| Author: Guttmacher Institute |
| InfoShare Partner: Guttmacher Institute |
| Publication Date: September 2005 |
| Type of Document: Article/Report/Paper |
| Topics: Abortion/post-abortion care, Behavior change interventions, Family planning, Gender, HIV/AIDS, general, HIV/AIDS prevention, HIV/AIDS care/treatment, Policy/Law, Reproductive health, general, Service delivery, Sexual health/STIs |
| Region: Global, Asia/Pacific, Latin America/Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Language: English |
| Additional information: In East Africa , where large families are common, women often bear the blame if a couple cannot conceive. In the urban district of Moshi , Tanzania , women who cannot bear children are at twice as high a risk of being beaten or sexually abused as are women with children. Surprisingly, women with larger than average families (five or more children) may be at even greater risk with two-and-a-half times the odds of experiencing sexual or physical violence.
One in five women interviewed said she had been physically or sexually abused by her partner in the past year, and one in four reported having been abused in her lifetime, according to “Gender Inequality and Intimate Partner Violence Among Women in Moshi, Tanzania,” by Laura Ann McCloskey of the University of Pennsylvania et al.
The study appears in Volume 31, Issue 3, of International Family Planning Perspectives. Also in this issue:
According to a 2001 national survey, more than half of Honduran men and women felt that decisions about family size and contraceptive use should be made together and said that was the case in their households. However, in “Gender Relations and Reproductive Decision Making In Honduras,” authors Ilene S. Speizer et al. of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 25% of Honduran women and 28% of men said that men alone should decide whether or when a couple has children or whether or not to use contraception. Moreover, 15% of women said that men should make neither decision alone, but that their husbands made one or both.
In “Contraceptive Use Among the Poor in Indonesia ,” Juan Schoemaker of Johns Hopkins University examines changing attitudes about family size in Asia . His analysis of the 2002–2003 Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey shows that the better off a woman is financially, the more likely she is to approve of contraception and want a small family. Better off women were one-and-a-half times as likely as poor women to be using modern contraceptive methods. However, access to services did not vary substantially across groups. Programs and policies, the author concludes, should focus on changing attitudes toward family size and use of family planning methods.
Despite legal restrictions on abortion, women wishing to avoid unplanned births in the Philippines obtain the procedure, often in unsafe conditions. New research from Fatima Juarez of El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City et al. found that in 2000, 473,400 women had abortions and an estimated 78,900 women were hospitalized for treatment of abortion complications. Though the overall abortion rate has not changed much since the last estimate in 1994, the abortion rate in metropolitan areas has risen sharply. Evidence suggests that this increase is linked to greater reliance on less effective contraceptive methods, leading to a rise in unintended pregnancy. Policies and programs need to ensure that poor women have access to contraceptives and that quality post-abortion care is widely available, the authors conclude in \"The Incidence of Induced Abortion in the Philippines: Current Level and Recent Trends\".
In 1998 the Bangladeshi government changed the mode of service delivery for its national family planning program from door step delivery to community clinics. In 2003, the government reversed its decision and began once again to supply rural women with contraceptive services in their homes. In “Use of Family Planning Services in the Transition to a Static Clinic System in Bangladesh: 1998–2002,” authors Alex Mercer et al. of the Centre for Health and Population Research, Dhaka, examine data from 11,000 married women collected quarterly between 1998 and 2000. In areas where there were clinics, three-quarters of women used them at some time. Though fewer than half of the proposed clinics were built by the time the program was terminated, contraceptive use rose or remained stable during this period and many women obtained their contraceptive supplies from the clinics. |
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International Family Planning Perspectives provides the latest peer-reviewed research on sexual and reproductive health and rights in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. This quarterly emphasizes contraception, fertility, adolescent pregnancy, abortion, family planning policies and programs, sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, and reproductive, maternal and child health. Staff-written summaries help you keep up with new developments in the field, while special reports and viewpoint pieces inspire new approaches to shared problems. All articles include summaries in Spanish and French.
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