UNAIDS' gender policy: strengths and weaknesses

1. UNAIDS' gender policy: strengths and weaknesses Agenda for Country Level Accelerated Action on Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV Shannon Olinyk – Michigan University, Ann Arbor, USA Andrew Gibbs – HEARD, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa Catherine Campbell – Institute of Social Psychology, LSE, London, UK

2. Strengths and limitations Strengths: 1) Political space for prioritizing women and girls 2) Engendering new alliances “It has made sure we engage as partners in a joint way, together around a common platform.” Limitations 1) Lack of grassroots participation 2) Insufficient resources and tools for implementing 3) Lack of political will within UNAIDS It was a: “high-level thingthat makes it look like they are doing a lot for women, but when you dig down, their efforts have been limited.”

3. Conclusions The Agenda is strong in content and design, but has significant weaknesses in implementation – policy evaporation However, we cannot understand the impact of the Agenda as solely about implementation, rather the processes of developing the Agenda and the Agenda itself seem to have had wider impacts in creating a political space for women, girls and gender equality in the response to HIV Andrew Gibbs: gibbs@ukzn.ac.za