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Contraception is left to women, survey finds
SAPA
2005-11-04
Most of the progress on gender issues had to do with women's health, a Commission on Gender Equality report has found.
A worrying trend, though, was that women were still held mainly responsible for contraception, the Commission disclosed on Wednesday in the report - based on a survey.
Respondents in both the closed-ended questionnaires and in-depth interviews were very clear about the fact that women should have a say in contraception, despite the fact that they were financially dependent on their partners, the report read.
Of the respondents, 58,4 percent had agreed that since women were the ones falling pregnant, they should take care of contraception.
This is a worrying factor, since women are often responsible for safe sex practices, which are usually tied to social construction of them as carers, the report found.
In this way, women are caught up in the conflict of being responsible for healthy sex and condom use, but in effect powerless to demand it.
Most women had also agreed that they should have the choice of abortion.
The survey showed that although women were not blamed for the spread of HIV, they were held responsible for preventing its spread through their behaviour.
It is evident in the strong support for virginity testing as a means of curbing the AIDS epidemic that the 'proper' behaviour of women is very much connected to the spread of HIV and AIDS, the report found. (Source: SAPA, 02 November 2005).
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