Gender and HIV

The idea for this tool grew out of a global consultation on Integrating Gender into HIV/AIDS Programmes held on 3–5 June 2002 at WHO headquarters in Geneva. This meeting brought experts on gender and HIV/AIDS together with national AIDS programme managers to discuss how gender could be addressed more systematically within existing HIV health sector programmes. The participants recognized that for this goal to be achieved it was necessary to produce an operational tool for programme managers, and to address specific types of HIV/AIDS programmes.

This report is based on a consultation organized by the department of Gender, Women and Health (GWH) of the World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the Department of HIV/AIDS (HIV), WHO in Geneva from January 16–18, 2006. The meeting was supported with funds from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Together We Must! represents an initial effort to draw attention to the knowledge, institutional capacity and resources needed to comprehensively address the intersection between HIV&AIDS and VAWG. It aims to stimulate debate and collaboration among practitioners and advocates around how to identify and promote policies and practices that are effective and can be adapted to various contexts. Of the multiple suggestions that could be drawn from the ‘promising practices’ profiled here, the report prioritizes five key recommendations.

This Review Paper aimed to provide participants of the Expert Consultation with background information and a suggested framework for considering the issues and challenges of integrating gender into programmatic and policy action. It also offers some programmatic examples of successful HIV/AIDS interventions that have
addressed gender issues in a meaningful and significant way. This Review Paper is not intended to be an exhaustive review of literature on gender and HIV/AIDS, but rather to draw from the literature to create a picture, in broad strokes, of the ways in which gender influences women's and men's vulnerability in the epidemic and the range of potential programmatic responses.

This publication presents the key findings of the consultation, 'Tracking and Monitoring Gender Equality and HIV/AIDS in Aid Effectiveness,'; it highlights the gaps in tracking budgets and expenditures on gender equality, and the need to transform the structural conditions that heighten the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV. It underlines the need for comprehensive gender equality indicators for use in monitoring progress in meeting key targets and goals outlined within the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS.