A male contraceptive gel is in the works but gender equality in sexual healthcare is still a slippery slope

This pioneering birth control could redress the balance and see men sharing the burden of contraception, but it won’t hit shelves for another 10 years and until then it’s still uncharted territory, writes Georgina Roberts

Sunday 15 September 2019 13:29 BST
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It’s 10.30pm in the town of Lynnwood, Washington state, and 30-year-old Michael Sworen is beginning his nightly bedtime ritual after a long day’s work as a sous-chef. The restaurant job helps pays the bills, but he and his wife Nic have also set up a children’s illustration business, Merlion Illustration, which they hope will one day allow them to stay at home with their little girl. The family celebrated their first Mother’s Day in May, with daughter Emelia kitted out in a pink leotard that read “Mom’s First Mother’s Day”.

With 11-month-old Emelia asleep and Nic in bed, he showers, combs his hair, then reaches for the tube of gel between his toothbrush and deodorant. He squirts a teaspoon-sized amount of the gel on each shoulder, blends it into his chest, waits 30 seconds and puts on an old, grey Los Angeles Lakers T-shirt before heading to bed himself.

Inside the nondescript tube sitting on the Sworens’ bathroom cabinet is a gel that could change the lives of millions of men and women across the world – a male contraceptive. It has been more than half a century since the first birth control pill was approved for women but, while there are 15 female contraceptives on the market, for men there are just two: vasectomies and condoms.

Six decades later, the pill is still the most popular option. Some 44 per cent of women prescribed contraception choose to take the pill, a total of more than 3.1 million women in England between 2017 and 2018. Despite its prevalence, weight gain, low sex drive, depressive moods or anxiety attacks have long plagued women who take it. A Danish study published in November 2016, the largest of its kind, linked women who use hormonal contraceptives with higher rates of depression. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen, who followed more than a million women aged between 15 and 34, found that those taking a combined oral contraceptive pill were 23 per cent more likely to take antidepressants. Those using progestin-only pills (“the mini-pill”) were 34 per cent more likely.

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