Half against the whole

In the context of such a massive number as seven billion, it becomes even more urgent to address a host of issues that are of concern to people today. While the stresses imposed on mineral and food resources guide state policies toward minimizing consumption, making distribution more efficient and distribution channels cleaner, the institutionalization of such directives involves, at its heart, women. It is important to address the needs and rights of those who constitute half the population of this planet.

The desired consequence of empowering women is their gaining in confidence that can help them escape those stereotypes born of outdated traditional customs, stereotypes that keep them from emerging into a meaningful public life.

While such grim realities are hardly reflected in statistical data, the disparity in access to healthcare services between men and women is startling. For instance, the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports (2010) by the United States government shows that in 2008, the state forecast that a minimum of 60.7 per cent of the people suffering from blood clots in the arteries could undergo successful fibrinolysis, a complex procedure to relieve the clots, by the year 2010. However, in 2010, while the number had been attained for males, women were expected to hit it somewhere in 2012.

Therefore, the transition from rhetoric to performance mandates the provision of round-the-clock and  easy access to healthcare for women. This empowers them to decide when or when not to have children and to determine the spacing between multiple births.

The reliance on such empowerment drives has been the greatest in developing and underdeveloped countries. Therefore, when the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) concluded that the world's poorest countries have higher fertility and population growth rates, the causes seem to be lack of freedom to decide when to procreate, jobs that confine women to performing tasks within households, and the lack of access to contraceptives - or  ignorance of their use.

In turn, an increase in the number of people points to fewer opportunities for poor families to rise out of poverty. It is in such areas where deprivation is prevalent that unreasonable and hindering cultural norms arise, norms that hold women back from holding paying jobs. American anthropologist Oscar Lewis once said, "The subculture of the poor develops mechanisms that tend to perpetuate it, especially because of what happens to the world view, aspirations, and character of the children who grow up in it."

Once she has emerged from poverty and its special circumstances, how does her employment affect the global population? To answer this, consider a study published in 2010 by the Department of Professional Employees (DPE) that shows that labour force participation has increased "most dramatically" among married women in the years from 1950 to 2009. The same study by the DPE shows that the number of working women (in the USA) increased from 18.4 million in 1950 to 66.2 million in 2009, with the corresponding drop in fertility in the same period being 3.6 births per woman to 2.0 births per woman.

Interpreting these facts together, the consequences of a woman working assume two forms: the first is that more the time she spends at work, less the time she will have for her family and even less her willingness to bear more children. The second is that there will be a corresponding shift from larger to nuclear families, such as those that can afford to live in cities where job opportunities are more abundant. Fertility rates, therefore, are brought down as  larger families become unaffordable.

It must be borne in mind that these reforms, and any other, become effective only if the woman is in control of her reproduction. If we are to hope that seven billion is the peak after which there is a decline that eases the stress on our almost-invaluable resources, we will have to invest in the health and social wellbeing of women.