Today, women are increasingly bearing the brunt of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. ActionAid has launched the Invisible Women campaign to bring the crisis facing women into the spotlight and to push governments to put women first in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

More than 15 million women are living with HIV globally and every half a minute another one becomes infected.

The denial of women’s rights underpins these numbers. Simply because they’re female, women and girls are denied education, healthcare and a living wage. Many women are economically dependent on men, and have little say over who they marry or have sex with. Violence against women is also widespread.

All these factors make women vulnerable to HIV infection. Despite this reality, women are often invisible in policies to tackle HIV and AIDS.

What is ActionAid doing about this?

Last year, ActionAid launched the Invisible Women campaign, to persuade our government to put women first in the fight against AIDS. Over 5000 ActionAid supporters contacted International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander, asking him to put women’s rights at the heart of his department’s new global strategy on HIV and AIDS.

As a result of this campaigning, the new strategy prioritises the rights of women and other vulnerable groups. The Department for International Development(DFID) have also promised to improve women’s healthcare and have already increased funding for HIV prevention methods which can be controlled by women, such as microbicides and female condoms.

But we didn't stop there
An area where the strategy could be tougher is the issue of violence against women. While DFID did acknowledge this complex problem back in June 2, 2876 women still contract HIV every day. Through the Put your foot down campaign we have been asking DFID to move from acknowledgement to action.