The Population Council confronts critical health and development issues-from stopping the spread of HIV to improving reproductive health and ensuring that young people lead
This summary outlines key development elements that will be necessary for various configurations of multipurpose prevention products for the simultaneous prevention of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and/or pregnancy.
In the Middle East, as elsewhere, gender roles are transformed in response to a number of influences. The changing socioeconomic conditions in much of the Arab world have created economic disparities, and, at the same time, have meant an increased participation of women in the labor force in many countries. These changes, along with the overall increase in female education, have threatened the “traditional” organization of households and are beginning to redefine female space and boundaries (Ali 1996).
The problems and risks of unprotected sex, unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections are inextricably linked. In this context, the critical yet overlooked problem of infertility also needs to be addressed. Dual protection means concurrent protection against unintended pregnancy and STI/HIV. This paper argues for a more comprehensive notion of "triple protection" to include the safeguarding of fertility. This is intended explicitly to draw out the connection between infertility and STIs--using the "visibility" of fertility and infertility and people's immediate connection with them--and in so doing to bolster STI prevention and control efforts. It could also serve to highlight the connections between infertility and unsafe abortion and delivery practices, which still exist in many developing countries. Understanding differences in perception and weighting of protection concerns by young women and men, whether they wish to start, postpone or avoid pregnancy, is essential for the creation of effective programmes. Building on efforts to promote dual protection, a strategic opportunity exists to include prevention of infertility into safer sex messages and to address the fragmentation of reproductive health and HIV/AIDS programmes.
In the midst of an intense debate among academics and those influencing public opinion over whether there is a deficit of democracy in the Arab region, it is interesting to note how little attention is given to local arenas, and how young people practice citizenship and become citizens. Penetrating even the most isolated locales, community development activities today represent a notable space for civic participation and an emerging agent of political socialization. This article explores the gendered meanings and processes of venturing into public life in four rural communities in Egypt, and how young women in particular forge new roles and relationships beyond their families. Ideals of youth participation in earlier eras in Egypt focused on young men and typically involved membership in a national party or political movement (Yousef 2000). An Egyptian program of national service existed for female university graduates in the post-revolutionary decades, after 1952, but by the 1990's it was largely defunct. While the ethic of social responsibility remains, what appears to distinguish contemporary forms of youth mobilization is less emphasis on the ideology of nation-building, and more concern for grassroots social development spearheaded by non-governmental actors. Despite the global proliferation of development activities targeting and enlisting youth,1 a search of the international literature yields few studies dealing with their introduction to public roles. The mainstream literature has largely concentrated on the transitions to adulthood in the context of work, schooling, marriage, and fertility (Mensch, Bruce, and Greene 1998). Only recently has there been interest in the transition to citizenship roles, and as yet little is published on the Middle East (Neyzi 2000). Thus, for grounding of this article, we have drawn mainly on the ethnographic literature of community power dynamics in the Arab region. Our contribution may be to extend the insights of that literature to account for the unique position of young women as they enter into public roles. We posit that as young women engage with peers and elders beyond their families, they face a double bind of age and gender disparities. In this context, young women both mobilize patriarchal relationships to their advantage and subvert patriarchal formulas to rework their prescribed feminine role. For those who successfully negotiate the hurdles of age and gender discrimination, the rewards may be greater access to public influence in their communities than was available to any previous generation of young women. It is in this sense that we speak of a new dimension of citizenship that deserves fuller exploration. Review of the Literature The institutions of patriarchy place women at a remove from direct public participation, but, as many scholars have argued, that does not mean a lack of avenues for public influence. For example, El Kholy (1997) demonstrates with ethnographic data from low-income Cairo that gender politics are governed by a wide range of women's behaviors, falling between passive acquiescence and open revolt. Acts such as disruption, deception, negotiation, avoidance, and accommodation constitute everyday forms of contestation and resistance seldom acknowledged in Marxist and other schools of thought concerned with conflict between subordinate and hegemonic groups (El Kholy 1997). Such strategies vis-a-vis men may secure privileges for women in the household and beyond, but importantly, they work within the structural and ideological constraints set by the dominant order, in this case, patriarchy. Similarly, marital alliances, both of a woman and of her adult children, can be a potent source of women's extended influence; thus the importance of marriagability to women as a political strategy (Ibrahim and Singerman 2002). One consequence is the reinforcement of a wide range of behaviors of modesty and reserve in each new generation of girls. …
The Population Council produced this paper to help guide discussions and considerations regarding the key evidence gaps and research investments needed to achieve the FP2020 goal and objectives. The paper focuses primarily on the social science, implementation, and operations research that will be needed to achieve the first three objectives. Research shows that through high-quality voluntary family planning (FP) programs, governments can reduce fertility and generate substantial improvements in health, wealth, human rights, and education. Family planning programs for the 21st century will require thoughtful design—engaging both public and private sectors—to meet the growing need for safe and effective FP services. These challenges need to be addressed in the context of constantly increasing population sizes in most developing countries, necessitating additional investments just to sustain existing levels of need.
The Population Council undertook this study to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding emergency contraception (ECPs) among providers in public and private facilities and pharmacies in India. This study’s objectives were: 1) to assess providers’ knowledge of ECP’s biological mechanism; 2) to understand providers’ knowledge and attitudes about ECP’s safety, effectiveness, and availability as an over-the-counter drug; and 3) to identify providers’ definitions of “repeated use” and profiling of women who are “repeated users” of ECP. The study recommends intervention programs and advocacy strategies to increase knowledge and access to ECP.
This brief describes multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) that address women's sexual and reproductive health (SRH) needs, and how to go about facilitating regulatory approval of this technology. It outlines a strategic framework to examine current regulatory guidance, as well a product development pathway to bring MPTs to market.
With access to safe, legal abortion under severe constraint or debate in many parts of the world, less attention has been paid to the issue of quality of abortion care. This issue of Quality/Calidad/Qualité explores two programs that operate in very different settings but with a shared commitment to providing high-quality abortion care in a context of broader reproductive health services: the Clinique d’Orthogénie of Broussais Hospital in France and Parivar Seva Sanstha in India. In both programs, each woman or girl who arrives for abortion receives crucial basic care, including: appropriate medical treatment to ensure complete abortion and safe recovery; if medically appropriate, choice about issues such as anesthesia and/or method of abortion; supportive counseling; and a range of related reproductive health services. The lessons learned from these two programs that emphasize safety, choice, and compassion remind us that there is no reason for an abortion to cause suffering.
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