The female condom remains unpopular

Although it is significantly less popular than a regular condom, if used correctly, it is 95 percent effective when it comes to preventing Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) and pregnancy. The male condom is 98 percent. So why doesn’t anyone really use them? This was a huge debate at the recent HIV/AIDS workshop hosted by PEPFAR Botswana. While several men argued that the female condom came because of feminists who thought it was going to work, women at the gathering showed little or no interest to speak about it.

“We were convinced by feminists that it was going to work, but the same people rejected it,” said Keorapetse Motsewabeng, one of the attendants. Another man Andrew Makaba said the challenge is that the female condom came when the male condom was well established. In 2012, a study titled ‘Acceptability of the female condom by female health workers in Francistown, Botswana’ by Lovemore Chirwa, Burt Davis and Thozamile Qubuda, found that 15.5 percent of women had used the female condom in the previous month, 12.9 percent had used the condom in the previous three months, and 17.2 percent had used the female condom in the previous 12 months.

The study also showed that the majority of participants believed the female condom was readily available (71.4 percent) and that it empowered women (63.3 percent), and the majority of women (78.9 percent) would recommend its use. However, only 22.8 percent believed that the female condom was better than the male condom, 28.6 percent believed it was easy to use, and only 9.8 percent thought it was popular with clients. The majority (53.5 percent) believed the female condom was not well-promoted and 56.3 percent of participants did not know if sex with the female condom was as good. Some women complain that the female condom is noisy if not lubricated correctly, that it can bother the skin of the genitals, that it limits feeling during intercourse, and that the penis can slip out of the condom during vaginal and anal intercourse.