Background In a patriarchal society, women often keep their use of contraceptives secret in order to meet their reproductive goals and satisfy their reproductive preferences. Nevertheless, to our knowledge, women’s covert contraceptive use and its association with husband’s gender attitude have not been studied in the Indian settings. The present study estimates the extent of covert modern contraceptive use (CCU) among women and its linkage with husbands’ gender attitudes in India. Methods The study is based on fecund and monogamous couples using modern, reversible contraceptive methods. The numbers of such couples were 4,825 and 7,824 in the national family health surveys 2005–06 and 2015–16 respectively. The outcome variable in the study was CCU, while the independent variables were husband’s gender attitude, women’s education, freedom of mobility, freedom to spend money independently, surviving number of children, concordance regarding additional children, couple-level information such as age and educational gap between spouses, and some socioeconomic status (SES) variables. We used latent class analysis to measure the gender attitude and used bivariate descriptive analysis and multivariate binary logistic regression to assess the linkages between husband’s gender attitude and CCU. Results This study found that the prevalence of CCU increased from 15% in 2005–06 to 27% in 2015–16. In both the time periods, contraceptive pills were the most preferred covert method, followed by intrauterine device (IUD). The results of the multivariate logistic regression show that women with husbands of moderate and low egalitarian gender attitudes were, respectively, 50% and 40% more likely to hide their contraceptive use than those with husbands of a high gender attitude. Women’s education, wealth index, number of living children, and region of residence were also found to be significantly associated with CCU. Conclusion The study reveals that husband’s low egalitarian gender attitude can be a potential barrier between spouses, preventing them from opening up about their fertility preferences and contraceptive needs to each other. A couple-oriented approach to family planning is needed so that both members of a couple can satisfy their fertility desires and preferences eventually.

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Marriage squeeze is a demographic phenomenon underlining the asymmetry between the availability of potential brides and grooms in a population. Since mate selection is very specific and bound by religion, caste, and region in India, existing demographic and sociocultural variability reflects even more emphatically on marriage squeeze in these subgroups. The last round of the Indian census (2011) was used for this study. To capture the marriage squeeze, the study utilized two methods—Schoen’s method of two-sex life table and the sex ratio method. At present, India is experiencing a marriage squeeze for males in rural as well as urban areas. Differences have been observed in the tightness of marriage squeeze across different subgroups of the population. The tightness of the male marriage squeeze is greater among Hindus than Muslims in the age group 15–45. In terms of caste, the scheduled tribes are experiencing a higher scarcity of brides than “other” castes; conversely, scheduled caste brides are experiencing a scarcity of grooms. Across the states, a higher tightness of marriage squeeze among males is observed in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Mizoram, and Haryana compared to the rest of the states. The rapid changes that occurred in the sex ratio in the past few decades are visible in the initial two cohorts of marriageable age. Variations in marriage squeeze across different social groups are mainly driven by alterations in the natural sex ratio and the changing pattern of marriage in India.