Male condoms come in all types of fun shapes and sizes and flavors.
Some even glow-in-the-dark.
There are hundreds of male condoms that have been
approved by the FDA.
Amazon alone has 76 pages full of different options, but how
many types of female condoms are available in the US?
Turns out, just one.
A female condom is the only woman-initiated method of preventing unplanned
pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.
It's a sheath with two rings, one open one closed, that can be used for vaginal
or anal sex.
Typically it's almost as effective as a
male condom and it can be inserted up to eight hours before having sex.
So, you don't have to stop in the heat of the moment to fumble with a clumsy condom wrapper.
Despite being effective and convenient, only a small percent of women
in the US have reportedly ever even used a female condom.
Why aren't more women
using this thing?
We decided to find out.
So I enlisted Dion to help me scour the
neighborhood to find one.
Can you just put a wig on and you can do it?
Do you guys have female condoms?
They don't have it.
Even though we ended up getting brownie snacks out of the whole thing, not a
single store that we went to sold female condoms.
I don't even have to leave my
office lobby to buy male condoms.
After doing a little research I found out why
it was impossible to find a female condom.
It turns out you can't buy them in a store.
Well, that sucks.
Yep.
Veru Inc., formerly known as the
Female Health Company, is the only company with a female condom on the
market in the US.
And they switched to a prescription based system in 2017, so if
you want to get one you either have to go see your doctor or buy it directly
from their website.
Imagine if a man needed prescriptions to buy condoms.
Female condoms aren't new. A Danish inventor created a prototype in the
early 1980s, in response to the AIDS crisis at the time.
In 1993 the Female Health Company
brought the design to the US,
and their first FDA-approved version was unimaginatively called the FC1.
It was made of polyurethane plastic, which was less flexible than latex.
Some women
reported that it was uncomfortable, made squeaky noises and, because there was
little awareness around proper use, it sometimes fell out during sex.
The media also ridiculed it, comparing its appearance to a jellyfish, a windsock, and
a plastic bag.
In 2009 the company came up with a second version, the FC2, made
with a softer rubber.
It was more comfortable and quieter, but it still
didn't take off.
Male condoms certainly have been around for a lot longer and
are more accessible and people, frankly, are much more comfortable with the
things that they know.
This is Dawn Bingham, an ob-gyn and a fellow with
Physicians for Reproductive Health.
And I think that the female condom has not
grown in popularity as the male condom has, because it's very easy to educate
people about male condoms.
You can let the people know how to use a prop,
using a banana to show how simple it is to put on a male condom and we don't
have the same accessible models for female condom to make people that comfortable.
According to a report in the Journal of Urban Health, the tampon had
similar challenges when it was first introduced in the 1930s.
In the first
decade on the market, the tampon was only used by 4 to 6% of women and doctors
questioned its safety and usefulness.
It took decades and carefully planned
marketing campaigns to reach even modest popularity among women.
Female condoms
had a similar trajectory in Zimbabwe.
After health organizations campaigned for
the condom as a successful barrier against HIV, the government introduced it
in 1997.
To boost popularity they were marketed across universities,
pharmacies, and even hair salons.
Which eventually led to high usage rates and a
decline in HIV cases.
These kind of contraceptive and STI prevention methods
are useful, because they empower the woman or whoever the receptive partner
is to protect themselves.
And they're simple to use.
But there still isn't
enough awareness around female condoms in the US yet.
The FDA put the female condom in the most strictly regulated category of
medical devices, which requires hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra
research and takes a ton of time for market approval.
But the FDA is now
considering reclassifying the female condom and renaming it
the "single-use internal condom".
This would ease restrictions on companies and let people
know they're actually not just for women.
Sure, male condoms work but that doesn't
mean they should be the only accessible choice for everyone.