The international HIV community has become increasingly attentive to the disproportionate disease burden borne by adolescent girls and young women, particularly in the epidemic's epicentre in sub-Saharan Africa. In some southern African countries, young women are up to eight times as likely to be living with HIV compared to their male peers. This severe age-sex disparity is often the result of deeply ingrained harmful social norms that perpetuate gender inequity in education, gender-based violence, early marriage and age-disparate sexual relationships, and gendered power dynamics that inhibit young women's ability to negotiate safe sex.