The Silent Partner

About the Project

In sub-Saharan Africa, home to two-thirds of the world’s people living with HIV, women make up 60 percent of those infected. Not only are women biologically more susceptible than men to HIV, many behavioral and social factors play into women’s vulnerability. The Silent Partner: HIV in Marriage was produced by Population Action International (PAI) to raise awareness of the risk of HIV transmission within marriage, and to illustrate the particular challenges facing married women. It also shows that traditional approaches to HIV prevention do not meet the needs of married women, because practicing abstinence is unrealistic, because wives cannot control the faithfulness of their husbands, and because they find it difficult to negotiate condom use.

This 12-minute documentary, filmed in Kenya, is intended to inform and provoke discussion of harmful gender and societal norms that put women and couples at risk for HIV. It is also intended for advocacy to mobilize political and financial support for sexual and reproductive health and rights to achieve broader social, economic and gender equity for everyone.

The Fledgling Fund Impact

The Fledgling Fund is supporting the outreach and audience engagement for The Silent Partner because we believe that it exposes the complex gender and sexuality dynamics that are often glossed over when discussing HIV/AIDS. Married women are also typically a forgotten population in the fight against HIV/AIDS and The Silent Partner tells their powerful and important story. We believe the length of this film - 12 minutes - will lend itself to the very focused outreach and audience engagement campaign that Population Action International will lead.