|UN Women Gender Equality and HIV/AIDS Web Portal| UN Women, in
collaboration with UNAIDS, created this comprehensive online
resource to provide up-to-date information on the gender
equality dimensions of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The site aims to
promote understanding, knowledge sharing, and action on HIV/AIDS
as a gender and human rights issue. UN Women's Approach While
HIV/AIDS is a health issue, the epidemic is a gender issue.
Statistics prove that both the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS are
not random. HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects women and
adolescent girls who are socially, culturally, biologically, and
economically more vulnerable. The figures are alarming: At the
end of 2009, slightly more than half of the estimated 33.3
million adults (aged 15-49) living with HIV/AIDS were women and
girls. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more women than men are living
with HIV, and young women aged 15-24 years are as much as eight
times more likely than men to be HIV-positive. In the Caribbean,
approximately 53 per cent of