Women's Equality Cited for Reducing AIDS

The Toronto Star is reporting that research in Southern Africa is showing that a tribe that gives equal rights to women has helped them escape the epidemic of AIDS raging across Africa. Here's a quote:

Lee's research, to be presented Monday, concludes that the relatively equal rights shared by men and women in Ju/'hoansi society has allowed them to largely escape the scourge of AIDS that is ravaging much of southern Africa.

A growing and well-accepted body a research over recent years has suggested that women's subservience in many African societies has played a crucial role in the spread of the disease.

Simply put, many African women are given no choice about their sexual partners, can't reject philandering husbands and have no power to insist that condoms be used, says pioneering Toronto AIDS doctor Philip Berger, who worked with African AIDS patients for seven months last year.

Lee says the high status of women in the Ju/'hoansi tribe gives them significant autonomy in choosing their sexual and marriage partners.

"In the other societies around the region, the young men will say, 'Oh no, a girl has to obey me if I want to have sex with her, and if I don't want to use a condom, that's it,'" says Lee.

"With the Ju/'hoansi, their high status in the community gives women plenty of leverage in sexual negotiations."

The Southern Baptist creed that wives are to be "graciously submissive" to their husbands would not prove helpful to this tribe.