Should I celebrate Nairobi +21? Being a woman in the age of HIV and AIDS in Lesotho - Mathabo Motalingoane-Khau

Twenty-one years after the Nairobi conference at which gender activists and scholars discussed ways to fend for women's rights and gender equality, women globally are still struggling to realise this goal. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this is further exacerbated by the prevalence of the HIV and AIDS pandemic, which tends to be negatively skewed against young women and girls. In this perspective, I explore the age of HIV and AIDS in Lesotho through my gendered, personal experience. I make meaning of lived experience by identifying and engaging with some key issues: marital rape and male sexual entitlement, female desire and pleasure, silence and sexual violence, Catholicism and divorce and women as caregivers. I also discuss how my interest in the area of sexuality and HIV and AIDS has been developed and shaped by my personal stories, highlighting my aspirations for future work in this field as a female teacher and gender scholar. By writing about my personal experiences, I aim to illustrate the continuing plight of women in Lesotho. Specifically, I provide a critical account about the power relations in which I have necessarily been engaged and, on the basis of this, address intersections of gender, sexuality and gender-based violence in Lesotho.
From: Agenda 69 (2006), pp. 111-118