A mother of two, Seema Devi, 36, from Barauli village in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh, is quite clear she does not want a third child. But the onus of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy is on her. Her husband refuses to use any method of contraception.
“The problem is mine, so I have to take precautions,” said Seema Devi, a homemaker. “It is best that I keep taking the [contraceptive] pills, it saves us from hassles and arguments in the house. When have men cared about the troubles of a woman’s body?”
India’s family planning campaigns, run by both its public health systems and civil society programmes, mirror Seema’s thinking: they are focussed almost entirely on women, found a recent study by International Center for Research on Women. The result is that women have greater awareness about contraception and bear its entire burden while men, who actually…