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Gender and Family Planning in Nigeria

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Gender Equality

Synonyms

Birth control; Contraceptives

Definitions

To quote the World Health Organization (WHO), Gender “refers to the roles, behaviours, activities, attributes and opportunities that any society considers appropriate for girls and boys, and women and men. Gender interacts with, but is different from, the binary categories of biological sex” (WHO 2020). Omadjohwoefe (2011) concurs in pointing out that gender is “socially or culturally constructed”; it is this social construction that prescribes certain social roles, obligations, privileges, and rights to people based on their gender identities.

According to the WHO, family planning (FP) “allows people to attain their desired number of children and determine the spacing of pregnancies. It is achieved through use of contraceptive methods and the treatment of infertility” (WHO 2018). The definition encompasses all strategies, services, advice, and methods aimed at achieving the goals of FP but its fulcrum is the use of contraception in...

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Correspondence to Obreniokibo Ibifubara Amiesimaka .

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Amiesimaka, O.I., Payam, S. (2020). Gender and Family Planning in Nigeria. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A., Brandli, L., Lange Salvia, A., Wall, T. (eds) Gender Equality. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70060-1_126-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70060-1_126-1

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