It may take two to tango, but the birth control market has been a one-sided endeavor for the past 50 years. If a woman wants to prevent pregnancy, she has about a dozen options to choose from, from pills to diaphragms to sticks you can insert in your arm. Men looking to stay child-free have two choices: Condoms and a vasectomy.

Gender politics as much as science has made women bear the burden of contraception, but all that might be about to change.

After 30 years of lackluster research into hormonal methods for men, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $100,000 grant for University of North Carolina scientists who are working on a possible method involving ultrasonic waves that would stop sperm production for up to six months, allowing researchers to conduct more clinical trials.

"Our long-term goal is to use ultrasound from therapeutic instruments that are commonly found in sports medicine or physical therapy clinics as an inexpensive, long-term, reversible male contraceptive suitable for use in developing to first world countries,"lead researcher Dr. James Tsuruta told the BBC.

Of course the research is hampered by the same assumptions that pharmaceutical companies have been making about the lack of interest in male birth control for decades: That men won't want to take it and that women won't trust their contraception to men.

But male birth control isn't about women ceding the power over their reproductive choices to men, it's about men having more control, instead of hoping that a condom works properly (the failure rate is 16 percent) or that their partner took care of it. Science Progress's Lisa Engelstein-Campo writes, "In some ways it seems unfair to hold men responsible for children they did not want when they are ill equipped to prevent pregnancy."

“It is time for men to have some control. I think it would empower men and deter some women out there from their nefarious plans,” one man told MSNBC. “Some women are out there to use men to get pregnant. This could deter women from doing this. An athlete or a singer is someone who could be a target and they could put a stop to that.” (Unlike MSNBC, I'm going to go ahead and point out that studies show those who sabotage birth control are often men.)

But while men may be the primary beneficiaries, women stand much to gain from the global acceptance of male contraception. For one, even the most reliable methods have about a three-percent failure rate, which would be much lower if more than one method were used. And if the cost of birth control could be shared or experienced by men, (women now pay 91% of contraceptive costs), maybe insurance companies will face pressure from both sexes to cover it.

At the very least, a male contraceptive option would do wonders for the Michael Scotts of the world: