Indian women also run an outsize risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, including a high rate of HIV/AIDS. One cause is that Indian men’s condoms malfunction more than 15 percent of the time. Why such a high fail rate? According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, some 60 percent of Indian men have penises too small for the condoms manufactured to fit World Health Organization specs. That was the conclusion of a two-year study in which more than 1,000 Indian men had their penises measured and photographed by scientists. “The condom,” declared one of the researchers, “is not optimized for India.”
With such a multitude of problems, what should be done to improve the lives of Indian women, especially the majority who live in the countryside?
The government has tried to help by banning dowries and sex-selective abortions, but these laws have largely been ignored. A number of monetary interventions have also been designed for Indian women. These include Apni Beti, Apna Dhan (“My Daughter, My Pride”), a project that pays rural women not to abort female babies; a vast microcredit industry that makes small-business loans to women; and an array of charitable programs launched by a veritable alphabet soup of international aid agencies.
The Indian government has also vowed to make smaller condoms more readily available.
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An excerpt, showing the level of Levitt's scholarship, from Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
Indian women also run an outsize risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, including a high rate of HIV/AIDS. One cause is that Indian men’s condoms malfunction more than 15 percent of the time. Why such a high fail rate? According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, some 60 percent of Indian men have penises too small for the condoms manufactured to fit World Health Organization specs. That was the conclusion of a two-year study in which more than 1,000 Indian men had their penises measured and photographed by scientists. “The condom,” declared one of the researchers, “is not optimized for India.”
With such a multitude of problems, what should be done to improve the lives of Indian women, especially the majority who live in the countryside?
The government has tried to help by banning dowries and sex-selective abortions, but these laws have largely been ignored. A number of monetary interventions have also been designed for Indian women. These include Apni Beti, Apna Dhan (“My Daughter, My Pride”), a project that pays rural women not to abort female babies; a vast microcredit industry that makes small-business loans to women; and an array of charitable programs launched by a veritable alphabet soup of international aid agencies.
The Indian government has also vowed to make smaller condoms more readily available.
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