This report from the Center for Health and Gender Equity actually came out in April, but it just appeared in my Google Alerts today. The report argues that the US government – still one of the world's largest providers of condoms through foreign aid – should send more female condoms. They are currently 2% of US condom buys. The Center wants this percentage to be increased so that there can be a serious effort to market female condoms and get more people using them.
The idea is that female condoms allow women to protect themselves and their partners from STIs without having to convince a many to wear a condom. It makes sense for cultures where conversations about sex are highly taboo, I guess. I still have to wonder if men in these relationships (whether transactional or romantic) don't still have enough power to demand no condom use at all.
This is getting into a very technical area, and I’m not going to pretend to be an expert. But I think it is a legitimate question if the female condom is just a bad product that people won't use, or if it needs to be marketed better. Few people like female condoms, but it isn't as if regular condoms are universally popular – so customer satisfaction is clearly not the only important factor. If the female condom wasn't so weird and alien, maybe it would be used more. But what percentage of our foreign aid needs to be spent on priming the female condom supply, versus ensuring a sufficient supply of the product that people already know?