Scales of justice: Women, equity, and HIV in East Africa

One of the themes of the 12th World AIDS Conference in 1998 was “Bridging the Gap�? between industrialized and nonindustrialized countries in availability of drugs and other resources to combat the transmission of HIV. The idea is an admirable one in many respects. It also glosses over the complex geopolitical causes and context of the AIDS epidemic that have arguably acquired particular patterns in nonindustrialized countries. The reasons can, in part, be found in the long history of inequitable encounters with industrial economies, encounters which persist today in the form of foreign loans that are made contingent upon “structural adjustments�? of receiving economies. The call to “bridge the gap�? is thus an ironic one for the degree to which it belies the underlying realities of political economies on a global scale.