wise and Creative
AIDS Beware Condoms are free
Anybody, Be prepared to Condomise before having sex
Anybody must Be careful and Condomise
Avoid Bad Circumstances
Awaken Before Calling for sex
AIDS Brings Chaos
Why is leadership so important at the school level?
The school represents the best opportunity for developing an effective challenge to the AIDS pandemic among school age learners and youth
(Source: Charles, UNESCO)
Who needs to take the lead?
Evidence suggests that a critical factor for successful prevention <of HIV/AIDS> is leadership. Leaders at all levels, from the President to the village head(person) or councillor, from the preacher in the pulpit to the captain of industry at a prize-winning school, from sports heroes to soap opera stars, should be taking every opportunity to talk about HIV and lead by example.
(Whiteside & Sunter, (2000).
New Challenges to Mainstreaming
Claudia Mitchell
Where there was the need for gender-across-the-curriculum, for example, we are now seeing a new "call to action", one which asks for HIV/AIDS interventions and strategies across the curriculum, HIV/AIDS and management, HIV/AIDS and policy making at the level of school governing bodies and so on.
However, while there are already structures set up nationally, a set of focused interventions in the area of Life Skills and a national education policy on HIV/AIDS, it is very clear that much of the work on HIV/AIDS lands directly onto the desks of those who are working in the area of gender. For example, the "ABC" campaign of Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condomise is one that very clearly cannot be separated from the work that is already going on in schools in relation to gender-based violence. The relationship between aggressive masculinity and attitudes towards male and female sexuality needs to be linked to the increased vulnerability that girls face with the spread of HIV/AIDS. There is an even greater need to develop educational programs that highlight the rights of girls to free choice in sexual relations. A great deal is currently being explored in Life Skills programs in relation to negotiation and assertiveness when it comes to girls' free choice in sexual relations. Experiences, though, in the area of gender-based violence suggest that the ideas of 'negotiation' and 'assertiveness' cannot be looked at independently of male power, girls' positions in society, the presence or absence of structures and policies that work for gender equity and so on. The should be taken as very compelling arguments in support of the work of Gender Focal Persons in the provinces and the Gender Equity Directorate.
One of the recent initiatives of UNAIDS has been to consider the need for a 'gendered strategy' in addressing HIV/AIDS and which, in particular, considers the role of males. Their concern is not only that males need to be "targeted" more directly in relation to the use of condoms, but also that males need to be more involved as care-givers in HIV/AIDS families and communities. They suggest that young males, in particular, need to be brought into HIV/AIDS activism in a major way.
These global initiatives on HIV/AIDS should be regarded in South Africa as strongly in support of the work of the Gender Equity Directorate and the nine provincial Gender Focal Persons. They speak to the significance of gender and curriculum (including HIV/AIDS awareness across the curriculum), HIV/AIDS and educational management (what is the role of the principal, the school management teams, the leadership programmes involving youth, HIV/AIDS and school governing bodies?), and strategic planning for mainstreaming.
Those working to promote gender equity in South Africa, then, have a double, if not triple set of 'tasks': first, to continue to mainstream gender equity into education generally; second, to mainstream HIV/AIDS within gender equity programmes and vice versa: and third, based on the experiences of working within a "mainstreaming ethos" over the past couple of years, to support the strategic planning of other structured and groups within education who are also working to mainstream HIV/AIDS. For example, at a recent conference of youth the SADC region held in Maputo, June 13-16, one of the focal points was to consider the ways in which HIV/AIDS should be regarded as a cross-cutting theme for youth in relation to Education, Health, and Participation. In essence, their concern is to mainstream HIV/AIDS in their policies and initiatives. We may not always consider ourselves "successes" in mainstreaming since there remains a great deal to be done, or experts in mainstreaming, but we are veterans, and the lessons learned over the past several years in relation to mainstreaming gender equity are not ones that should be lost in taking on the new challenges posed by HIV/AIDS in South African schools and communities.
Adapted from Gender Matters: A Newsletter on Gender in South African Education, No. 4, July 2000
What school principals, head teachers, school governing bodies and school management teams can do:
- Provide leadership in relation to human resource policies and absenteeism related to HIV/AIDS
- Manage a safe school
- Support training of Representative Council of Learners (RCLs) on gender issues and HIV/AIDS
- Provide opportunities for youth to discuss identity formation in terms of societal expectations of masculinity and femininity
- Support peer educators in informing youth of Gender and HIV/AIDS aspects
- Help to develop sensitivity towards HIV positive people
- Establish a climate of trust and confidentiality for teachers and learners whose lives are directly affected by HIV/AIDS
- Foster leadership among girls to assist them in developing negotiation skills
- Provide role models for behaviour that respects girls’ sexuality
- Encourage open discussion among teachers and learners on HIV/AIDS within a context of gender and gender-based violence
- Encourage dialogue with communities and learners about the following:
- distribution of condoms
- obtaining literature on HIV/AIDS, gender issues, etc. for learners and teachers
- HIV/AIDS education week in the schools1
Endnotes
1Mitchell & Smith (2000).