tHrIVing
ELLA GAUCI speaks to the women who aren’t letting HIV get in their way
If you see an advert about treatment for HIV it’s unlikely you will see a face that looks like Marnina Miller. In fact, it’s unlikely that you’ll see a woman at all.
Despite women making up over half the global population with an HIV-positive diagnosis, HIV is surrounded by a stigma that excludes women from the conversation entirely. This lack of representation has shrouded HIV in a culture of shame for women, pushed further by a fundamental absence of education.
It was this stigma that forced Marnina (she/her, pictured above) into a “depressive state” in her freshman year of college when she received her positive diagnosis for HIV. She couldn’t bring herself to speak to healthcare professionals about receiving treatment. It felt like the end of her life. And then her sister announced that she was pregnant. Marnina smiles: “I realised that I wanted to be an aunt.”