Twenty-Seven Years of Women Living With HIV: Past, Present and Future

1990. The First National Women and HIV Conference is held. ACT-UP spearheads a massive protest at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta to expand AIDS definitions to include women specific diseases. Women with AIDS lead the demonstration; 94 are arrested. An estimate of women worldwide with HIV is at three million. Cook County Hospital (the only hospital with an AIDS ward in Chicago) refuses to admit women stating they have no women's AIDS ward. Gay and lesbian activists set up a ward in the street in front of the hospital; 35 are arrested. Two days later, the hospital admits women with AIDS for the first time.

National "Speak Out" by women with AIDS is held in Washington, DC to protest the Social Security definition of disability, which discriminates against women and people of color. On March 7th, the CARE bill was introduced into the Senate and House. During a Budget Committee that same day, Elizabeth Taylor speaks forcefully in support of the bill during her testimony, playing a vocal and visible role in its introduction. Elizabeth Glaser, a woman living with HIV, speaks at a House subcommittee hearing on pediatric AIDS, where she is praised for convincing the formerly unresponsive Ronald Reagan to do a public service announcement on pediatric AIDS.