Loudmouth, yes we know about all those indirect connections and
those noble goals. Give it a hundred years to implement them.

We also know of the direct connection between popping out babies,
when you have sex with no birth control. That is a relatively
cheap programme, that could be implemented now, for all women in
the third world who are willing and it seems as if they are.

Its great that so many people are paying attention to this very important issue. However, to those who continue to push the 'lets implant them with contraception today' argument (which I wouldn't disagree with for anyone who wants it), think on the following - a very simple three-point plan proposed years ago by demographer Aynsley Coale .. First people have to believe that they can actually control their fertility (rather than seeing it as being 'up to God'); second they have to perceive there to be value in having fewer children (difficult when kids are net economic assets who gather fuel and water, look after animals, weed crops and generally contribute to the family's food supply); third - only when these two 'preconditions' are met that they really go for having fewer kids, and even then there has to be appropriate attitudes, information, acceptance etc in that society. In short providing people with the actual means by which to have fewer children, before getting all those other things sorted out, doesn't drive demand for contraception. What does is realsing that most of your kids are going to live; those kids not just attending school but being required to - the classic John Caldwell wealth flows argument; and having an alternative means of support in old age. Education IS the key, but its going to be far too slow by itself. We need to throw everything possible at the problem - including wiping the debts of those countries, wiping Structural Adjustment Programs that prevent poor people feeding themselves, moving away from the mad neo-liberal economic agenda.. its time to put all our eggs in the one basket.

Hi Yabby,

Marie Stopes has a point, just like her predecessor did eighty years ago. But with great respect, you both may be missing one important point, that in many countries, reactionary cultural practices (there's a phrase you don't see often these days) will force women to keep having children, for the benefit of her husband's family more than for her own, and to 'honour' her own family. Many societies WANT high fertility rates - Islamic, Catholic and many Indigenous groups as examples - regardless of the health or rights of the women.

I wish you wouldn't keep using the phrase 'popping them out' Yabby, it greatly demeans women, just as 'tie a knot in it' does to men. In many societies, women not only have little say in whether or not, or when, to have sex, but are required to by dominant cultural practices - in which invariably male power trumps women's rights, incidentally.

While women are trapped in male-dominated social situations, i.e. where they effectively have no power, and that power is sanctioned by vile cultural practices, then they will not be able to develop, let alone exercise, any equality of human rights. Lack of access to education is almost always a telling sign of this social and cultural powerlessness, and the sooner such societies are transformed, and their justification for inequitable cultural practices exposed, the better. Without equality of rights, women will keep 'popping them out', Yabby, whether they like it or not, because they will have little say in the matter and even their own families will force them to submit, just to keep the peace between families, in which women are not much more than micro-political pawns.

Enforcement of the equality of rights for women, equal access to education for girls and women, pension systems for the elderly, better health services - a huge agenda which, yes, may take a hundred years.

Well, that's me for another 24 hours.

Loudmouth

Thank you for your succinctly worded lesson in reality for the lives of far too many third world women.

Given that it has taken 100 years since western women achieved the right to vote and we are still to reach parity in government and business, I can only pray that time speeds up for women in third world countries. Too much suffering for too many and this includes the men (in those poor countries) if only they would realise that healthy happy people are a benefit to all.

"Enforcement of the equality of rights for women, equal access to education for girls and women, pension systems for the elderly, better health services - a huge agenda which, yes, may take a hundred years."

Which begs two questions:

1: People seem to forget that the rights of men are also squashed in these cultures. The best prism to understand these cultures is one of THREE genders 1: Powerful men (with power and hence freedom), 2: All women (safe and protected, but with limited rights), 3: powerless men (with neither power, nor safety).

In this light, polygamy is one of the forces of oppression of men! Because it creates an underclass of men who have no value other than as cannon and factory fodder.

2: When are the relative rights and opportunities of men and women 'fair'?
My take on this is that the pendulum is way to the women's favour in the west.

THis is why many middle class men are refusing to become fathers. commitment phobia is in fact a rational response to irrational society that devalues fatherhood and children's rights to have a relationship with their natural fathers.

Where men regularilly have their children they love and the assets of their life's work stolen by the divorce courts, and left, with a garnishee order on half their future income for the crime of becomming a father.

Where men are arrested and convicted on the "denouncement" (on the false accusation) of a woman in cases of violence and sexual assult - and convicted without even the basic human right to an open court and the opportunity fo face your accuser.

BTW Women who commit perjury, are almost never punished

Part Time,

People tend to want extra children as insurance if they expect several of their children to die or emigrate (see refs. to Chapter 3 of Virginia Abernethy's "Population Politics"). Keeping existing children alive may lead to fewer of them. Of course, governments should enforce compulsory education and child labour laws, but if they don't, those free school meals give parents an incentive to send the children to school instead of putting them to work. They tried it successfully in Kerala, India. Children also learn better if they are not malnourished.

Loudmouth,

The collapses have already started happening. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has calculated that providing an individual with a nutritionally adequate diet requires 0.053 hectares of arable land, even with the best modern farming techniques. Rwanda got down to 0.03 hectares per person before the genocide. James Gasana, their former agriculture minister, wrote an article on the genocide in 2002 in Worldwatch Magazine. He included a table showing that the most people were killed in massacres in districts where calories per person was lowest. The Darfur massacres have also been blamed on a combination of overpopulation and drought so that there is not enough to go around.