Investing in Women’s Health in Pakistan – Role of Mass Media: Positive or Negative?

Abstract

Investing in women’s health is still an island in this huge sea of knowledge. Hence, this research intends to focus on role of mass media on Pakistani women’s wellbeing. The scoping review synthesized data from Pubmed and Google scholar databases reaped 17 eligible studies, of which 5 studies were on family planning/ contraception use and 3 studies on STD’s prevention, 3 studies on breast cancer and its screening, 3 studies on cervical cancer and its screening and 3 studies on social media exploitation among Pakistani women. Findings revealed that reliability and active participation in mass media has fetched many educational programs in improvement women psychological and physical health awareness. But at the same time excessive use of media caused troubles and negative impact on youth’s perception and attitude regarding women reproductive and sexual health resulting in obscenity leading to sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancy and miscarriages; which has inevitably affected women’s health. Therefore, effective strategies are need of an hour to ensure that mass media services should provide positive awareness and parents continual monitoring on their children networking websites will help community to refrain from occurrence of various adverse health consequences as well as from unwanted sexual and risky behaviors.