The session will aim at presenting papers on four important issues:

• changes in male age at marriage now occurring in some societies, especially increasing age differentials with their wives or stable sexual partners and the reason for this phenomenon, including its effects on male and female fertility and on women's autonomy and empowerment;
• men's attitudes toward male (and female) methods of contraception and how these attitudes influence contraceptive choice and use in different types of sexual unions and cultural contexts, considering also that sexuality plays an important role in the selection of contraceptive methods and it is also affected by it;
• adolescent male sexuality, premarital sex, sexual negotiations, unwanted pregnancy and adolescent fertility - an area that has been largely explored from a women’s lens - would include a discussion of men’s involvement in the use of contraception, how decisions for or against method use are made including the decision to seek an abortion when an unwanted pregnancy occurs, and men’s views on parenting when the decision is to see the pregnancy to term; and
• gender power relations, sexual networking and sexual behaviours that men engage in, including negotiations for condom use in specific circumstances or sexual acts, and how these relate to their experience and exposure - for themselves and their partners - to STD's and HIV/AIDS, as well as the resulting male reproductive morbidity and mortality patterns observed in specific contexts.

In seeking papers to address these issues the session expects to correct the past neglect of men as "units" of analysis in research explaining determinants and patterns of demographic phenomena utilising as a general framework of reference the new reproductive health perspectives and concepts imbedded in the ICPD Programme of Action.