"Men should declare zero tolerance for violence against women, be committed to their daughters' education and help alleviate the burden of care placed on women," said Peter Piot, director of the joint UN programme against AIDS (UNAIDS).

"Women are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV and they account for half of the 40 million people living with HIV or AIDS around the world," he added in a statement on International Women's Day.

"Too often, women -- and particularly young girls -- are unable to protect themselves from unsafe sex because they don't have the information or confidence to do so," it said.

The statement also noted that women were physiologically more vulnerable to HIV infection than men, noting that a woman was statistically twice as likely to be infected by a man than a man by a woman.

Females bear the brunt of the impact of AIDS, because women do most of the work to care for the sick, while girls are the first to be taken out of school when a family's income falls, it said.

TERRA.WIRE