Women’s Empowerment and HIV Prevention in Rural Malawi

Berit Gerritzen

No 1222, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: Condom use and communication among sexual partners are important strategies for HIV prevention. Using a panel data set of more than 1,200 married women in rural Malawi from 1998-2008, this paper shows that adequate HIV prevention strategies, i.e. condom use within marriage and HIV-related spousal communication, are more widely used as women's bargaining power increases. I focus on different dimensions of women’s empowerment, namely personal and interpersonal empowerment. Among the proxies used for women's empowerment, own income, knowledge of other local languages and awareness of exit options from marriage are found to play a particularly important role in promoting adequate preventive behaviors. The main findings continue to hold after individual-specific fixed effects and time dummies are included in order to account for unobserved hetereogeneity and time trends.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS; Sub-Saharan Africa; gender; development; spousal communication; condom use within marriage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 J16 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dem, nep-dev and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Women's Empowerment and HIV Prevention in Rural Malawi (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:econwp:2012:22

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