Last Updated on February 23, 2023 by Shabnam Sengupta
According to the National Family Health Survey-5, between the years 2019 to 2021, 37.9 per cent women in India underwent sterilisation for family planning. Whereas there have been only 0.3 percent male sterilisations. These figures show that in India, men are indifferent towards this procedure.
Sterilisation is a surgical procedure done for permanent birth control. Female sterilisation is called tubectomy, and male sterilisation is called vasectomy.
Rita Devi, an ASHA worker employed in Phulwari Sharif in Patna, Bihar, said, “The women themselves come forward to undergo sterilisation. According to them, men have to go outside and earn money. Therefore, if they undergo the procedure, they could become physically weak. Many of them say that they don’t want to bother their husbands”.
Fear of becoming weak
Mamta (name changed), a 22-year-old woman, said that she has two children, a one-and-a-half-year-old son and a 6-months old daughter.
“I don’t want to get pregnant again, but my husband does not want the surgery for either of us. However, I have decided against it and I will get the sterilisation”, she said. When asked, Mamta’s husband said that he fears that he might become weak.
While most men shy away from undergoing sterilisation despite the government offering them a bigger monetary reward than women, the latter do not hesitate to go for the same.
Why do women bear the responsibility alone?
Rajesh, a 28-year-old wage labourer from Janipur, said that it is the woman’s duty to go to hospital and undergo surgery because they stay at home. “We men have to go out for livelihood and if something happens during the procedure, who will take care of our families? Therefore, women should do it”, he said.
The Supreme Court of India has said that housewives also have a pivotal economic role to play. The amount of labour that the housewives put into the household chores and taking care of the daily affairs at the domestic front also come under the area of economic support. Even if not directly, women also contribute towards making one’s home economically stable and a lack of formal financial assessment system of their labour cannot change this fact.
Misconceptions about vasectomy
Men harbour a lot of misconceptions about sterilisation. For instance, a lot of men think that they will become physically weak after vasectomy. There is also the backward notion of our patriarchal society that relates fertility of men with their ‘manliness’. People often associate the honour of the family and/or the man with his masculinity, and that honour is too big to be ‘compromised’ through sterilisation and even money can’t compensate for the ‘loss’. And those who lack the ability are often humiliated as impotent. Therefore, men do not agree to the idea of undergoing vasectomy, and the onus of family planning falls upon the women completely. Besides the social norm and conservative mindset, lack of medical facilities and awareness is also responsible for the male members showing less interest in surgical procedures to prevent childbirth.
Amulya Nidhi, national co-convenor at Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, said, “There are two main reasons why men do not prefer to undergo vasectomy. One is the inadequate number of male health workers in the rural areas. In villages, ASHA and ANM workers are females who mostly focus on women and children. This in a way affects the mission of raising awareness among men. Secondly, there is also a lack of accountability because of the low numbers of men opting for vasectomy. Our Constitution speaks about men and women being equals, but where they are not, no steps are being taken to address the situation”.
Sterilisation surgeries without anaesthesia
In 2012, sterilisation surgeries of 53 women were done in just two hours in Araria, Bihar. In 2014, women who went to a sterilisation camp in Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh did not get proper medical treatment. As a result, 11 of them died. Last year, 23 women underwent sterilisation surgery in Bihar’s Khagaria without anaesthesia. A video of Kumari Pratima, one of the patients, and a resident of Alauli block of Khagaria district got viral later.
“There was no medical facility available at the place of the surgery. There were only four beds and some women were lying on two of them, screaming in pain. When we asked a nurse why they were having pain, she said that they had a problem of addiction. She also told me that if I didn’t have an addiction, I wouldn’t feel pain”, Pratima said.
She added, “But when the doctor started the procedure, I was feeling intense pain. I asked them to stop the procedure as the pain became unbearable, making me unstable. The doctor then called four-five people who held me tightly and did the surgery and the stitches, and then injected a needle in my back”.
After an order of the Supreme Court in 2016, sterilisation day is observed instead of sterilisation camps as women were treated inhumanely in these camps. Also, there wasn’t much change in the situation.
Hesitation to undergo vasectomy
According to an article by Hello Swasthya, most of the men are neither keen on sterilisation nor other contraceptive measures. A study by the University of Southampton has found that men find using condoms as an obstacle to physical pleasure, and sterilisation as something that hurts their manliness. It is because of their reluctance that women go for sterilisation to avoid unwanted pregnancy. The age-old patriarchal mindset that men will earn, and women will look after the household has compelled women to go for sterilisation.
How women try to avoid unwanted pregnancies
There is a serious lack of contraceptive options for women in villages. So, they try other ways to avoid unwanted pregnancies. For instance, they stay away from their husbands for some time before and after their menstrual cycle by spending more time in the kitchen, making excuses of children being around, stomach pain, etc. This is because the insertion of Copper-T (a contraceptive option) to prevent pregnancy is quite painful.
Although women do not get much say in the decisions about how many children to have, only they are deemed responsible to take steps for family planning. NGOs and government and private hospitals also take advantage of this situation for profit.
In order to change this, it is important for women to stop undermining the value of their own household chores and start recognising its significance. They have to understand that their work is as important as their husbands. Also, active conversations and communication has to happen among the members of a family, so that men too understand the importance and their responsibilities of family planning.
Apart from this, initiatives must be taken to spread awareness among men about vasectomy and other contraceptive methods, just as it is done with women through ASHA and ANM workers. We need more male workers to do this work among the men, as it is easier for them to have these conversations among themselves. Only then, this inequality between men and women will be addressed, or else, women will continue to suffer.
Disclaimer: Medical Science is an ever evolving field. We strive to keep this page updated. In case you notice any discrepancy in the content, please inform us at [email protected]. You can futher read our Correction Policy here. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking medical treatment because of something you have read on or accessed through this website or it's social media channels. Read our Full Disclaimer Here for further information.