Bursting at the Seams

Women across the world continue to suffer from gender inequality, including child- and forced marriage, gender-based violence, sexist policies, as well as barriers to participation in education and employment. Achieving gender equity globally is crucial to meeting development goals, reducing human suffering and solving our biggest environmental problems.

has yet achieved full gender equality and women across the world continue to suffer from discrimination and unequal rights and opportunities.

The situation is worst in countries where harmful patriarchal traditions, including child marriage and female genital mutilation, remain the norm. Globally, one in four girls does not attend secondary school and one in five girls is married before her 18th birthday. Child marriage robs girls of a bright future and brings a high risk of death and injury related to pregnancy and childbirth. In most developing countries, a woman’s ability to determine the number and spacing of her children is limited or non-existent.

Even in many high-income countries, women often get paid less than men for the same jobs, face gender-based discrimination and violence, and suffer from misogynistic attitudes and sexist policies that restrict their autonomy over their own bodies.A lthough Poor reproductive health is a leading cause of illness and death for women in developing countries. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), some 830 women still die every day from pregnancy or childbirth complications, and these remain the primary cause of death for 15-19 year-old girls globally. Within relationships, women often have very little control over which contraception methods they use (if any), and are often powerless in protecting themselves against sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. While family planning services and attitudes towards them are improving, they remain inadequate. Even in developed nations, unintended pregnancies remain common while sex education and family planning are under threat from regressive policies and funding restrictions.

UNFPA estimates that more than 200 million women in developing countries have an unmet need for modern contraception, meaning they do not wish to become pregnant but are not using safe and effective contraceptive methods. In fact, this number is still increasing due to family planning services not keeping pace with rapid population growth in the most vulnerable areas.

Even where contraception is readily available, uptake and use are limited by lack of information and cultural acceptance, resistance from male partners and affordability. As well as facilitating universal access to modern contraception, quality health care and good information, we must overcome harmful socio- cultural barriers to responsible family planning.

To help tackle this issue, we’ve joined forces with selected grassroots NGOs to create Empower to Plan crowd funding. It’s your chance to get behind effective family planning providers, back their projects and increase their impact.

Help us empower more women to plan – for their own sake, and for the wellbeing of future generations and the planet that sustains us NGOs need to pay our their duties work on that so Each is taking practical action, aligned with our mission and values, and with a proven track record of impact.

Although population growth in the 20th and 21st centuries has skyrocketed, it can be slowed, stopped and reversed through actions which enhance global justice and improve people’s lives. Under the United Nations’ most optimistic scenario, a sustainable reduction in global population could happen within decades.

We need to take many actions to reduce the impact of those of us already here – especially the richest of us who have the largest environmental impact – including through reducing consumption to sustainable levels, and systemic economic changes.

One of the most effective steps we can take to reduce our collective environmental impact is to choose smaller family size, and empower those who can’t make that choice freely to do so. Many countries have had success in reducing their birth rates through policies which improved lives and empowered people. Our report Power to the People: how population policies work looks at some examples and the evidence that shows how different approaches work. Thailand, for instance, reduced its fertility rate (the average number of children per woman) by nearly 75% in just two generations with a targeted, creative and ethical population programme, which helped it to grow economically.