Key to better sex ed: Focus on gender & power

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/pc-ktb041715.php

Public Release: 17-Apr-2015
Population Council

A new analysis by Population Council researcher Nicole Haberland provides powerful evidence that sexuality and HIV education programs addressing gender and power in intimate relationships are far more likely to be effective than programs that do not. The research appears in the March 2015 issue of International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, published by the Guttmacher Institute.

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According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, young people in the United States aged 15-24 account for half of all new sexually transmitted infections. Globally, young people in this age range account for 40 percent of all new HIV infections, according to UNAIDS.

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Studies have shown that when people hold biased beliefs about appropriate roles and behavior for males and females, or when they report unequal power in their intimate relationships, they are more likely to experience poor reproductive health outcomes. For example, women who report low power in their sexual relationships tend to have higher rates of STIs and HIV infection than women who report more equitable relationships. Thus, some programs and researchers theorized that sexuality education should help young people reflect critically about issues of gender and power in relationships.

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Haberland found that the impact of including gender or power content was dramatic. "The programs that addressed gender or power were five times more likely to be effective than those that did not," said Haberland. "Fully 80 percent of them were associated with a significantly lower rate of STIs or unintended pregnancy. In contrast, among the programs that did not address gender or power, only 17 percent had such an association. It is striking that the two sets of programs--sexuality education programs that address gender and power and programs that do not--have nearly opposite outcomes."

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