UNITED NATIONS, June 27 (AFP) - Striking a different tone from others at the UN conference on AIDS, one participant said that in her country, Barbados, inequality between the sexes was not a prominent factor in the spread of AIDS.
"We try to treat boys and girls equally," said Fay Burke, who works with programme to educate youth on the dangers of HIV infection.
"A lot of women hold dominant positions in Barbados, in politics, as business leaders and so on," she said in an interview with AFP.
This contrasted with remarks by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that women in most developing countries must be given more power over their lives if the fight against AIDS is to be won.
But Barbados is not like most developing countries.
According to one UN assessment of women's participation in politics and economic decision-making, it ranks higher than Japan and some members of the European Union, including Italy.
The Caribbean is, nevertheless, the region with the highest rates of HIV infection outside sub-Saharan Africa, with close to two-percent of adults infected in some island states.
"The biggest problem is HIV illiteracy," Burke said.
"By that I mean, for example, the myth that you cannot get infected on your first sexual experience. The next problem is a very laid-back attitude; people believe it cannot happen to them."
But, she said, lecturing young people on how they ought to behave often had the undesired effect.
"At the Barbados Family Life Club, we put our message into multi-media communications, song, dance and drama," she said.
"We are trying to deal with a whole range of questions, drugs, conflict resolution, self-esteem, teenage pregnancies as well as HIV."
But, she said, "young people are tired of hearing professor whatever coming to talk to them, so in our theatre we try to get some humour, so they can have a laugh about serious matters too."
Burke said there were two obstacles to promoting condom use: shyness and the claim by some boys that condoms were a barrier to complete sexual pleasure.
"Barbados is a very small country, only about 160 square miles (430 square kilometres), so you are never far from places where everyone knows you," she said.
"Some young people feel uncomfortable about going to a shop or to a pharmacy to buy condoms, because the person behind the counter might know them or members of their family.
"They are worried that people will think they are buying condoms to have sex, rather than that they are mature and buying condoms to protect themselves," she added.
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