Women, Politics, and Global Management

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) sponsored three decennial world population conferences over the period 1974-94. The first such conference was held in 1974 in Bucharest, Romania, at which the North and the South became polarized over the importance of demographics relative to other development concerns. Northern countries proposed vigorous family planning programs to control rapid population growth, while many Southern governments, led by China and India, argued instead that higher priority should be given to socioeconomic development and the more equitable distribution of resources between the North and South. After a decade of extremely rapid population growth, however, most Southern countries had adopted antinatalist policies by the second world population conference held in 1984 in Mexico City. While Southern countries had adopted the 1974 Northern view of world population growth, widespread political and religious conservatism in the US at the time of the second conference had the US delegation opposing abortion and being neutral on demographic factors. The US argued that private markets would solve many population problems and the US government even withdrew financial support to several international organizations, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the UN Population Fund. The third decennial UN-sponsored world population conference, the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, Egypt, however, succeeded in shifting concern about world demographics into a gender-sensitive, people-centered approach of sustainable human development and bringing sensitive and ideologically charged population issues into the public domain. It was also a landmark in the management of complex global problems such as population. The international consensus achieved in Cairo and summarized in a World Program of Action was truly a monumental achievement. The authors note the shift in rhetoric to concerns about women's status and reproductive health, the involvement of nongovernmental organizations, and the unfinished agenda of the World Program of Action.