Empowerment through Inclusion: The Case of Women in the Discourses of Advertising in Botswana

In this article, published in Perspectives on Global Development and Technology in 2002, the author offers a critique of an HIV/AIDS campaign advertisement in Botswana by situating it within the context of socio-cultural constraints encompassing gender relations, identity, post-colonial Africa, and globalisation. According to the author, Botswana has one of the world's highest HIV prevalence, and, among the age group 15-24, the prevalence for women is about twice as high as among males. Botswana's society is also characterised by asymmetrical gender relations, particularly within sexual relations between men and women. Women are at a greater danger of HIV infection because they lack agency to refuse high-risk sexual encounters.

The investigation of an HIV/AIDS campaign billboard was carried out by employing a qualitative research method, interrogating several fundamental moral and practical goals that have been adopted in the development communication field, such as empowerment, equity, and inclusion of marginalised people. The author concludes that the advertisement, while opening the space for women's voice in the HIV/AIDS discourse, ultimately concealed the socio-cultural structures of Botswana's gender relations, and, as such, it was ineffective in reversing the HIV/AIDS problem in Botswana.

Evaluation/Research Methodologies:

The immediate object of this investigation was an HIV/AIDS campaign billboard, located on the periphery of the city center of Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. The author sees the billboard as a cultural space where female identity is created/recreated through graphical and textual representations of women. The author recognises the slippery nature of "culture" as an object of study, and acknowledges the difficulty of using methods and measurements that quantify specific cultural practices. The study used a cultural studies approach, which, according to the author, "explore[s] the ways in which societal practices, assumptions, symbols, values and human relationships…[that] interact in all their complexity to form the mass called culture." The author explored the ways in which the language and message on the billboard challenged, negotiated, and perpetuated the cultural norms and values that exacerbated HIV prevalence among Botswanan women.


Key Findings/Impact:

The billboard in question was part of the national government's public education campaign fighting against the spread of HIV. It portrayed a serious and resolute looking woman ready to stop a man's sexual advances toward her. In addition to this graphic element, the billboard had several textual messages such as "You have the power…" and "NNYAA RRAA!" (No Sir!).

The author acknowledges that the ad indeed opened a space for women's voices in a society where women are subordinate to men in all aspects of life and are looked as the object of pleasure in sexual relations. Thus, the billboard was a cultural practice that attempted to break the stereotypes of women. By advocating the right of woman to say "no", it succeeded in the subversion of the expected traditional subordinating role of women.

The author argues, however, that the billboard as a whole was ineffective in fighting HIV/AIDS because it failed to address the socio-cultural constraints to which Botswanan women were subjected. Under the traditional gender relations in Botswana, women take significant economic and psychological risks when they refuse to have sex or unprotected sex. By refusing sex or insisting on condom use, women may be denied or thrown out of marriage and lose the privileged social status and financial security of married women. The study found that none of the graphics or texts in the billboard ad challenged the existing gender relations in a fundamental way. The message in the ad placed too much of a burden on the women as a preventing agent when, in reality, women lacked control over their relations with men. The corollary was that the message did not question the role of men as sexual aggressors. It is the author's position that HIV/AIDS problem is deeply imbedded in the unyielding structure of male domination in the society; mere inclusion of women's voices in HIV/AIDS discourse would further dis-empower women by validating the patriarchal tradition.

The author calls for a more holistic approach in HIV/AIDS campaigns. The author suggests a multimedia strategy in which different forms of media work in conjunction to focus individually on separate aspects of complex HIV/AIDS issues. She asserts that complexity and not simplicity should be highlighted for HIV/AIDS education to be effective.