Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies Vol. 15 No 2 (2001)
Gender power relations and the HIV/AIDS cnsls                                                       In
Botswana: some food for thought
Julia Preece
University of Botswana, Adult Education
    Gender inequality has been identified as a central feature of HIV infection rates among women in
    Africa. In Botswana recent studies have suggested that strategies for information, education and
    communication (lEe) about HlV/AlDS should be targeted at the differential needs and
    experiences of gender and age. There is little evidence to show that current lEC strategies are
    specifically addressing inequality issues within those experiences. There is evidence that current
    rates of infection are not decreasing and behavioural change is slow. This paper offers a
    theoretical analysis of gender inequality in terms of power and discourse. It suggests that such a
    theoretical perspective of gender inequality within Botswana's cultural context may provide a
   framework that can strengthen lEC objectives to stimulate behavioural change.
Introduction
Exploration of attitudes towards HIV/AIDS, focusing on the culturally specific
circumstances of Botswana has been the subject of increasing research in recent years.
Sentinel surveys and other studies conducted amongst pregnant women and people
registering with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) reveal that women are more
vulnerable to infection and that gender inequality is a significant reason for higher infection
rates among women (UNDP 2000). This paper offers a theoretical analysis of gender that
might be used to explain the gender power dynamics in Botswana's highly complex family
system. The theoretical analysis is applied to specific contexts in two recent publications
(Strebel 1994 and Mookodi 2000) as an invitation to stimulate further discussion.
    The paper begins with a brief overview of some of the gender-specific beliefs and
practices in Botswana that are perceived as underlying some resistances to behavioural
change in relation to HIV infections. This is followed by an exposition of feminist post-
structuralism and its applicability to understanding gendered social relations in Botswana.
Central to the paper's analysis is the argument that a deeper understanding of how power
differentials are maintained within Botswana's culturally-based gendered social relations
can provide a tool for challenging the inequalities that women experience in sexual
relations.
Gender inequalities and HIV/AIDS in Botswana
 The UNDP (2000: 4) states that gender inequality is the main cause of higher infection
 amongst women in Botswana. The reasons cited in relevant literature are premised around
 the concept that women are traditionally subject to male decision making in the home and
 this is perpetuated throughout all private or concensual relationships. Women's position of
 inequality is embedded in Family Law that denies women equal access to property or
 important fmancial transactions (Botswana Society 1993). Adultery is regarded as a female
 crime only, and as Mookodi (2000) states: 'There are defmed power relations within
 consensual relationships and ... women occupy subordinate positions in relation to their
 consensual partners' (p.12). These defined relationships mean that women have little or no
 say in matters such as sexual behaviour. They are not in a position to defend their position
 on safe sex and if their husband works away from home they are vulnerable to any infection
 he may have picked up from casual sex relations. Women's lack of control over matters in
 relation to sex can result in abuse, violence, or forced sex in or outside of consensual
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relationsh.ips. It is common, ~or instance for men to forcibly or otherwise impregnate young
teenage girls and women. This can mean that women are prone to infection from older men
at a very early age (Stegling 2000).
     The extent of women's engagement in the commercial sex trade is also attributed to their
difficulties in gaining adequate alternative employment. But in this most vulnerable of
professions they are still without the ability to insist on safe sex practices (Stegling 2000).
The above circumstances mean that multiple sex contacts are common. In addition there is
strong pressure on young women to demonstrate their reproductive abilities; expectations
for several children within families are high and unprotected sex is the norm (Stegling
2000). Power relations between men and women and between generations are therefore a
 significant and complex issue that must be addressed in IEC strategies for behavioural
 change: 'The process of negotiation between men and women is often not about sex but
 about power' (Adeokun 1994: 33).
     Against this background of normative behaviours are a number of traditional beliefs and
 taboos that perpetuate a gendered distribution of blame and responsibility towards
 undesirable outcomes of sexual relations. Some examples of such taboos are manifested in
 perceptions about female bodies. On the one hand it is understood that giving birth cleanses
 the womb and this understanding contributes greatly to the prevalence of teenage
 pregnancies. On the other hand blood and semen are seen as pollutants meeting in female
 bodies so that the spread of HIV is often attributed to women. Moreover the condom is seen
 as a white people's thing (Botswana National Council for UNESCO 1999: 79). These
 issues can be explained by identifying conceptions of gender as socially constructed and
 reproduced over time through relations of power and enacted out in behaviours, attitudes
  and beliefs that have become so internalized that they are now simply common sense.
  Resistance, in the name of culture, to attempts to overturn the status quo must be
  understood in this context.
  Gender power and discourse
     Sexuality is socially constructed and historically located within a matrix of intersectings~cial,
     economicand cultural factors.... Male sexualityand powerneed to comeunderthe spotlightl~ the
     analysisis to reflect the complexityof issues involvedand generaterealisticand effectivesolutIOns
     (Strebel 1994: 36; 41).
     Most theoretical analyses of gender share three core concepts: woman, experience and
  personal politics (Grant 1993). Western literature on gender is embedded in ~ range of
  feminist positions that have become increasingly blurred during the 1990s and mfluenced
  by a number of black writers (bel hooks 1991, 1994; Brah 1996; Mirza 1997 for instance).
  A brief exposition of some of the evolutionary phases of feminisms, is useful, however, to
  explain the contribution of a poststructuralist position to the present problem. ~or ~xample
  both radical and socialist feminisms provide us with a concept of male dommatlO~ ~ver
  Women. Whilst radical feminisms emphasise the unitary concept of womanhood as dl~tmct
   from masculinity, socialist feminisms explore ways in which gender has been SOCially,
   rather than biologically constructed throughout history (Weedon 1987, Grant 19?3).
   Socialist positions recognize the pluralist influence of race and class on gender relations
   and acknowledge there are different sources of oppression on and between women. They
   are linked, however, to Marxist perspectives on reproduction as ~ cl~ss based concept and
   ?ave been criticized for not taking account of how patriarchy eXIstsm the first p~ac~.T~e
   Issue of power as a central feature of oppression is inadequately addressed wlthm thiS
   perspective, it is argued. The post-structuralist position shifts the debate away from
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pluralism and onto the relationship between language and power, with an emphasis on
language as the site of struggle for meaning (Weedon 1987). This perspective facilitates a
more political analysis of difference and how women are positioned-as                 women-
throughout history. Feminisms therefore, share a common concern about masculine
constructions of gender and their power relationship with women. Feminist post-
structuralism combines these concerns with an analysis of the relationship between
discourse, knowledge and power. The notion of 'discourse' includes the interactive
application of language, beliefs and societal systems to everyday life. This provides a way
of explaining different, gender specific, ways of behaving and knowing.
   A particular feature of post-structuralism is the exploration of how history is produced
and the 'how' of power; how the process of making history is portrayed and understood
(historicity); how discourses interact within different power relations to produce shifting
identities and meanings. In the process dominant discourses create notions of differenc~,
and isolate certain groups as 'other than' the dominant group. As a result individuals are
caught between acting as knowing 'subjects' and acting unconsciously as individuals who
are socially conditioned (Jones 1997); while power relations authorize certain ways of
knowing and privilege certain statements as truths (Foucault 1980, Preece 1999). Applied in
the Botswana context these concepts can be seen in the way Family Law inscribes women
as less than and other than men with regard to property ownership. The cultural practices
that perceive men as decision makers and define women as perpetual children when it
comes to ownership are reproduced over time. Both men and women are socially
conditioned to believing and knowing that they hold certain positions in society. In spite of
these reproduced messages, however, there are indications that identities and meanings shift
throughout time. For instance, Mookodi (2000) has pointed out that patterns of wage
employment and the creation of the male breadwinner ideology in Botswana were
significantly influenced by colonization, labour migration and introduction of capitalist
wage labour systems. But cultural norms and knowing subjects have now incorporated
these patterns of male authority over women through economic structures that were hitherto
not so defined.
   From these observations we can see that power is not a static concept, though its
discourses may be reproduced over time to give the appearance of a fixed status quo. Power
can be reproductive and positive and it can be interactive. Power relations co-exist with
other power relations. It is the combination of different axes of power that create the
conditions for domination (Foucault 1980). So, for instance, legal structures may compete
or collude with cultural practices and women may resist or collude with social expectations,
while the education system may perpetuate or introduce new discourses. The interaction
between these sources of power and discourse provides the possibility for new ideas, new
behaviours or a continuation of existing ones. Individuals caught within these discourses
may choose to follow certain courses of action, or may feel disempowered by pressure from
competing and more dominant discourses. So the potentially unpredictable combination of
power relations and discourse interactions (as the mechanisms for power) renders the
possibility of resistance and the possibility of changing power relationships. Dominant
agents of power (such as families and institutions) and their discourses are therefore
constantly under threat-hence the intricate networks of social systems and discursive
practices, such as rules and internalized rationalities, that are in place to sustain the status
quo. Knowledge itself can become a medium of power that excludes resistance, difference
or change, by virtue of its existing authority status.
    T~e systems of discourses and relationships of power, therefore are multiple-they
contrlbu~e to the creation and sustaining of culture, truth, reason, common sense
assumptIOns, the construction and reconstruction of history, the identification of some and
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the subjugation of others. The way discourses function explains how power is in operation
at anyone time and renders the possibility (albeit fragile) for intervention, resistance and
change.
    To summarise, post-structuralism claims that identities are multiple and fragmented. The
subject (individual) is de-centred-both as an individual who is 'socially produced' and as
someone who is 'multiply positioned' by different discourses (Jones 1997: 263).
Knowledge is contextualised by a constantly changing set of experiences. The extent to
which people defme their own truth or how far they resist oppression of themselves,
depends on how they relate to dominant power structures. The way in which certain
dominant discourses manipulate or silence or camouflage certain forms of knowledge, or
ways of seeing the world, are now well documented, particularly across different cultures
 (Kobayashi 1994, Murray Thomas 1994, Bhabha 1984). However, the extent to which
 individuals within cultures can explore and identify oppression or inequality is much more
 difficult because it is hard to challenge our own common sense assumptions and realities.
 One way of doing this, it might be argued, is to demonstrate the process of domination and
 historicity of discourses and their contribution to cultural change where the recipient has
 already identified their own oppression. Racism is more obvious to a black person, for
 example, than a white person. Marginalisation is understood more easily by minority
 cultures within a nation than by the dominant culture. Once the application of oppression is
 understood in one context, then it is easier to understand in additional contexts. In this way
 discourses are expanded and new power relations emerge as individuals undertake new
 forms of agency or resistance to the status quo. An example of this latter situation is
 identified by Mookodi (2000) in her description of the complexities of understanding the
 status of female household heads in Botswana.
  Applying the theory to the Botswana context
  Mookodi deconstructs the dominant discourse of census and household surveys in their
  defmition of the Botswana household. She notes that surveys reveal that 'almost half of all
  households in the country are headed by women' (p.2). Yet, she states, these configurations
  of household render invisible the reality of household organization and gender relations
  within households. A Botswana household is multifaceted and not necessarily defmed
  according to geographical boundaries. Men may not be living directly in the househ~ld to
  which they are contributing; women may not necessarily be making important fmanclal or
  other decisions within households that they head because of social and cultural norms
  which defme women as incapable of making such decisions and expect them to defer to
  other men in the extended family. Therefore, her own survey revealed that women ~ould
  culturally interpret 'head of the household', t/hogo ya /o/wapa. to mean that there eXisteda
  man who was ultimately in charge of the extended family infrastructure. The words by
  themselves were decontextualised in national surveys, ~owever. ~hey w~ul~ b,e~nderst~od
  to mean the person living as the main wage earner, m a phYSicalbUlldmg s Imme~l~te
  geographical boundaries was the head of the household. This would mask the complexities
  of decision making within gendered social relations of the extended famil~.. The social
  reality of family power relations would therefore override this narrower defmlt10n of.head.
  The implications for this misrepresentation of reality would be that the gende~ pow~r Issues
  associated with family status are not addressed in public policy. The public notIOn that
  women are increasingly heads of households would present a different kind of truth from
  the one lived out privately by women ..                                        '
      In spite of this reality Mookodi does identify another dynaml~ among~t smgle Batswana
  Women. This makes the link between their economic status and mcrease m autonomy. Both
  Adeokun (1994) and Mookodi (2000) note that women have achieved relatively more
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power and autonomy in proportion to their economic and educational status. In this respect
the power relationship between men and women can be perceived as changing over time,
albeit imperceptibly:
   In the context of change, a large proportion of single mothers maintain independent households on
   their own, and are the key providers and decision-makers within these domestic domains with little
   or no support from extended family and fathers of children (Mookodi 2000: 7).
   The historicised rationale, of women's traditional inability to make decisions, then, is
already being counterbalanced by a new form of agency amongst women. Some single
mothers are positioning themselves differently because their economic status has given
them the space to manipulate a different balance of power between the old and new
discourses associated with gender.
   Similar arguments can be applied to the way gender is addressed in AIDS awareness
literature and its efforts to persuade women to take the initiative in preventing the spread of
AIDS. A brief analysis of Strebel's account of the incongruities in HIV prevention
measures illustrates both the difficulties and potential for analyzing current information,
 education and communication (IEC) discourses in a way that exposes gender bias.
 Applying the theory to an HIV/AIDS awareness context
 The issue of decision-making is central to the problem of gender power within the
 HIV/AIDS crisis. Strebel (1994) points out the contradictory nature of dominant discourses
 which on the one hand define men as decision makers but on the other hand blame women
 for the spread of HIV/AIDS. She suggests, for instance, that current AIDS IEC advice to
 use condoms is predicated on a male dominated concept of sex and a relationship where
 women are required to accommodate, rather than influence, particular sexual behaviours.
 She states that the IEC message:
     Upholds the prevailing notion of a male sex drive for which men are not responsible, but which
     women are expected to curb ... women are paradoxically required to exert control and make
     choices in a domain over which they have notoriously little control and few options (p.36).
 In other words HIV prevention strategies are being defined in ways that protect male forms
 of sexual relations while enabling women to take the blame for not protecting themselves
 sufficiently from the outcome. Strebel points out that the power dynamics could be changed
 if the discourse itself changed to promote and legitimize alternative sexual practices. She
 proposes that IEC awareness strategies need to isolate the issue of male sexuality and power
 as a collective problem in order to highlight the complexity of gender relations. Only then
 can realistic and effective solutions to the spread of infection be found.
 Conclusion
 These brief examples offer some insight into the way dominant discourses create a
 gendered image of society. In this society male reason is legitimised to construe one picture
 of reality. Within that publicly acclaimed profile women live a different reality. Their
 voices and arguments are silenced-rationalized             out-so that strategies for women's
 empowerment are suppressed. It is only when the dominant rationalities themselves are
 deconstructed in the light of other forms of reason, and then reconstructed, that we can
 present new arguments to solve intractable problems.
   An HIV/AIDS IEC strategy which seeks to undermine existing discourses that sustain
 themselves in the name of culture and normality, would, of course, require clearly defined
 analyses with the opportunity to present alternative rationalities. But the evidence of
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economically      sustainable     households   amongst  Botswana's   single mothers   suggests that
resistance   and change     is possible.
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