Engendered Discrimination

UNICEF routinely conducts city-level health surveys in various developing countries, such as Malawi, called the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, or MICS.  The MICS focuses on indicators related to maternal and child health, including fertility, child mortality, nutrition, child health, environment, reproductive health, education, child protection, and HIV/AIDS and Orphanhood.

A finding that struck me from the survey conducted in Blantyre, Malawi concerned HIV-related stigma and family dynamics.  It reported that 68% of women compared to 36% of men would want to keep it a secret if a family member had HIV.  In the discussion, they mildly conclude that women are more discriminatory than men when it comes to stigma and discrimination of HIV.

I disagree that women in Malawi are more discriminatory.  From my research on gender in Blantyre and the observations I made during my limited experience there, I think there is an alternative reason for why women more than men would want to keep it a secret if a family member was infected with HIV.  Women to me seem more socially connected, more relational with their neighbors, friends, and other mothers, in very personal and familial social networks: the neighborhood, the local church, their children’s schools, the market.  In this sense women seemed to be more tightly woven into the fabric of other people’s lives.  So something like stigma against a family member who has HIV is more damaging, more threatening, more immediate to a wife or a mother in Blantyre.

Women then, are not more discriminatory.  Rather, they are more affected, threatened, or harmed by discrimination from their community.  The conclusion drawn from the MICS seems to conflate women being more discriminatory with women being more susceptible to discrimination.