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Assessing Equity in Health and Women’s Opportunities to Be Healthy

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Gender and HIV in South Africa

Part of the book series: Global Research in Gender, Sexuality and Health ((GRGSH))

Abstract

This chapter conducts an assessment of whether the ongoing problem of HIV in black South African women constitutes a health inequity. Nested within the health equity analysis is a section that considers key capabilities in direct relation to human rights afforded South African women in the basic law. The assessment concludes that: (a) this problem does constitute a health inequity that is modifiable; (b) four central capabilities are undermined and these have direct counterparts in sections 11, 12 and 27 of the South African Constitution; (c) the current government response to HIV in South African women is insufficient because it fails to attend to the social factors that foster HIV risk and transmission in women; (d) relational factors associated with the basic social structure are contributing to HIV in this population; (e) this problem can be socially governed, which generates an obligation by agents of the State to take further action to ameliorate HIV in women and to facilitate the enjoyment of their rights. Moreover, the Government and South African National AIDS Council are aware of these structural drivers but they have failed thus far to address them fully in the National Strategic Plan on HIV.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Italicised emphases are mine.

  2. 2.

    Note that in political philosophy, the moral and the ethical are most often used interchangeably to refer to what is right, just and good and I am applying this same convention here. Where distinctions are made, particularly in law and business, morality tends to be viewed as located from ‘within’ the individual person and ethics is imposed from ‘without’ by the government, society or the profession to guide right conduct. Both revolve around social values and norms in keeping with the good life in a given society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA

    Courtenay Sprague

  2. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Courtenay Sprague

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  1. Courtenay Sprague
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Sprague, C. (2018). Assessing Equity in Health and Women’s Opportunities to Be Healthy. In: Gender and HIV in South Africa. Global Research in Gender, Sexuality and Health. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55997-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55997-5_8

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