Women’s Empowerment, Population Dynamics, and Development

This book assumes that “women’s empowerment” is a social movement aimed at producing political, economic and social change. It traces the changing relationship among three unprecedented trends experienced in the “developing world” since 1950: declining levels of mortality and fertility, socioeconomic development, and women’s empowerment. It offers two policy analyses of the contemporary relationship of these three trends. One for the 30 countries that in 2021 still have TFRs above 4, and another for the 34 countries that currently have below replacement level fertility. This analysis highlights a new 21st century fact: over-ardent neo-Malthusian population controllers are no longer the greatest threat to women’s reproductive rights. That place has been assumed by over-ardent pronatalist population controllers in low fertility countries.