In this chapter we contrast the male circumcision debate with activists’ work that connects HIV/AIDS to questions of historically specific patterns of colonialism, apartheid, capitalism and a global economy with its powerful pharmaceutical corporations. HIV activists have to deal with the Western constructions of ‘African AIDS’ on the one hand, and the realities of HIV/AIDS in women’s lives, on the other. One strategy has been to highlight the importance of women’s empowerment in fighting HIV/AIDS (Abdool Karim 1998; Gilbert & Walker 2002). Activists in Africa have, like other activists worldwide, emphasized the impossibility of fighting HIV/AIDS without addressing HIV/AIDS in gendered terms. They look for ways of pointing out that women are more vulnerable to become infected both socially and physiologically, and that this should not be disregarded in HIV prevention work. Gilbert and Walker (2002) emphasize that addressing women’s specific situations should not be understood as a further victimization of African women, nor as an essentializing view on gender.
A notion that can be helpful when trying to understand the specific situations of African women without reproducing victimization is vulnerability (Delor and Hubert 2000). The notion enables a social analysis of infection patterns: while anyone is biologically susceptible to infection by different diseases such as HIV/ AIDS, certain social and economic factors place some individuals and groups in situations of increased vulnerability (Kalipeni 2000:966). Kalipeni (2000) refers to vulnerability as consisting of entitlement, empowerment and political economy. Doyal’s (1995) general claim that the disadvantageous social position of women and girls places them in a vulnerable position with serious health consequences, is applied by Gilbert and Walker (2002) on the South African HIV/AIDS situa-
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