24% of women didn't use contraceptives for 1st time
The older girls get, the more intensive their sexual experience: By 18 to 20, nearly half have had sexual experience.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHcondoms 88(photo credit: )
Thirteen percent of Israeli girls aged 13 to 15 and 80% of women aged 21 to 24 are sexually experienced, while 60% of this group are sexually active, according to a new Geocartography survey published Sunday.
The survey, conducted via a discreet questionnaire on behalf of a pharmaceutical company that markets contraceptives, found that the average age for first sexual experience (which does not necessarily mean full intercourse) was 17.2 years, but the most common age was 16 to 18.
The older girls get, the more intensive their sexual experience: By 18 to 20, nearly half have had sexual experience.
Geocartography also found that the most common age for starting to use contraceptives was between 16 and 18, and 76% of girls and young women used some sort of contraceptive method the first time they had intercourse. Only 19% reported that they had not used contraceptives when having sex for the first time, and an additional 5% used unreliable methods such as timing it close to their menstrual periods.
When asked why they did not use a contraceptive, 29% of girls and women aged 15 to 24 said they "trusted" their partners to use condoms, 41% said they were certain their partners "would be careful," 13% were "ashamed" to go to a gynecologist, and 6% were "afraid of taking The Pill."
Of those between 15 and 24 who did use a contraceptive, 60% chose a contraceptive pill, and partners of most of the rest used condoms. Nearly 90% who used contraceptives said they were satisfied with it.
