Gender, culture and changing attitudes: experiences of HIV in Zimbabwe

Stephen O'Brien, Alex Broom

This paper draws on a series of qualitative interviews with 60 people living in economically poor communities of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, to provide new insight into the cultural landscape of HIV. While there has been extensive exploration of gender, sexuality, culture and HIV in Zimbabwe, there is a need to revisit these issues given the country's recent political and economic history. These questions have shaped the meanings that have been created around HIV (i.e., notions of HIV-as-death and as being produced by promiscuity) and the gendered mediation of cultural practices (i.e., forms of sexual expression and treatment uptake). Drawing on the accounts from a group directly affected by HIV, we illustrate the persistence of gendered and spiritualised ideas about 'blame', 'transmission' and 'treatment' and the disproportionate burden that still falls on Zimbabwean women. We conclude with an exploration of how everyday understandings of HIV may be shifting and the ways in which marginality, discrimination and stigma may be being challenged by openness, dialogue and attitude change.