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)