Women, prison and HIV

Women in prison are suffering from HIV, and their pain and their courage are going unnoticed.

A health care worker who has been providing care to incarcerated HIV-infected women in Massachusetts prisons since 1992 describes the situation of one of her patients: “Z is 25 years old. Last year, Z moved back to her mother’s house after her husband died of AIDS, and her mother moved her stepfather back into her room with her. That was the way they lived when she left home at 16. She says that she protested, that she ran out into the yard crying about incest, but they sat her down at the kitchen table and told her that it couldn’t be incest because he was not her real father. How can this be?

“I ask her why her mother does this to her. She says her stepfather doesn’t care that she is HIV-positive, he doesn’t wear a condom when he sleeps with her, and she thinks that her mother is ‘getting him back’ this way. She wears her hair long, in two big pony tails set high on her head like a little girl. She talks in a little-girl voice and won’t look me in the eye when she tells me that she has to go home when she gets out, to her mother and stepfather, because she has no other place to go.”

This health care worker paints a picture of the life of just one of her many HIV patients. Most people rarely hear the numbers or the crises of these women.

The number of women in the prison system who have HIV in comparison to men is alarming. Even though women are less likely to be incarcerated than men, incarcerated women are three times more likely to be infected with HIV than are incarcerated men. One in 10 inmates in U.S. prisons and jails is a woman.

In many U.S. states more than 20 percent of the female inmate population is HIV-positive, while 9 percent of incarcerated men are HIV-positive. In the state of Nevada, 30.6 percent of the female prison population is living with HIV.

According to 2003 figures, over 14 percent of the women incarcerated in the state of New York were living with HIV—twice the rate of male prisoners. In New Jersey state prisons, 9 percent of incarcerated women were known to be infected with HIV. In Connecticut, the prevalence of HIV infection among women incarcerated in the state prison is 15 percent.

HIV has additionally affected women of color in recent years. In the general U.S. population, Black women account for 64 percent of new HIV infections. These women are also disproportionately represented in correctional facilities due to overwhelmingly institutionalized racism.

The number of women incarcerated in U.S. prisons has increased more than six-fold since 1980. Almost two-thirds of women in prison in 1998 were women of color. Black women were twice as likely as Latina women and eight times more likely than white women to be in prison.

Black women make up 44 percent of the female jail population and 48 percent of women in state prisons.

Linkages among histories of childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, drug use and sex work are believed to explain the disproportionately high prevalence of HIV infection among incarcerated women. According to self-reported data, as many as one-third to two-thirds of incarcerated women report prior sexual abuse, and as many as two in five report a history of childhood sexual abuse. More than 80 percent of women in prison have experienced significant and prolonged exposure to physical abuse by family members or intimates.

Prostitution can be one of the few opportunities for poor women, including impoverished women of color, to survive. Women of color aged 14 to 24 years old accounted for 42 percent of the women arrested and imprisoned for sex work in 2001 in the United States. According to the Minnesota Department of Correction, 25 percent of women incarcerated for prostitution in the state are Black. At the same time unemployment for single Black mothers in the state of Minnesota is over 10 percent, and is double the percentage of unemployed single white mothers.

Poverty is a direct cause for women to become sex workers. A 2004 U.S. Census Bureau report shows that the poverty rate for Black women was 25 percent, more than twice the percentage for non-Black women. Black households had the lowest median income amongst all national groups; poverty rates were highest for families headed by single women. The poverty rate for Black or Latina female-headed households is nearly 40 percent. In comparison, poverty rates for households head by single men came in at 13.5 percent.

It is apparent that the status of women in the United States, especially that of poor and oppressed women, plays a huge role in their high rates of incarceration and HIV infection rates. But this does not have to be the norm.

Where capitalism in the United States presents few options and engenders further oppression of women, in Cuba, by contrast, women are finding socioeconomic opportunities. In fact, one of the most significant changes brought about by the Cuban Revolution has been to the lives and status of women. Since the Revolution, which has put gender issues to the forefront of policy making, Cuban women have seen a fundamental transformation in almost every aspect of their lives.

The Cuban Constitution explicitly guarantees that women have the economic, political, social, cultural and family rights and opportunities equal to those of men. These guarantees are found in Article 32, which states that women and men enjoy the same economic, political, cultural, social and family rights; Article 42, which states that sex discrimination, among other forms of discrimination, is forbidden by law; and Article 44, which stipulates women’s right to equality in the home, at work, in health provision and in their entitlement to state benefits.

Equality for working women in Cuba is guaranteed by law—one of the fundamental measures taken to achieve social justice, the main objective of the Revolution. The Labor Code ensures equal rights and opportunities for women in all fields of work. Women are assured an equal salary for equal work, while in the United States white women still make 74 cents to every dollar a white man makes.

In other ways Cuba shows its commitment to the equality of women, who compose 36 percent of female deputies in the National Assembly. Cuba ranks fifth in the world, after the Scandinavian countries, for the percentage of parliamentarians who are women. The average for Latin America was 14.7 percent in 1999.

In Cuban’s central government, 18 percent of ministers and 22.7 percent of deputy ministers are women. Just over 16 percent of the State Councils are women. In the provincial assemblies, 31 percent of delegates are women. Within the legal system, 62 percent of lawyers, 49 percent of judges and 47 percent of the Supreme Court are women.

Statistics reveal the role women play in a wide number of fields. Women compose 66.1 percent of all professionals and technicians, 51 percent of all doctors, 43 percent of scientists, 33.1 percent of managers. Overall, 50 percent of professional posts are held by women. Sixty-two percent of all university students are women, and 49.5 percent of graduates with higher degrees are women. In 2001, in seven out of nine branches of the sciences, women represented over 50 percent of graduates.

By any standard, the position of women in Cuba ranks among the highest. The culture of equality promoted by socialism and the infrastructure created during the decades following the Revolution have brought fundamental changes and improvements to the lives of Cuban women.

The question for women on U.S. soil remains unanswered: How much have human beings in U.S. society advanced and gained, when the women of this society, in particular those who are poor and oppressed, are denied the opportunities to provide for themselves and their families, and are instead locked behind concrete walls, dying of AIDS and cut off from the possibilities that would help them grow and flourish?

Melissa Kleinman is a FIST member and a Denver public-health-care HIV/AIDS worker.

Sources for this article come from Women in Prison Project, Positive Populations Vol. 3, No. 5 and cuba-solidarity.org