Men Make Women Go Under the Knife, New Sterilization Data Reveals

NEW DELHI: Women are at the receiving end of a malevolent patriarchy, even when it comes to taking progressive measures towards family planning. The latest numbers coming from the southern state of Tamil Nadu show that women undergo family planning procedures with the men remaining reluctnt to do the same,

The latest report which was compiled by District level Health and Facility Survey (DLHS) reveals that only 0.3 per cent of men went for vasectomy against an overwhelming 51 per cent of women in the year of 2012-13. The report was published recently by Union Ministry of Health and Welfare, and had taken a sample of 42000 individual across the state.

The current trend manifests the age old fear among men which identify their masculinity with the potency to bear child.

“Be it sexual health, reproduction or pregnancy, the burden is always imposed on women,” says Geeta Sethi, Secretary General, Family Planning Association of India (FPAI), an NGO that promotes sexual health and family planning.

“Every individual who wants to have a family should take equal responsibility for everything that comes in the way. Sterilisation is not a woman’s concern alone. However, the gender bias continues to prevail,” she said to New Indian Express.

There is hardly any difference between rural and urban areas in terms of inclination of men towards sterilization, which remains constantly feeble. Against o.3 per cent in urban areas, a slightly lesser 0.2 per cent of men sterilized themselves during the year of study. Same holds true for women, who remain constantly vulnerable to a possibly forced sterilization, hardly a matter of choice for them, between rural and urban population. According to report, 52.2 per cent of women in rural areas were sterilized in comparison to marginally less 48.9 per cent in urban areas.

“There is a big taboo attached to men when it comes to birth control. They feel that it would hamper their masculinity or make them impotent. It thus automatically becomes the onus of the woman,” said P Muniappan, retired demographer and member of FPAI.

“Hardly a few, mostly the educated ones, come forward for vasectomy,” he said, as per the media report.

According to the last round of survey done by DLHS, even when the survey was done with a smaller sample size of 32000, the figures emerged were just as constant, 0.2 per cent men again 54 per cent of women, rural and urban both combined.