“Even when you write with a pencil there is an eraser to clean it”: examining men's conceptualisations of and involvement in emergency contraceptive use in Accra, Ghana

Strong, Joe ORCID: 0000-0001-8626-4020 (2024) “Even when you write with a pencil there is an eraser to clean it”: examining men's conceptualisations of and involvement in emergency contraceptive use in Accra, Ghana. Social Science & Medicine, 344. ISSN 0277-9536

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Abstract

Emergency contraceptive pills are an essential and unique post-coital method to avoid a pregnancy, with evidence showing the significant role men can have in procurement and decisions to use. Global Health recommendations specify that emergency contraceptive pills be used sparingly and under specific conditions. This increasingly misaligns with the myriad conceptualisations and rationales among the public for why they choose to use emergency contraceptive pills. There has been a paucity of research aiming to understanding men's involvement and how they shape women's access, choice, and autonomy. This study interrogates how emergency contraceptive pills are conceptualised by men in James Town, Ghana, and how this intersects with their motivations to be involved in its use. Mixed method data from a survey (n = 270) and in-depth interviews (n = 37) were collected between July 2020 and January 2021. The analysis examines men's framings of emergency contraceptive pills and how these shape their involvement in its use. Men's knowledge of post-coital contraceptives was high, while knowledge of the specific term ‘emergency contraception’ was lower. While some men understood the pills in ways that aligned to Global Health framings, many more men saw emergency contraceptive pills as another means of pregnancy prevention in line with other contraceptives. This included its conceptualisation as a contraceptive that facilitates pleasurable (condomless) and spontaneous sex. Gendered perceptions of women who use emergency contraceptive pills were bound in sexual stigma, and men indicated that emergency contraceptive pills were a directly observable form of contraception that they could pressure their partner into using. Understanding plural conceptualisations away from ‘emergency’ are necessary to create policies and programmes that account for men's involvement. This includes understanding how emergency contraceptive pills are located within people's sexual and reproductive lives and gendered power dynamics, to reflect the public's own rationales for and experiences using post-coital contraceptives.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/social-scien...
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Author(s)
Divisions:	International Development
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine H Social Sciences
Date Deposited:	05 Feb 2024 16:42
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 04:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/121657

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