“Male contraception is a critical area, ” said Jenny Sorensen, a foundation spokeswoman. “It doesn’t make sense to not include everyone in the discussion.”

While male contraception has been studied before, no method met the stringent safety and effectiveness criteria that female methods do. It was also unclear whether men would use them.

China leads the world in the research on male contraception techniques, some of which have been listed as the ones to be promoted by the world Association of Voluntary Surgical contraception (AVSC).