Business Women’s Initiative against HIV/AIDS

May 19, 2005

Inaugural Meeting Summary

 

On Thursday, May 19, approximately sixty prominent women from the worlds of business and civil society gathered in New York City for the inaugural gathering of the Business Women’s Initiative against HIV/AIDS (BWI).  The purpose of the gathering was to determine the most effective strategy for BWI to leverage the resources and expertise of women business leaders to diminish the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls in the developing world.

The meeting was convened by BWI’s honorary chairs: Secretary Madeleine K. Albright; Kathleen Cravero, the founder of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS; and Carol Bellamy, the former Executive Director of UNICEF; as well as by BWI’s co-founders, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson; and President and COO of the Female Health Company, Mary Ann Leeper.

The day began with welcoming remarks from Mary Robinson that set the tone for the day.  Addressing her own initial involvement in BWI, Robinson made it clear that she “had no option”.  With the growing feminization of HIV/AIDS, women in positions of power have a responsibility “to reach out to our sisters in the developing world and to empower them to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, to succeed, to help their families, to help their communities, and to help themselves.”  Robinson called on each woman in the room to reach out to their peers to engage them in the battle and gave an overview of the day to come.

Kathleen Cravero then took the podium to help the group to understand the causes behind the growing feminization of HIV/AIDS.  Despite the fact that women in the developing world know HOW to protect themselves from the virus, Cravero explained, they do not have the resources or power to act on that information.  “If we are going to help women protect themselves,” Cravero challenged the group, “we have to acknowledge, and act on, the realities of their lives.”  Cravero finished her presentation with a list of specific actions that the women gathered could take “to make a difference in the lives of women and girls,” ranging from implementing workplace policies to provide support for women in their companies living with HIV/AIDS to helping to make female condoms more readily available to women in the developing world.

The next speaker on the agenda, Dawn Averitt Bridge, Founder and CEO of The Well Project, provided the group with a personal account of a woman living with HIV/AIDS in the United States.  Through this lens, Averitt Bridge emphasized the need to ensure that women all over the world have access to the prevention, treatment and care they need to live full and productive lives.

Following Dawn Averitt Bridge’s emotional contribution, Joelle Tanguy, Managing Director of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, spoke to the group about how businesses can justify — and in fact benefit from — their engagement in the battle against HIV/AIDS.  Tanguy cited the disease’s impact on economies, including those in emerging markets such as China, India and former Soviet countries, its impact on the workforce and, relatedly, productivity and profit.  Tanguy also pointed out consumer support for business’ engagement in the fight against HIV/AIDS and gave examples of companies that were making substantial contributions through programs in the workplace and community and by relying on their “core competencies” and capacity as leaders.

The women were then given the opportunity to hear from business women who had taken the initiative in their own companies to develop and implement programs that were already making a difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS: Linda Distlerath, Vice President, Global Health Policy, Merck & Co., Inc.; Lilia Garcia-Leyva, Executive Director, M·A·C AIDS Fund and M·A·C Global Foundation; and Sonya Lockett, Director of Public Affairs, BET.  Each woman conveyed to the group, not only WHAT their company had done to make a contribution, but also why the company had chosen to undertake the initiatives and how they had benefited from their involvement.  Linda Distlerath, for example, provided information on Merck’s programs — in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — in Botswana and China, which encompass prevention, treatment and care.

Nancy Nielsen, Senior Director of Corporate Citizenship for Pfizer, Inc. and the day’s host, then took a few minutes to describe how the day’s working lunch would unfold.  Participants would be given the opportunity to sit at tables where one of three issue areas would be discussed in more detail: HIV/AIDS prevention, the role of gender-based violence in the spread of HIV/AIDS and how economic empowerment of women in the developing world could serve to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS.

To lay the groundwork for the lunchtime discussion, Mary Ann Leeper presented the group with an overview of the role of prevention as part of a holistic approach to fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  Leeper’s emphasis was on the role of the female condom, the only CURRENT prevention barrier to HIV that women have the capacity to control.  Claudia Garcia-Moreno, Coordinator of Gender, Violence and HIV/AIDS and Coordinator of the WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence within the Department of Gender, Women and Health of the WHO, then gave a presentation that effectively communicated the role of gender-based violence in the spread of HIV/AIDS, painting a stark portrait of women and girls who do not have the power to negotiate safer sex.  Finally, Susan Davis, Chair of the Grameen Foundation USA, gave the group a primer on microfinance as a tool for empowering women in the developing world and — harking back to Kathleen Cravero’s presentation — clarified how economic autonomy is a powerful barrier against HIV/AIDS.

Following these three presentations, the women transitioned to lunch and to in-depth conversations regarding the issues raised in the course of the meeting and the action steps they could take moving forward.  To close the meeting, Mary Robinson summed up the day and repeated her call to action from the beginning of the day, asking the women in the room to reach out to their peers and engage them in the very necessary fight against HIV/AIDS.

AGENDA – Business Women’s Initiative against HIV/AIDS May 19 Inaugural Meeting