A quarter of women younger than 50 years now use male condoms for contraception, and for the first time this matches the number relying on the Pill, according to the Office for National Statistics. More than twice as many 40-44-year-old women rely on male condoms as those using the Pill. Older women are more likely to rely on their or their partner’s sterilisation for contraception.
Of men and women using condoms, 90% said contraception was one of their reasons for choosing them and 45% mentioned prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
Increasing numbers of women are now using long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) – 24% of women who attended NHS community contraceptive clinics in 2008/9 chose it as their primary method, against 18% in 2003/04.
The ONS says that 91% of women say they have heard of "the morning-after pill" or emergency hormonal contraception, but fewer than half of these knew that it remains effective for 72 hours after intercourse. The number who know about using an intrauterine device as emergency contraception has actually fallen, from 49% eight years ago to 40% now.
Most people surveyed - 55% - said that their main source of information on STIs was television programmes and advertisements, 16% said it was newspapers, books and magazines, and only 3% said most of their knowledge came from government information leaflets.
Sexually active men not in an exclusive long-term relationship weren’t always taking sexual health seriously – 59% said that information on HIV and other STIs had not affected their sexual behaviour, and only a very few – 6% – had cut their number of one-night stands or took an STI test when they changed sexual partners.
Only 43% of men and 40% of women who had had two or more sexual partners in the past year said they always used a condom; 18% of men and 25% of women with multiple sexual partners said they never used condoms.
