Female condoms – does it empower women?
Author: Professor Joyce Harper
The advantage of condoms is that they do not just protect against pregnancy but they also protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
The female condom is a long flexible polyurethane or nitrile sheath with a ring on either end. It is inserted into and lines the vagina.
It was hoped that the female condom would empower women as it gives women the control over protection against pregnancy and STDs if their partner will not use a condom.
So why have they not caught on?
BuzzFeed asked six women to try female condoms for the first time, and well … there seems to be a good reason. “It was … interesting, and by that I mean awful and traumatizing,” one of the participants states of her experience. All of the women find the application of the condom foreign and unenjoyable, with one saying it felt like a trash bag and another citing bags of the Ziploc variety.” They have a great short video of women trying the female condom. They felt the condom was too big and too lubricated.
But good news might be on the way as several companies are developing new female condoms.
Path have been working for 10 years, trying to develop a slicker female condom. From the Path web site “We refined the material until we had something much softer and thinner, which got high marks from female testers. The inner ring was painful for some women, so we replaced it with four small dots of soft, absorbent foam. The foam adheres gently to the interior of the vagina, holding the condom securely in place during use and releasing easily from the vaginal walls on removal. To make insertion easier, we added a rounded cap to the end of the condom, which gathers the condom pouch together until after insertion. Once the condom is inserted, the tip dissolves in less than a minute for most women.” They particularly want to introduce the female condom into developing countries to stop unwanted pregnancies and the transmission of HIV.
Let’s hope some of these new designs work.
Read More:
http://www.mtv.com/news/2747366/women-try-female-condoms/
Female condoms empowering women
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