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AIDS is the largest global emergency to face women and girls in our lifetime. In 2007, an estimated 15.4 million women were living with HIV - a 1.6 million increase from 2001.In Sub-Saharan Africa, almost 61% adults living with HIV in 2007 were women. In the Caribbean that percentage was 43% (compared with 37% in 2001). The proportions of women living with HIV in Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe are slowly growing, as HIV is transmitted to the female partners of men who are likely to have been infected through injecting drug use, or during unprotected paid sex or sex with other men. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, it is estimated that women accounted for 26% of adults with HIV in 2007 (compared with 23% in 2001), while in Asia that proportion reached 29% in 2007 (compared with 26% in 2001). Globally, women make up almost half of the 39.5 million people living with HIV – this figure is rising.

Since 1999, the World YWCA has mobilised women and girls in local communities to respone to HIV and AIDS; YWCAs in ober 70 countries have developed a solid base of programmes that address the pandemic at multiple levels.