Reversed Realities

"When this book was published 15 years ago, development programmes were mostly generated with an inbuilt male, urban, educated elite bias. Kabeer exposes this very effectively. It’s been questioned. It’s changed in the sense that there are many people challenging the ideas put forth, but, by and large, development programmes are very much donor-driven. In the context of family planning, for example, many decisions are made without the consent of the people they are supposed to support. And, whilst it’s very good that there are Millennium Development Goals that focus on gender equality, whether by reducing maternal mortality rates or improving women’s access to livelihoods, my criticism is that such goals are target-orientated rather than process-orientated. To me, what is more important is to ask who is responsible for change and who is in control? And what will happen once the target date passes? Kabeer also discusses population control and argues that women must play a greater role in policy-making. ‘Population control’ first became a buzz word in the 1970s. There was a huge thrust during that time to promote it – there were advertisements about where to buy contraceptives and healthcare workers were set targets to provide family planning services to a certain number of couples. However, sometimes coercive methods were used as a result of those targets – many women were forced to use injectible contraceptives or other methods that had not been tried and tested. This happened not only in South Asia but in many other countries, including Scotland. The Bangladesh government was very dependent on external aid for population control in rural areas. However, when Reagan’s conservative administration was elected in the United States in 1981, US government said it would stop funding population-control programmes in Bangladesh unless abortion was made totally illegal. Abortions that are carried out within the first eight weeks of pregnancy have always been available under the Bangladesh government’s family planning programme, though the service is known as ‘menstrual regulation’. Because abortion wasn’t made illegal, the funding of services in Bangladesh was greatly reduced, and many women had abortions carried out by untrained women in the village. Needless to say, many deaths from septicaemia and other preventable illnesses occurred. The availability of family planning services remains inadequate, particularly in rural areas. But, with new health population policies being discussed, it’s likely that awareness-raising programmes will be strengthened once more. In my view, awareness is as important as the contraceptives themselves."