allAfrica.com: Zimbabwe: Women's Latest Bargaining Tool: opinion
"WOMEN think that when you're married, you don't have to worry about HIV. They think it is a safe haven,"said Beauty Nyamwanza of the National Aids Council.
But marriage can actually fuel the risk of HIV among women, particularly the young.
Research has shown that marriage increases the frequency of sex and impedes a woman's ability to negotiate condom use or abstain from sex.
In essence, married women find it difficult to request their husbands to use condoms, even to use one themselves as this would be seen as if they are promiscuous.
When Aids first struck in the 1980s, it mainly affected men. Now, globally about half of the 33,3 million people infected with HIV today are women, and in sub-Saharan Africa, the share rises to 60 percent.
The large majority are infected through unprotected sex with their husbands or long-term primary partners.
Nyamwanza recently told a media seminar in Kadoma: "Marriage, once thought to protect women from sexually transmitted infections, puts many girls and women, especially those who marry much older and more sexually experienced men, at risk."
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