Taking Care of My Own Blood: Older Women’s Relationships to their Households in the Agincourt Sub-District

The implications of aging populations, which in the more developed world center around issues of social security health service provision and eldercare, are further complicated in areas of the developing world with high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Elders are being asked to take on additional financial, emotional and physical responsibilities due to the HIV/AIDS-related illnesses and death of their children. The Agincourt Health and Population Unit fieldsite, from which this study's ethnographic and survey data come, is situated in the rural north-east of South Africa, in a province with an estimated 33% prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Women in the African context are bearing much of the burden of care related to HIV/AIDS. In this context, I examine the intersection of age and gender, exploring the roles that older women, in particular, are playing in their households, and how those roles are affected by the presence of illness and death of prime-aged adults. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, I show the high percentage of children and adults living in a household with an older woman, and, further, the importance of the caretaking roles older women are taking on in the households in which they live.