Women in India keep date with safe sex: study

Govt data shows traditional contraception methods are gaining popularity, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 2, 2007, 05:05:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Condoms are good but a growing number of married women in India feel traditional contraception methods are better.

Over the past decade, they have shown growing preference and trust for traditional contraception methods like withdrawal and periodic abstinence, according to a government report based on data from across the country.

Married women using the withdrawal method in 2004, the year the data was compiled, was 2.9 per cent — up from 1.3 per cent in 1993. In case of periodic abstinence, in which unsafe intercourse is avoided during the end of menstrual cycle, the figure increased to 4.2 per cent from 2.6 per cent in 1993.

Use of traditional methods, like keeping calendar record of the assumed days of ovulation, increased from 4.3 per cent to 7.3 per cent, making it more preferred than condoms. Only 4.8 per cent married women preferred condoms.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare submitted the report on Population Stabilisation to the Planning Commission last month. The report, prepared by a group headed by ministry secretary Naresh Dayal, highlighted another trend: more women were getting sterilised.

While female sterilization was 34.3 in 2004 as compared to 27.3 in 1993, male sterilization went down to 0.9 per cent from 3.4 per cent in 1992-93. The trend showed that “males are the main decision makers in Indian families”, the report said, adding that no-scalpel vasectomy should be promoted to bring the men in.

The probable reason given for fall in vasectomy cases was “excesses committed for male sterilization in the 1970s”.

With men lacking initiative on contraception, women have taken a lead. Only 6 per cent of married men used contraceptive methods against 53 per cent married women.

The past decade also witnessed a leap forward in awareness of contraceptives among women with an increase in figures by 13 percentage points, the report said. The data was collected from 593 districts across the country.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike LIVE and more across India.