Human Insecurity in the People’s Republic of China: The Vulnerability of Chinese Women to HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS has become one of the world’s leading causes of human insecurity for both men and women. In addition to physiological factors, women’s vulnerability to HIV transmission is primarily fuelled by gender inequality and gender-based discrimination and violence. Therefore, women’s vulnerability to HIV transmission is closely linked to issues of empowerment and gender-based power relations. Even with this realization however, women are still sometimes overlooked in many HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment campaigns, such as those in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and responses to HIV/AIDS do not always actively seek to empower women. Therefore, a deficiency in women’s human security increases their HIV/AIDS vulnerability. This chapter examines the intersection of gender inequality and HIV vulnerability as it applies to women in the PRC. The unequal status of many women in China, and the privileged position accorded to Chinese men, strongly indicates that Chinese women face a heightened vulnerability to HIV transmission. While many of these vulnerabilities are similar to women elsewhere in the world and certainly are not unique to China, by overlooking the many social, cultural, economic and political factors that contribute to HIV/AIDS vulnerability and transmission of the virus, particularly those faced by women, China has a long way to go before Chinese women are protected from HIV transmission. Given that HIV/AIDS heightens human insecurity, the stage is set for Chinese women (and men) to face an insecure future if the Chinese government does not fully implement international best practice, meaning a gendered response, into its overall HIV/AIDS response.