Men need to do more for family planning

Men need to do more for family planning

SEMARANG (JP): Indonesia's family planning campaign should be targeted at men by making more alternative forms of contraception available to them, apart from condoms and vasectomies, a leading demographer suggests.

Saparinah Sadli said at a seminar yesterday that the national family planning program has been unfair to women because they have been forced to shoulder most of the responsibility of bringing population growth under control.

In fact, said Saparinah at the seminar on the role of women in national development, the family planning campaign has been targeted entirely at women.

The government boasts that an exceptionally high percentage of fertile couples participate in the national family program. But the figure, according to Saparinah, neglects the fact that it is women who are practicing contraception and not the men, out of which only four percent regularly use contraceptives.

Given this gender bias, contraceptive manufacturers have chiefly targeted women and have not devoted many resources to the development of alternative contraceptive methods for men.

"Ideally, there should be more alternative contraceptives available for men to choose from so that they can share in the responsibility of family planning," said the head of the Post Graduate Studies on Women at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta.

The family planning workers should also target their campaign at men when they visit villages, she said.

Another University of Indonesia demographer, Sri Moertiningsih Adieotomo, also joined in the chorus to reject the widely- believed notion that women have not been taking an active part in national development.

Moertiningsih said that such a notion had been reinforced by society's stereotype of women as weak, passive and inferior to men. (har/emb)