Besser leben ohne Männer? Taktische Religion, Geschlechterordnung und HIV/AIDS in Südafrika

Abstract

Abstract
Living a Better Life without Men? Tactical Religion, Gender
and HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Social science scholarship has pointed to
the renewed presence of religion in public discourses and institutional networks of
development politics and humanitarianism but has largely ignored questions regarding
the gender politics resulting from this renewed presence. Building on research that
has explored the role of religion in development, this article explores how gendered
arrangements of domination are addressed and reconfi gured in Christian responses
to the AIDS epidemic in urban South Africa. Based on 10 months of ethnographic
research in Cape Town, the findings suggest that responses to HIV/AIDS originating
from the religious domain reinforce the construction of separate gender spheres.
While the construction of separate spheres provides benefits to women dealing with the consequences of HIV/AIDS, it also replicates the existing gender division of
labour, leading to ambivalent outcomes.