Pratiche negoziate di prevenzione della fecondazione

This paper is dedicated to investigating the actual implications gender roles play in making contraceptive choices specifically focusing on the findings from a qualitative study that explored the contraceptive experiences of twenty-five women from South-central Italy who have used emergency hormonal contraception at least once. An analysis of the contraceptive biographies narrated by the subjects, from her first sexual intercourse to all later experiences, reveals heterogeneous experiences in negotiating contraceptive choices, where sometimes the partner’s preferences prevailed over the woman’s preference, yet the women differed in their responses. Contraception failures and the partner’s role in the decision to take the morning after pill are described with an outline of how those experiences impact future contraceptive choices and the perceptions of acceptance of this method in the family and social context of the women interviewed.