Contraception across Cultures: Technologies, Choices, Constraints

Dramatic population increase could be one of the greatest problems currently faced by the human race. Population growth, which is concentrated in, but not limited to, the southern hemisphere (Harrison 1993) has provoked richer nations to intervene on a global scale to introduce effective contraceptive programmes. However, population increase in many developing countries still continues at what many consider to be an unsustainable rate. Many attempts to introduce contraceptives have been largely ineffective in curbing population increase. This is perhaps because population increase stems largely from another of the developing world's ills: poverty. The persistent lack of an assured provision of adequate social security for many of its inhabitants has been linked with high fertility (Seabrook 1995). Unless people in the developing countries believe that they will be socially and financially secure throughout their lives, without the need for large numbers of children to provide for them, population increase is likely to persist.

However, even if people do have access to secure social welfare throughout their lives, as do many people living in industrialized countries today, they will still require acceptable forms of contraception. In addition to poverty, then, one of the most salient reasons for some contraception programmes' ineffectiveness, is the discrepancy between planners' perceptions of the acceptability of their contraception programmes and the perceptions of programmes and planners by the

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