Statistics: Women and HIV/AIDS 

In the United States 

• Women account for one in four new HIV diagnoses and deaths caused by AIDS.
• The proportion of AIDS diagnoses reported among women has more than tripled since 1985.
• The vast majority of women diagnosed with HIV contracted the virus through heterosexual sex.
• African Americans constituted 64 percent of women diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2009.
• African Americans and Hispanics represent 26 percent of all women in the U.S. but they account for 82 percent of AIDS cases among women.
• African-American women have an HIV prevalence rate nearly 15 times that of white women.

Around the Globe 

• Worldwide, women constitute more than half of all people living with HIV/AIDS.
• For women in their reproductive years (15–49), HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death.
• Women are at least twice as likely to acquire HIV from men during sexual intercourse than vice versa.
• A study in South Africa recently suggested that nearly one in seven cases of young women acquiring HIV could have been prevented if the women had not been subjected to intimate partner violence.
• In 2011, 57 percent of pregnant women living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries received effective drug regimens to prevent new HIV infections among children.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, women constitute 58 percent of all people living with HIV/AIDS.
• Among young people aged 15-24, the HIV prevalence rate for young women is twice that of young men.

Sources: UNAIDS World AIDS Day Report 2012; UNAIDS Fact Sheet 2012; Kaiser Family Foundation; U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

(Last updated December 2012)