What Women Really Need; The next frontier: For many of the world's women, marriage is not a refuge from AIDS. It's a risk factor. But new technologies could change that

A FEW MONTHS AGO, ON A TRIP TO AFRICA, I MET WITH A GROUP OF women in Kibera, the biggest slum in Kenya. These women ranged in age from 16 to 45 but had one thing in common: AIDS had devastated their lives. A woman I'll call Chanya told me her story. Chanya is a mother in her 30s trying to raise four children. She does not fit the typical profile of a person living with AIDS—at least not the profile that prevails in the West. She is not a man who has sex with men; she is not a sex worker; she does not use IV drugs. She has engaged in no behavior at all that is high risk for AIDS, except for one—she got married.