This Washington Post article about HIV/AIDS in African women dances all around the point. Most anti-HIV/AIDS campaigns in Africa (such as they are) emphasize abstinence, monogamy and condom use — which many African women cannot negotiate with their male sex partners due to their social and economic dependence on men. The article’s author, Janet Fleischman, contends that what women need to combat and live with HIV is education, female-support, and safe ways to control their own risk factors for the disease.

Fleischman is wrong. What is at issue here is power. In most African cultures, men have it and women don’t. Education and sisterhood may help women attain power, but they are just means to that end. Identifying proximate needs is not enough — it’s only half the conversation.