Lets talk about sex

I want to take you back to when you were 13 and sat in a class room listening to ‘Sir’ talk about sexual reproduction. The overwhelming feeling of wanting the ground to swallow up and die rather than listen to another syllable as this is terribly embarrassing for all involved really.  Oh how lucky I realise I was…now.

I discover cultural differences all of the time but I did joke to a colleague recently that I find it amusing that people will not talk about sex but will talk be the regularity and indeed consistency of your ‘motions’, that will be the toilet variety.

We have been base lining for the programme that is being run combining maternal and new-born health and sexual and reproductive rights. It has been a stressful exercise as the timelines were so short and I have only had an initial look at the data but it makes for some interesting reading.

We have been conducting Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) surveys with women from the age 15 to 49 (the reproductive age) as well as focus groups discussions with men and women. The types of responses we get vary with the age ranges vastly – namely anyone over 25 will on most occasions talk about it whilst the 15 to 24 age bracket just will not answer some if not most of the questions. A large majority just do not know the answers.

I have come to learn that if you go into a school in India and start talking about sex you will be unceremoniously thrown out and told to never darken their door again. So it has to be phrased as ‘life skills’ instead. An accurate term perhaps but it does pose a massive quandary to me as to how you get around the issue of an ever burgeoning population (the second largest in the world according to the latest census), delaying pregnancies and ensuring the people don’t have 2+ babies by the age of 19… it’s a tricky one and sometimes I am thankful that I just collect the data.

The main issue is around taboo and how to get around it. In order to educate people you need to be able to talk about it in the first place. I’m not sure how you can get around this especially when asked women will respond that they really don’t know that much about contraceptives and the people who decide if she will take contraceptives are the in-laws, close knit indeed.

The good news is that there is an impact being made through hard work and commitment; marriages are being delayed, the messages about contraceptives are getting out there and safer pregnancy and birthing practices, it just takes a bit of time and a lot of tact.