Involving Men in Reproductive Health: Implications for Health and Rights

That men figure in a list of the “hardly reached” in reproductive health (RH) testifies to the complex history and politics of this field. It is true that RH services have tended to overlook men and concentrate their efforts on women. Yet family planning (FP) services were often delivered in an expedient manner, not to serve women’s needs, but to reduce population growth. The field’s traditional focus on women as the means through which population policy could most effectively be implemented left little room for men, since the assumptions that underlay services for women neglected sex and relationships. Men were seen as peripheral at best and problematic at worst (Greene and Biddlecom 2000).