Gender, sexuality, society/culture and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa: The case of Nigeria

GENDER, SEXUALITY, SOCIETY/CULTURE AND HIV/AIDS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: THE CASE OF NIGERIA

Sexual activity poses great risks for the reproductive health of people particularly where sex education programmes are not widely available. In sub-Saharan Africa, the advent of HIV/AIDS epidemic has heightened these risks especially amongst youths and women. In Nigeria for example, the prevalent rate is 4.5% and 35% of the infected are youths, while 68% are women. In the absence of sex education programmes, the Africans understanding of their gender and sexuality remain dominated by societal/cultural conceptions of gender and sexuality which place the male over the female in power relations. The unequal power balance in gender relations that favours men, translates into an unequal power balance in heterosexual interactions, in which male pleasure surpasses female pleasures and men have greater control than women over when, where, and how sex takes place. The focus of this paper therefore is to identify and discuss the different ways in which the imbalance in power between women and men in gender relations narrows women's sexual independence and expands male sexual freedom, thereby increasing women’s risk and vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in a sub-Saharan African Country, Nigeria.