What women really want for Valentine's Day: more freedom
Valentine鈥檚 Day has long celebrated love with caring notes, decadent chocolates, and romantic arrangements of flowers. But this Valentine鈥檚 Day, perhaps it鈥檚 time to celebrate with a gift many of the world鈥檚 women desperately want and need: reproductive health.
According to the (UNFPA), 1,000 women die every day due to pregnancy or childbirth, or one woman every 90 seconds. Ninety-nine percent of these deaths occur in the developing world, 90 percent in Africa and Asia. A handful of complications account for 80 percent of these maternal deaths 鈥� severe bleeding, infections, high blood pressure, obstructed labor, and unsafe abortion 鈥� and the bulk of these deaths are preventable.
Reproductive health, including access to the information and means to plan a family, is a human right the world鈥檚 nations have recognized in various forms since 1968. Access to family planning and other reproductive health services safeguard the lives of women and their children and promote families that are emotionally and economically healthy.
In my book, ," I explore centuries of reproductive history and concludes that, if given the chance to do what they really want, women on average have smaller families, with childbirths later in their lives. This pattern is safer for women and children, and promotes environmental sustainability through the slower population growth that lower fertility rates and later births bring about.
The health of women and children
The UNFPA report notes that poverty, marginalization, and gender inequalities based on culture are key challenges to reproductive health. The report relays that women own less than 15 percent of the land worldwide; their wages, on average, are 17 percent lower than men鈥檚; and they make up two-thirds of the world鈥檚 776 million illiterate adults.
This means that women, particularly in the developing world, must often rely on men for financial support 鈥� creating situations in which women are subject to their partners鈥� views on contraception, feel trapped in physically or emotionally abusive relationships, and marry and have children young instead of pursuing further education or employment outside the home. In the developing world, will be married before she turns 15, and worldwide, complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the of death for girls 15鈥�19.
Many women are not empowered to make their own decisions regarding if or when to have children, how many to have, and how long to wait in between them. Some 40 percent or more of pregnancies are unplanned, with more than 21 percent of all births resulting from such pregnancies worldwide, according to estimates of the . If given access to family planning, and permission by their families and societies to use it, fewer women and children would die from unsafe abortions and high-risk pregnancies.
The health of the planet
The sponsors, an organization that encourages a world where young girls can avoid the pitfalls of too-early marriage and childbearing and can instead go to school, enjoy health and safety, and grow into the next generation of leaders. In the , where half of adolescent girls are married, Girl Up is helping to promote education for young girls. The project offers basic literacy classes, family planning information, and agricultural training.
When women and girls are empowered with education and the capacity to make choices about sex, marriage, and childbearing, they have opportunities to realize futures as farmers, businesswomen, politicians, or whatever dream drives them. These benefits ripple out from the lives of individual women and girls to their families, their communities, their nations 鈥� and ultimately to the entire world.
In the Worldwatch report ," I suggest that if women are given access to increased reproductive health, they are better able to more naturally control the size of their families and counterbalance the resource depletion and pollution that are exacerbated by unabated population increases. The importance of women and the autonomy they exercise may be far greater to the climate鈥檚 future than most experts and negotiators on climate change have realized.
What women really want听
Reproductive health is not about state-mandated family sizes; it is about freeing women to make their own choices about when and how often to give birth. In all countries where affordable access is offered to family planning resources and women have the option of safe and legal abortions, women鈥檚 fertility rates drop to two or less children per woman. Such rates are normal for nearly half the world and are less than the 鈥渞eplacement fertility鈥� rate of slightly more than two children per woman, that fuels present and future population growth.
When women are free to make their own choices, they improve their own health and that of their families. A by the UNFPA and the Guttmacher Institute suggests that it would take $24 billion to fulfill unmet reproductive health needs in developing countries, several times what countries spend today. According to the , such an investment would 鈥減rovide every woman with the recommended standard of maternal and newborn care鈥� and would 鈥淸r]educe unintended pregnancies by more than 66 percent, prevent 70 percent of maternal deaths, avert 44 percent of newborn deaths, and reduce unsafe abortion by 73 percent.鈥�
鈥� Robert Engelman is president of the . Click to purchase a copy of听 "More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want" and for a copy of "Population, Climate Change, and Women鈥檚 Lives." originally appeared at , a blog published by the Worldwatch Institute.
鈥� To purchase "State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet" please click听. And to watch the one-minute book trailer, click听.
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