Engaging men and boys in sexual and reproductive health and rights

Two of the UN’s sustainable development goals (on good health and wellbeing and on gender equality) emphasise improving sexual and reproductive health and rights.1 Given the centrality of unequal gender and power relations to this issue, we need to work with men and boys, alongside women and girls, to make meaningful progress.23456

For example, when services deliver women’s family planning advice by mobile phone in countries where men often control women’s use of mobile phones as well as their birth spacing choices, we must ensure that male partners understand the importance of respecting women’s bodily autonomy and supporting their choices.78 And we cannot teach sex education in schools without adequately challenging boys about their norms, beliefs, and behaviours with respect to sexual consent and safe sex, given that boys are an important part of the solution for issues such as gender based sexual violence, teenage pregnancy, and sexually …