Behaviors and Needs for Reproductive Health and Implications for Gender Sensitive Interventions

Background: Despite cultural and religious prohibitions against premarital heterosexual rela-tionships and intimacy, some recent evidence suggests some rise in premarital heterosexual interactions and relationships among young people. On the other hand, although HIV in Iran is a concentrated epidemic and mainly reported among high risk groups such as injecting drug users (IDUs), but there are evidences that the mode of transmission is shifting towards sexual contacts. This trend has caused concern among health policy makers in terms of prevention of STDs and HIV/AIDS particularly, among young people. This paper was prepared with the aim of high-lighting how gender contributes to variation in reproductive health needs and conduct of young people in Iran. Method: This paper is based on a secondary analysis and compares comparable reproductive beliefs and conducts of women and men based on the data of two surveys conducted in Tehran in 2002 and 2005. A survey among 1385 adolescent males and another survey among 1743 fe-male undergraduate students in four multidisciplinary universities in Tehran. Both surveys used anonymous self-administered questionnaires. To make the two samples comparable, the data o