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by Carol Aloysius

When the world celebrated Population Day on July 11 last week, one of the most important messages that was reiterated in every nation which marked this event was the key role women could play in controlling the current population explosion.

 Now at 6.2 billion and increasing by 1.2 percent every year we're told that approximately seventy five million persons are added to the world population every year, which is likely to treble by the next half century, unless drastic steps are taken to control its growth.

Interestingly, this huge population growth occurs not in the underpopulated affluent countries of the Western world, but rather in the poor nations of Asia and the Sub-Sahara. One of the chief reason cited for the growth of a population in any nation is, the low status of women.

Som P. Pudasaini, UNFPA Representative reiterated this fact at a media brief held at the Health Education Bureau, on 'Poverty, Population and Development', when he observed that wherever women have been sidelined, deprived of their basic rights of education and equal job opportunities as well as access to good health and most importantly rights over their reproductive health, a rise in population was inevitable.

Women, he stressed, played a key role in controlling the growth of a nation's population.

Proof of this fact was evident in countries where gender inequality is still very much evident and where women occupy subservient roles in their male dominated societies. Such countries included India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Indonesia - the six most populated countries in the world.

Bridging the gender gap between men and women was the vital link to development, poverty eradication and controlling population.

It was in the light of such thinking that this year's Population Day theme was largely focused, to draw global attention not only to the serious consequences of an exploding population but more importantly, to emphasise the fact that by empowering women, educating them and protecting their Reproductive Health Rights among other rights it was possible to reduce exploding populations and raise the quality of life of the world's poorest of the poor.

Poverty we know is one of the chief contributory causes of gender inequity. It is the reason why so many poor women around the world remain trapped in a vicious cycle of economic degradation. Or why, so many underprivileged women have high fertility rates in a male dominated society. Poverty is caused by illiteracy, limited job opportunities and lack of skills training for women.

It is caused by depriving women of their reproductive rights, preventing them from exercising their rights over their bodies, planning the size of their families or spacing the births of their children. Lack of such rights is perhaps the single most important reason why women in poor countries are more vulnerable to reproductive health risks such as sexually transmitted diseases, illegal abortions and AIDS, as well as domestic violence and sexual abuse than their counterparts in the more affluent countries.

Reproductive health is central to women's life opportunities and choices. Smaller and healthier families, fewer sexually transmitted infections and safer childbirth are the key to gender equality. Yet poverty prevents most women from these benefits, and more than 350,000 women according to the latest UNFPA report of Reproductive Health, do not have access to a choice of safe affordable contraceptive methods.

Reproductive Health saves women's lives. Some 500,000 women die each year from mostly preventable causes related to pregnancy and perhaps fifteen times as many suffer injury or infection from unsafe abortions.

Needless to say, most of them live in poor countries.

Poverty is most visible in over-populated and under-developed countries. In countries that have been stripped of their natural resources. It is the women who suffer most, because they occupy the lowest rung in a society that is mostly male dominated and where gender inequality is the order of the day.

Thus poor women who live in countries with rapid population growth, and depleting natural resources, where water, air and forests are constantly being damaged and destroyed are much more vulnerable to risks of the attendant ills of gender inequality such as health, poor education and unemployment than women in more affluent and developed countries.

But that can change. How? By empowering and educating women. This is main message of Population Day 2001.

Such change must start at the grassroot level - with poor rural women.

For, as numerous studies carried out by the UNFPA and other UN agencies have clearly shown, in spite of their low social status, it is these poor rural women who form the most important segment of society in terms of environmental, social and economic development. It is they after all who farm the land, gather fuel and water, cook nutritious meals for their husbands, see to their children's education and engage in micro-income generating jobs that help supplement their husbands' tiny incomes.

Visit any rural household in Sri Lanka for example and you will see women tilling the fields, growing vegetables in their backyards, gathering fuel for their fires, trekking long distances for water, cooking, washing, and managing the domestic front while their husbands are out working. Many of these women, in spite of their busy household work, often engage in income generating jobs such as wrapping beedi, breaking stones, weaving mats from coconut leaves in order to supplement their husbands' meagre wages.

Given the motivation and support to enhance their quality of life through education, income generation, good reproductive health care and access to family planning, these same women can become change agents in their communities .

Not only can they collectively pass on the important message of nature conservation, environmental pollution, and healthy eating habits to the rest of the community, they can effectively communicate the benefits of smaller, well spaced families to the larger community across the world.

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