Privileging prevention,gendering responsibility: an analysis of the Ghanaian campaign against HIV/AIDS

This article focuses on the discourses around HIV/AIDS in the national Ghanaian ‘Stop AIDS Love Life!’ public health campaign, within non-governmental HIV/AIDS publications, and the Ghanaian national print media. I have used critical discourse analysis to interpret and deconstruct a range of these social texts collected between June and September of 2001 and 2003 in and around Greater Accra, Ghana. I argue, firstly, that these discourses are shaped by an international politics of funding for HIV/AIDS that privileges prevention through behaviour change over treatment action under the premise that prevention is a more cost-effective option for the Global South. I critique this stance, highlighting the emerging possibilities for integrated prevention–treatment efforts in resource-poor settings such as Ghana. Secondly, I argue that the discourses around HIV/AIDS presented in prevention campaign materials powerfully construct normative and gendered subjectivities with assigned roles and responsibilities. The fight against HIV/AIDS is constructed as a national project in which an idealized, and often very young, female citizen is positioned as educator, volunteer, carer and protector of herself and society. This discursive coding of responsibility places the many burdens of HIV upon some of the most vulnerable in society, ignoring the structural constraints of gender, generational and economic inequality. I conclude my paper by arguing that efforts to reduce transmission rates, stigma, and the burden of care for those living with HIV/AIDS in Ghana must integrate both preventative efforts and treatment action. Where prevention campaigns are utilized I suggest that these must recognize the limitations of behaviour change initiatives that primarily target women and acknowledge the gendered constraints faced by those very subjects identified as responsible for the protection and education of the nation.