Who Owns My Womb?

The causes of population overgrowth and population decline actually share common root causes: the deprivation of women’s free agency, the neglect of women’s voices in the policy-making process, and the deeply gendered norms that persist inside and outside family settings.

In the case of population overgrowth in 1980s China and current-day Niger, gendered norms can be clearly observed: males are perceived as more socially valuable, while women are considered baby-makers. In China, this explains why women kept trying to become pregnant in an attempt to give birth to a boy and why the one-child policy led to selective abortion based on sex, which eventually widened the gender ratio and laid the foundation for the current decline in the fertility rate. Instead of recognizing this radical cause, the government, however, chose the simplistic punishment strategy of forced abortion, which was indeed a second victimization of women who had already been victimized by the gendered social norms. In Niger, the government itself adopted the gendered norms that perceive women as baby-makers, perpetuating their negative effects and leading to the persistent issue of population overgrowth.

The three shared root causes identified above also explain the predictable ineffectiveness of Russia’s and South Korea’s efforts to boost their declining fertility rates. Neither Russia’s punishment strategy nor South Korea’s incentivization strategy is likely to be successful, as the governments have failed to recognize the root cause of women’s reluctance to have babies. In both Russia and South Korea, society is set up in a way that discourages women from having children, with a highly gender-based division of labor in both the workplace and family settings and higher opportunity costs for women. In both cases, women are merely perceived as essential factors for population growth, so states create policies that police women in order to make them perform their role as baby-makers. Neither policy is built from the perspectives of women, and neither bothers to understand why women do what they do.

In a nutshell: Women’s free agency to choose should be restored. Here, by “the agency to choose,” I specifically refer to preserving women’s “authentic choice” that is free from restriction, indirect coercion, or induction. Women’s choice to decide whether to have children or not should not be constrained by fear of high opportunity costs in the workplace, unequal distribution of labor in childcare, or punishment initiated by the state. Nor should it be a result of conforming to or internalizing gendered social norms that construct women not as individual human beings but as vessels for newborns.

While most of the stated requirements are self-evident, one that may deserve further elaboration is the idea of induction. One example is granting or prolonging paid marriage leave without addressing the gendered division of childcare labor, with the aim of increasing the likelihood of women becoming pregnant. For instance, while China used to offer three days of paid marriage leave to newlyweds, multiple Chinese provinces have extended this duration to as long as thirty days.¹ While the government did not explicitly claim that this policy change was made to encourage fertility, it is highly likely that this change aligns with its broader agenda to boost population growth, considering the general lack of work-life balance for the labor force in China. Studies have found that this type of marriage leave policy can increase fertility rates by as much as 24%.² In this example, although the government did not explicitly coerce women to reproduce, the policy largely sets women up in a situation where they are more likely to become pregnant, which could consequently disrupt their career and life plans. Therefore, it should not be considered a policy that respects women’s agency to choose freely, without implicit coercion or induction.

One may argue that the underlying logic for states managing the size of the population implies depriving women’s control over their own wombs and downgrading their own agency. If family size and women’s reproduction are matters of personal and private choices, then the best way to restore women’s autonomy over their own wombs should indeed be governmental inaction, since any efforts taken by the government will fall under the category of state intervention in private affairs. One country that circulates a similar rhetoric is the U.S., with the State Department outlining that “the U.S. does not endorse population “stabilization” or “control.” The “ideal” family size should be determined by the desires of couples, not governments. The U.S. strongly opposes coercive population programs.”³ Indeed, when states impose policies over women to either control or encourage their reproduction in order to serve the perceived interests of the state, women’s wombs are securitized and their agency matters less.

However, women’s agency and bodily autonomy are not asserted in the face of governmental inaction, and the case of the U.S. is not applicable to most other states. Being the most popular destination for immigration in the world, the U.S. attracts immigrants in numbers far greater than needed to fill different fields of its economy while its fertility rate has dropped to a historic low⁴ The gap between its decline in fertility rate and the replacement level of 2.1% can easily be made up by immigration, allowing the state to claim a non-intervention policy in terms of population growth. When it comes to, for example, Russia, South Korea, and China that do not attract immigration as much as the US, the population decline thus becomes a pressing issue that is threatening the economic development of the country.

The non-action strategy also clearly did not turn out well in states that are experiencing population overgrowth, as demonstrated earlier with the example of Niger. In states like Niger, governmental inaction toward population overgrowth not only exacerbated the issue of poverty but also further reinforced the gendered norms that consider women as pure baby-makers. Refraining from intervention in these scenarios thus should not be considered a preservation of individual free choice, but a perpetuation of social problems and a violation of women’s free choice.

Upon establishing the necessity of state intervention in the issue of population control, it is also useful to consider the potential oppositions that this proposal may face at various levels.

1. The government may be reluctant to implement such policies. Indeed, comparing the four case studies assessed earlier, the harsh punishment strategy implemented by China was the only one that achieved absolute success in terms of controlling population growth effectively, if we ignore the concerns of tremendous human rights violations and deprivation of individual freedom (that countries across the world have been, in fact, constantly violating). So why would governments go for an effort that will be costly in terms of both time and resources when a more simplistic choice of punishment has been proven useful, not to mention that the use of punishment is not just cheaper, but can even be used to collect fines?
2. This policy may potentially face opposition from countries like Russia, where speaking of the other choice for women is constructed as a war started by the West and aimed to undermine its population security.⁵
3. This policy is also likely to face opposition from men, and may include women who have already internalized the norms and firmly believe that they should follow the gendered expectations that society has imposed upon them. As for men, the reason for their opposition is relatively straightforward: changing the traditionally gender-based division of labor in the workplace and families will inevitably lead to the loss of their current privileges. They will no longer be able to receive higher wages than their female counterparts at work; they will have to be responsible for childcare; they will no longer enjoy cheap labor at home. As for opposition from women, this is particularly the case in less developed countries where women’s access to education remains low, and the major source of information they receive that shapes their understanding of their own bodies comes from their parents or partners who themselves are supporters of the norm.

At the Individual Level

Female leaders need to avoid being the initiator or the major actor in policy initiatives that oppress women’s reproductive freedom. It is undeniable that female leaders should not be held more accountable regarding the issue of gender equality, given that their paths to assuming leadership positions in a fundamentally gendered society are already hard, and that the issue of gender equality should be the burden of all human beings. However, it is essential for female leaders to at least avoid being the action initiator when it comes to policies that are oppressive and potentially discriminatory against women.

One example is the bill that bans propaganda calling for a childless lifestyle in Russia, with Elvira Aitkulova, a female legislator, being the author of the bill. When the image of her serves as the spokesperson for the bill and is circulated not only in Russia but also around the world, the chilling effect that it has would presumably be even greater than if it was a male legislator who did so. Indeed, psychology theories have shown that people are more likely to be influenced by those they consider to be within their own social groups.⁶ By at least avoiding pushing for policies that would further perpetuate gendered norms and oppress women’s reproductive freedom, women leaders indirectly create a non-discouraging environment for grassroots organizations and individuals.

At the Domestic level

1. Gender equality in terms of access to education, work opportunities, and other essential social resources needs to be first achieved, and any effort made by the government to induce or indirectly coerce women to engage in reproduction before addressing the fundamental background injustice that imposes a high opportunity cost on women for becoming pregnant and performing childcare should not be endorsed. To do so, the government should take the primary responsibility for achieving this goal.

   • For access to education, a compulsory education policy needs to be implemented. The government needs to increase the cost of not sending girls to school to be higher than the potential gains for parents who keep girls at home as cheap labor and future "baby-makers." This punitive policy needs to be combined with an agenda to lower the costs of accessing education in general, so parents will also not be discouraged from sending their girls to school due to the high costs.

   • For equal workplace treatment, the government should initiate punitive policies against workplace discrimination along with establishing a supervisory department that will monitor companies’ progress in achieving workplace gender equality routinely. This supervisory department will ensure that, first, female workers receive equal pay as their male counterparts. Second, female employees should be able to enjoy parental leave. Parental leave should be paid and should equal at least a significant portion of their original wage. Third, male employees should also be given similar paid parental leave to encourage the equal division of childcare labor between parents. The government should allocate funds or set up policy incentives for companies to adhere to these three requirements. The supervisory department will ensure that companies that fail to comply will face monetary or legal punishment.

2. Both the government and advocacy groups should work on improving men’s knowledge of reproduction, particularly women’s potential opportunity costs associated with reproduction. When speaking of providing education on reproduction and family planning, the target population often tends to be women. However, this traditional understanding needs to be changed. Governments and advocacy groups should design reproductive education programs that target men as the potential audience group.

   • Better reproductive knowledge among men will help address both the challenge of population overgrowth and population decline, as proper knowledge by the male partner is essential for family planning in terms of both controlling and boosting population growth.⁹ On the one hand, it is important to realize that in countries facing population overgrowth, women often do not have factual ownership over their own wombs: even if women have access to reproductive health education and understand the harm of over-birth, they may not be able to make the call. Thus, this proposal aims to change the minds of men with pro-natal ideologies and hopes to make them realize that having as many children as possible not only does not mean prosperity but will even exacerbate poverty.

   • On the other hand, for countries facing declining population growth, men’s better understanding of the potential opportunity costs that their partners will experience is an essential step toward incentivizing women to be willing to give birth. This part of understanding, however, often remains limited. Surveys have found that, for example, less than 51.7% of South Korean men understand that bearing a child may put a woman in a disadvantageous situation;⁷ less than a half of Ethiopian men understand the reproductive rights of their partners.⁸

3. The gendered division of labor for childcare needs to be changed. Governments, civil society, and advocacy groups’ collective efforts are needed, as the successful achievement of this goal requires both top-down efforts like parental leave and bottom-up efforts that will gradually mitigate the effects of gendered norms regarding childcare. In terms of changing the norm, the potential of media should be recognized. While the media often comes with the problems of mis- and disinformation, its great potential for setting the agenda of public discussion should not be ignored, as it can potentially shift the Overton window regarding the understanding of the division of childcare labor between men and women. Combined with 1.2, these two aspects particularly respond to the third category of the potential opposition that this proposal may face.

4. At the governmental level, states’ current understanding of overpopulation and population decline that holds women accountable for both needs to be reconstructed. The fact that the causes of both issues are grounded in broader gender problems within society should be acknowledged.

At the International Level

1. The implementation of a new international law framework that emphasizes women’s reproductive choice is necessary. Given the fact that states tend to violate international law occasionally and that almost all international law lacks a credible enforcement mechanism, this aspect of the proposal is actually less about enforcement, but more about setting up a new norm at the international level and offering a foundation for naming and shaming countries that violate the norm in the future. This creates a concern for international reputation among states, and thus may function as a small factor that states will need to take into account when taking actions.
2. International non-governmental organizations and individual activists should also push for the construction of new international norms that recognize women’s reproductive choice as an issue of human rights universalism. This effort particularly responds to the second category of the potential opposition that this proposed policy agenda may face.
3. International NGOs and the UN should consider “sustainability” as an essential aspect of policies aiming to address the demographic challenges that states are facing. The emphasis on “sustainability” should encourage states to shift from pursuing either simple punishment or incentivization efforts to control or boost population growth to seeking solutions for the root causes of the demographic challenges.