A Gendered Perspective on Men's Reproductive Health

The aim of this article is to identify analytical approaches to situate men within the reproductive health processes. One approach is to identify the circumstances under which men are considered in the reproductive health discourse, the places in which they are absent and present, and how they condition favorable consequences for women’s and children’s health. This can be achieved without necessarily challenging the premise that women are the only ones who reproduce or questioning the relationships of power that underlie the experience of sexuality and reproduction. Another possibility is to explore the relational, social, and potentially conflictive nature of sexualized reproduction. This alternative means of analyzing reproduction as a gender relational process rather than as isolated events simultaneously recovers the specific sexual and reproductive characteristics of men and women. In the article we use the gender perspective in order to explore the second approach, so as to imagine these processes without negating the dimension of power.