Women are the Solution

"...We must be courageous in speaking out on the issues that concern us: we must not bend under the weight of spurious arguments invoking culture or traditional values. No value worth the name supports the oppression and enslavement of women...
The function of culture and tradition is to provide a framework for human wellbeing. If they are used against us, we will reject them, and move on. We will not allow ourselves to be silenced..."


Dr. Nafis Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund, Beijing, 1996


I’ve been listening to the University of Berkeley’s lecture podcasts of their Population and Poverty course. Malcolm Potts, Martha Campbell, Ndola Prata and a host of other speakers share their insights and experiences to provide an understanding of the relationships between population growth, poverty, women’s empowerment, and the politics and changing paradigms of population control.


They explore the history of family planning movements the world over in order to place in context the developments of today, and why since the 1980s, population control measures seem to have lost their momentum,  though, “..globally one million more births than deaths occur every 112 hours, 90% in the poorest countries.”


In September 2000, the UN Millennium Declaration was adopted by 189 heads of state. It set out a plan for countries to work together to achieve the following goals for 2015:


• Goal 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger


• Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education


• Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women


• Goal 4. Reduce child mortality


• Goal 5. Improve maternal health


• Goal 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases


• Goal 7. Ensure environmental sustainability


• Goal 8. Develop a global partnership for development


In Lecture 5, Martha Campbell asks an inconvenient question – Is it realistic or feasible to work toward any of these goals without addressing the population problem? How can we speak of eradicating hunger when there are a million new mouths to feed every few days?


They make a strong case for the support of women’s reproductive rights…which they see as crucially linked to the availability of options for contraception. This was raised by Dr. Sadik in her 1996  Address To The World Conference Of Women, highlighting the need to liberate women "from a system of values which insists that reproduction is their only function”


“…the first mark of respect for women is support for their reproductive rights. Women must be empowered to perform this role as they see fit. No-one has the right to impose reproductive decisions on them.


Living in Mumbai, a city that is bursting at its seams, with hundreds of children begging at every traffic light, and hundreds upon thousands of families living their lives on the roads, these words resonate deeply with me. But when and how will change come?