Chinese Young Women, too Shy to Use Contraception

It has the largest population in the world and the only thing that keeps the Chinese population from further booming is the policy of one child only. Still, the deeply rooted rural concepts roam urban China.

A survey made by a team from Fudan University, Shanghai, China and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, and led by Xu Qian found that young, single women in urban China are informed on the contraceptive methods but many are too embarrassed to look for them.

Young women (aged 16-30) are interested in them; judgemental attitudes towards premarital sex and especially premarital pregnancy make them require private and anonymous family planning. These prejudices are a burden for contraceptive use and prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases amongst young migrant workers in China.

A 2004 survey made by the same team revealed that a high percentage of urban women had experienced abortion before marriage. The research was made at a Shanghai mobile phone factory and the female workers received lectures, information leaflets and a free workplace contraceptive service offered by the company's doctors. The information leaflets were accepted, but less than 5 % of the women used the company's free family planning service.

All women were interested in reproductive physiology and barrier methods, but only about 50 % read about oral and emergency contraceptives and ways of impeding sexually transmitted infections.

The women felt discomfort or embarrassment about being judged by the others as they perceived no privacy in the workplace service and the gratuity of the service, also, puzzled them.

The data points rather on prejudices than lack of knowledge on the low use of contraception methods in young Chinese women, even if they felt a need for contraceptive use in unmarried youth: 90% of women considered contraception necessary in premarital sex.
Privacy and anonymity seem to be the key elements for promoting contraception in young migrant workers.

Roughly 50 % of the urban migrant unmarried women in Shanghai experienced pregnancy and 40% did not make safe abortion in legal clinics.

China's National Family Planning Program targets just married couples and young women who get scarce information from magazines and the radio.