A long time ago women had loads and
loads of kids. Having loads of kids made sense - back in the day when
smallpox and polio used to snatch young 'uns away to an early grave
and the life expectancy at birth was only 18 in London, the grim fact
is you had to have seven kids if you wanted two to survive into
adulthood. And obviously, without the cushy welfare state to sit you
in a care home and feed you boiled cabbage in your old age, having
kids was a necessary financial investment.
When you count on top of this the fact
that kids were likely to have far less expensive education than
today, the cost of raising sprogs was small in comparison to the
economic dividend they'd provide should they grow up with enough arms
and legs between them to help on the farm or in the family business.
Then things changed - medical advances
dramatically reduced child mortality meaning that a woman only had to
have two children for two to survive. Obviously, this would free up a
hell of a lot of extra time. Childbearing is no longer the sole
activity in a woman's life - she can marry later and have some time
after the kids have grown up to dick about doing what she wants (even
more than her husband, actually, as he's statistically more likely to
die first). In other words, women have more time for education, and
more time for work. Hooray!
Unfortunately, that's where the good
news ends. Despite women's entry into the workplace, and despite
women's increased expectations brought about by greater education,
the burden of domestic work still falls heavily on women. You know,
that free work women do that gets them covered in baby sick and
Dettol but that they love so much because it's so 'rewarding' (I
could link to about a gazillion Daily Fail articles here but I don't
want to contribute to their hit count).
Instead, why not take a look the shiny new index for gender equality created by EIGE, the European
Institution for Gender Equality. You'll see great strides in gender
equality when it comes to workforce participation and depressingly
little progress when it comes to sharing the burden of domestic
care-work with men.
What all this means is that, rather
than fertility rates falling and settling at a nice steady 2.4 births
per woman (the amount needed for replacement level fertility),
instead, some fertility rates have plummeted to way below
replacement, which signals massive problems for the future. Whatever
society may say, at the moment, it's clearly not possible to 'have it
all'.
In societies where fertility rates are
below replacement, not only will the population be very old with
fewer sprightly young things to generate income and support an ageing
population - populations in many countries will shrink unless
governments start actively attempting to attract migrant workers. Not a great vote winner for some reason...
So what are the alternative policies?
Well, governments could go hardline Republican on us and attempt to
block women's access to abortion,
contraceptive and sexual health services, and equal pay. Not going to win the female vote, that one. Alternatively,
we could see policies like this,
which improve gender equality, encourage couples to share the
domestic burden, and make it less likely for women to be
discriminated against in the workplace on account of their
reproductive capacity. In other words, make baby-making make sense.
Of course there's a strong argument
that governments have no place trying to determine the 'right' amount
of children for women to have. But inevitably, they're going to be
concerned with population shrinkage and economic growth which
necessarily forces them to
set their sights on women's uteruses. If we get a choice as to where
that attention focuses, let's make sure that governments view gender
equality as something essential to human survival, shall we? So Dave,
here's one from me - unless you want the guaranteed vote of these guys (below), make gender equality your top priority.
LK
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