What now for the global women's movement?
Guaranteeing reproductive freedom to every woman on the planet – the ability to choose if/when to become a mother – is a new litmus test for the power of the global women’s movement. No woman is truly free if she cannot control her own fertility and societies that can’t protect this right are not free societies. Access to contraception has always been a foundational goal of women’s movements everywhere. But it has never been an agenda where the good sense of governments has been enough. Most national parliaments have consistently failed to prioritize fertility control even at the expense of their own economic and social development. That may be changing in some parts of the world, but it is not changing fast enough and progress has too often proven fragile.
As a result, in the world today, less than half of all women (48%) use modern contraception and a massive 121 million – nearly half of all pregnancies – are unplanned each year. Forty-two out of every 1,000 teenage girls give birth each year and 19,000 will die as a result. Teen deaths in childbirth are the second leading cause of death for girls aged 15 to 19. Every day 786 women are dying in childbirth – 287,000 each year. Lack of reproductive freedom is one of the reasons just 47% of women are able to work for pay – lower than in the 1990s – a fact that holds back not only economic growth, but also health, education, and even peace and security gains. Against this dismal backdrop, authorities in the USA, China, Russia, and many more countries are further restricting access to contraception and/or abortion. In some of these countries there are even new calls for women to have more babies in a desperate effort to boost economic growth.
What should the global women’s movement do in a climate of slow gains and rising political threats against reproductive freedom? Stand on the sidelines while hundreds of millions of women can’t get modern contraception or abortions and remain at higher risk of poverty and even death? Advocate aggressively for political changes while sharing the horror stories of women denied abortions to wake voters up? Call on the United Nations to step in as country after country fall further off track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because so many of their citizens can’t safeguard their own reproductive health? After all, how can a government reduce deaths in pregnancy and childbirth (SDG 3.1) when deaths from unsafe abortion have just doubled?
The global women’s movement is powerful enough to do more. The marches that brought five million women, men, and children to streets on every continent in 2017 have inspired a new confidence and opened up new possibilities for global connection and influence. Were these powerful demonstrations the stirrings of a new global political movement with the potential to offer a very broad platform for progress, prosperity, and peace – A movement that is not aligned with the old right/left political divide or with any particular government in any country? The critical question is how to nurture this movement and harness it to neutralize the latest attacks on reproductive freedom and protect women in the most adversely affected countries from their harsh effects.
Here are three ideas for how the global women’s movement can support a new wave of reproductive freedoms:
1. First, the vast network of groups that now make up the global women’s movement must find ever more compelling ways of cooperating on a massive scale to increase access to contraception and safe abortion. The movement needs to offer the numerous regional and global reproductive health coalitions a common platform for action. At the moment, the major reproductive health initiatives, including FP2030, Ougadougou Partnership, the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition, She Decides, the Global Financing Facility, and many more largely operate in siloes. There is so much fragmentation that opportunities to influence governments and the private sector are lost. What if the women’s movement regularly brought these initiatives together with governments in a global conference as large and influential as the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, otherwise known as COP. This would mean that every year, political leaders from all governments would meet to advance the achievement of universal access to contraception and reap its vast economic and social benefits. While all countries and the planet will benefit, it is the low- and middle-income countries where women’s reproductive freedom is limited that stand to gain the most, especially in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middles East.
2. Second, the global women’s movement should champion new technologies and non-traditional allies that can bypass government bottlenecks and get information, products, and services directly to the women most at risk. The hundreds of millions of women in the world who want to use modern contraception but who can’t get it represent one of the largest, under-served markets in the world. Pharmaceutical companies are producing ever better contraceptive products – longer lasting and with fewer side-effects – while for-profit and not-for-profit startups like are finding ways to deliver contraception and safe abortion right to a woman’s doorstep. While many of these initiatives are based in high-income countries (e.g., nurx, wisp, PlushCare, twentyeight, Hers, Lemonaid Health), others are serving women in low- and middle-income countries (e.g., PillSquad, Zoie Health, Muso Health), while others aim to serve women everywhere (e.g., Women on Web). The vast private sector is still a relatively untapped source in the fight for fertility control. Perhaps the new World Economic Forum’s Global Alliance for Women’s Health could bring all these groups together for greater impact on the SDG of ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services and their integration into national strategies and programs by 2030 (SDG 3.7).
3. Third, the global women’s movement should mobilize more resources – financial, time, and talent – to getting people who support universal access to contraception and safe abortion into at least half of all decision-making roles in the institutions that influence women’s reproductive freedom – governments at all levels, companies, universities, religions, etc. This means supporting candidates to run/apply for the positions of greatest influence on women’s health and also ensuring that there is a pipeline of stellar people to run/apply. The movement needs to play a major role in the building a global network of organizations supporting women to run for political, public, and corporate office in every country and region of the world, like Emily’s List, She Should Run, Ignite and more. And another network of organizations supporting women when they get there, like Women Political Leaders, Global Institute for Women Leaders, Council of Women World Leaders, Global Women Leaders Voices, and more. The Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women in Politics map has remained stuck at around 25% of women Parliamentarians. Fifty percent women leaders across governments, business, and civil society is THE key to securing the global transformation in reproductive freedom that the women’s movement has always sought.
As for restricting access to safe abortion and contraception, we know how that story ends. Have we forgotten Romania? When women are forced to become mothers, when abortion is outlawed and contraception impossible to get, countries can say goodbye to a prosperous and stable future. Nine out of every ten women who die from unsafe abortion live in Africa or Asia. Does the world really need to erect yet another barrier to hold these billions of women back?
Updated January 2024