A quarterly international newsletter on sexuality, sexual health, and sexuality education.
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Summer 2004
News and Views on Sexuality: Education, Health and Rights
The U.S. Strategy on Global HIV/AIDS is underway, and although it mentions the particular vulnerability of women and girls, it contains no substantive strategies to address their predicament. Instead, the Strategy promotes abstinence-until-marriage programs as the preferred method of HIV-prevention. These programs not only fail to address gender inequality but also promote harmful gender stereotypes. Most notably, they are based on the idea that "marriage" alone will protect people from becoming infected with HIV.The irony is that in the areas of the world where the U.S. Strategy offers funding, married, monogamous women are the fastest growing risk group.
This issue of SIECUS' international newsletter, Making the Connection, looks at some of the relationship structures that make women, especially young women and girls, uniquely vulnerable to HIV infection. Articles examine cross-generational sex in Africa and the effects of child marriage.We also profile a U.S.-based abstinence-onlyuntil- marriage program that is beginning to expand globally.
SIECUS hopes both our domestic and international colleagues will find this information helpful in their work. Please contact us if you would like additional printed copies of Making the Connection. Also, if you would like to share a program, resource, or strategy that promotes sexuality education, sexual health, and rights, please send information to us at:
SIECUS
Making the Connection
130 West 42nd Street, Suite 350
New York, NY 10036-7802
Phone: 212.819.9770
Fax: 212.819.9776
E-mail: intl@siecus.org
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