Quantitative studies indicate that HIV incidence in Zimbabwe declined since the late 1990s, due in part to behavior change. This qualitative study, involving focus group discussions with 200 women and men, two dozen key informant interviews, and historical mapping of HIV prevention programs, found that exposure to relatives and close friends dying of AIDS, leading to increased perceived HIV risk, was the principal explanation for behavior change. Growing poverty, which reduced men's ability to afford multiple partners, was also commonly cited as contributing to reductions in casual, commercial and extra-marital sex. HIV prevention programs and services were secondarily mentioned as having contributed but no specific activities were consistently indicated, although some popular culture influences appear pivotal. This qualitative study found that behavior change resulted primarily from increased interpersonal communication about HIV due to high personal exposure to AIDS mortality and a correct understanding of sexual HIV transmission, due to relatively high education levels and probably also to information provided by HIV programs.
Studies of born-again Churches in Africa generally conclude that they help members embrace modernity. Their teachings provide the ideological bases for members to embrace changing material realities. Such studies are rather silent on the demands of this ideological frame on women and men. This article looks at two Zimbabwean women's organisations, Gracious Woman and Precious Stones, affiliated to Zimbabwe Assemblies of God in Africa and Family of God respectively. Using ethnographic methods, it argues that such organisations teach women domesticity and romanticise female subordination as glorifying God. They discourage individualism by exalting motherhood, wifehood and domesticity as service to God. These demands emerge at a time when life is changing drastically in urban areas as women get educated and enter the professions. Economically a small but growing number of black families have experienced some upward mobility—something these Churches encourage through ‘the gospel of prosperity’. Although accumulation and upward mobility free families from (traditional) kin obligations which the Churches encourage, women are discouraged from resisting the patriarchal yoke even when material circumstances make it possible. The organisations repackage patriarchy as Christian faith. The article concludes that if these Churches are concerned with managing modernity, then they see modernity as female subordination.
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