Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 15, 2002Volume 30, Number 22Two-Week Issue



Jason Heffner of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) joined a group of women in the international conference to explore how religious traditions and institutions influence the spread or prevention of AIDS in Africa. The women represented 14 countries and various religious traditions. The conference was sponsored by the Yale Divinity School and USAID.



Event explores role of faith,
gender in fighting AIDS in Africa

The role that religious institutions play in the continued spread of AIDS in Africa was among the topics discussed at a conference held Feb. 28-March 3 at the Yale Divinity School.

Fifty women from 14 countries and diverse faith traditions gathered to take part in the event, part of the Project on Gender, Faith and Responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The participants included 23 theologians and church workers from the African nations of Botswana, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, Mozambique, Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Namibia, Kenya, Cameroon and Rwanda.

The African women joined with female theologians from the United States and Canada to probe the connections between gender and faith in an attempt to find new responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa and around the world. The conference participants represented various groups within the Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish traditions.

Musimbi Kanyoro, general secretary of the world YWCA, described the participants from Africa as "women speaking authoritatively as leaders in our communities with responsibilities covering local, regional and international spheres."

She added: "We represent professions and institutions, movements or individual initiatives. We are theologians by training and theologians by faith and practice. This is a table rich in variety -- for Africa is big, and the U.S. is big, and women always have a big agenda."

The participants shared the conviction that religious traditions and their institutions can exert a major influence on the spread or prevention of the AIDS pandemic. "Faith communities are either part of the problem or part of the remedy," said Margaret Farley, the Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at the Yale Divinity School and director of the conference.

She noted that, as AIDS continues to "burn its way across Africa," women are at increasing and disproportionate risk of infection and death. They are also increasingly at the center of community, district and national responses, she added.

The conference -- which was sponsored by the Divinity School and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) -- had its roots in the White House Summit for World AIDS day, which was held in December of 2000. That summit brought together religious leaders from countries facing massive increases in the spread of HIV/AIDS, particularly African nations. A summit participant from the Yale Divinity School challenged the world religious leaders to address questions of sexuality, the status of women and poverty in relation to HIV/AIDS. This, in turn, led USAID to collaborate with women faculty at the Yale Divinity School on the Project on Gender, Faith and Responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa. The weekend's conference was an outgrowth of the work of this project.

Conference participants noted that the beliefs and practices of many religious institutions often contribute to women's risk of infection and can present obstacles to women's effective action in their own communities -- thereby promoting harm rather than good. On the other hand, speakers noted, religious institutions and their faith practices often also inform, inspire and sustain women as leaders, theologians, policy makers, clinicians and care-givers.

The women at the conference spoke of the need to critique and transform aspects of religious traditions that can contribute to sickness and death -- such as the availability and acceptability of condoms. The participants also addressed issues of social justice in international access to medical care.

While the conference was an invitational working conference, it included a session open to the public on Saturday morning that provided a wider discussion of issues with various representatives of local HIV/AIDS organizations and the medical professions. Speakers at this session included Michael Merson, dean of Yale's Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, who spoke of the work that is being done at the University in response to the worldwide AIDS epidemic, and Elsie Cofield, founder and director of AIDS Interfaith Network in New Haven, who shared her experience working on the national front in response to AIDS.

As part of the conference's goal of finding ways to support the work being done in Africa by women, participants spent the final sessions of the conference determining how to sustain the theological and practical work they had begun. Plans were made for continued collaboration at a future conference to be sponsored in Ethiopia by the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Participants also agreed to continue to work together to share research, strategies and resources.

"The collective power of women has the possibility to reach out and touch the lives of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS," said Kanyoro. "We do not accept that HIV/AIDS is our fate."

Further questions regarding this conference can be addressed to Margaret A. Farley, Yale Divinity School, 409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511. She can also be reached by telephone at (203) 432-5355 or (203) 488-0692, by fax at (203) 488-0692 or by e-mail at margaret.farley@yale.edu.


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