A series of campus groups joined forces Tuesday to sponsor a campus-wide workshop aimed at promoting awareness for the upcoming World AIDS Day this Thursday.

Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment and Sex Out Loud hosted the Feminization of HIV/AIDS workshop, which was led by PAVE Peer Facilitators Samantha Johnson and Jayne Jones and included activities demonstrating factors contributing to the spread of the HIV virus.

The workshop focused on ways to support sexual violence victims and included a discussion of the feminization of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

“The workshop is a bit of a more global focus, but we’re bringing it back home with sexy, causal ways to promote barrier use with a partner and sexy, casual ways to talk about getting tested,” Jones said.

Workshop participant and University of Wisconsin senior Matt Wyller said the workshop was informative and that he believes others could benefit from being more aware of HIV/AIDS on a global perspective.

“I was really surprised about how much I got wrong in the true/false activity,” Wyller said. “I felt like I should know more, [and] I was surprised by a lot of the information.”

According to Johnson, the workshop not only honors World AIDS Day, but also complements the recent trend of feminization in global issues as well, specifically the feminization of poverty.

The number of females living with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan African countries has risen to roughly half of the population, she said.

“[The feminization of HIV/AIDS] is referring to the global trend in the past couple decades of the number of females living with HIV and AIDS,” Johnson said. “The feminization of HIV/AIDS is about looking at the reason why this happened and why there was such an astronomical burst in rates.”
Jones also presented statistics showing that for every male infected with HIV, five or six females are infected.

“The fact that their prevalence has increased at such an alarming rate is something to be concerned about. We need to explore the reason for the gender gap in HIV and why it’s more prevalent in more areas of the world.”

Jones said a possible contributing factor is the disparity in education. Fewer women attend school in these counties and may therefore be less informed, she said.

The two student organizations collaborated to put together the workshop as part of their week-long campaign supporting World AIDS Day, which extends from Nov. 28 through Dec. 2. The group is hosting three events during the week to highlight the biological, sociological, cultural and political aspects of HIV/AIDS on a global level.

Sex Out Loud’s main event will be a presentation entitled “Risky Business” by School of Journalism professor Shawnika Hull to discuss her research on the epidemic and to encourage sexually transmitted infection testing on Dec. 1.

Wyller advocated the events the two organizations planned for the week.

“People have this idea that PAVE and Sex Out Loud are about rape and sexual violence survivors, but [the workshop] was really informative,” Wyller said. “I think it’s information that everyone should have because you don’t know who in your life could be a victim.”