China’s recently-released 2020 census points to an overall decline in the country’s fertility rate. Given that forecasts project that China’s current fertility rate of 1.3 is set to drop even lower in the years to come, the government moved quickly to announce that married couples will now be able to have up to three children. Even prior to the announcement, experts were calling on Beijing to offer incentives for couples to have more children through subsidies, tax cuts, and benefits to companies who “hire women of childbearing age.”
These events mirror what happened in Russia at the start of the year, when President Vladimir Putin outlined a plan to increase the birth rate from 1.5 to 1.7 within four years. To achieve this vision, he announced a host of maternity and welfare benefits, in addition to existing tax breaks that were put in place the previous year. Countries like Italy, Sweden, South Korea, Singapore, and France have also implemented similar policies. This comes at a time when countries across the world, especially the more developed ones, are reporting record low fertility rates that are well below the replacement rate.
However, as policymakers and experts scramble to avoid irreversible economic damage from falling fertility rates, few have stopped to consider that it is not couples who bear children, but women, and perhaps those women just don’t want to have kids. Keeping this in mind, the reactions to China’s 2020 census have reinforced the age-old paternalistic notion—which is masked as economics—that women must produce babies to keep the economy afloat.
Yet, this same responsibility is not placed at the feet of men. A global study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2013 found that 95% of homicides are perpetrated by males. Men also make up an overwhelming majority of members in governments, security forces (police and military), and militia and terrorist groups, and therefore disproportionately account for acts of violence committed by non-civilians as well. All of this violence—both interpersonal and through warfare—has wrought decades of untold economic damage. Yet, experts, policymakers, and leaders never specifically call on men to lay down their arms to protect the economy and future generations.
So why are women burdened with this responsibility then?
In an article for Foreign Policy, Lyman Stone, Laurie DeRose and W. Bradford Wilcox posit that policymakers think that the relationship between feminism and fertility can be represented through a J-curve. In other words, as countries begin to “embrace” gender equality, fertility rates will initially fall, but will pick up once again following the “full incorporation of egalitarian policies and norms.” Essentially, as women increase their labour force participation rates and become more financially independent, they can “more easily combine work and family.” Consequently, women will be willing to have children rather than bearing children due to societal expectations and traditional gender norms.
Yet, in direct opposition to this theory, fertility rates in countries that are generally regarded as more egalitarian are typically those with lower and dropping fertility rates. For example, since 2006, South Korea has spent at least $130 billion on changing this trend, through “tax incentives, expanded child care, housing benefits, special holidays for baby-making for some government workers, support for in vitro fertilization, generous parental leave from work, [and] subsidised play dates.” However, none of these measures have yielded the desired outcome, with the fertility rate still well below the replacement rate. Even Nordic countries like Norway, Finland, and Iceland, which have some of the most generous parental leave and childcare policies and are ranked as the most equal societies, are reporting a declining fertility rate despite their government’s best efforts.
This suggests that the J-curve theory may be invalid, and that women with greater financial independence who are freed of the shackles of societal expectations and gender norms become less inclined to have children. Simultaneously, it also showcases that policymakers’ outward commitment to feminism is grounded in deeply patriarchal and paternalistic concepts, wherein the end goal is still to ensure that women’s role in society is to produce children.
Against this backdrop, one wonders whether China’s efforts will meet the same fate. In fact, Peter McDonald, a professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health, says, “Even in areas where the one-child policy was not applied, the birthrate was low.” Therefore, it is uncertain what the new three-child policy will change. To this end, Zhan Lijia, a Chinese journalist opines, “Better education, higher income and more career options grant these women the freedom to choose a lifestyle they desire. They are assertive enough to resist the pressure from their parents to produce children.”
Admittedly, there isn’t always an inverse correlation between fertility rates and women’s empowerment. Niger, for instance, has the world’s highest fertility rate, with 7.6 children per woman, ranks last on the United Nations’ development rankings of 189 countries, and ranks 157th on the gender inequality index. Yet, Japan, which ranks 19th on the Human Development Index and has a relatively low fertility rate of 1.42, ranks 121st out of 153 countries studied in the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Index, the lowest rank for a ‘developed’ nation.
That being said, while there might not always be a direct link between fertility rates and women’s empowerment, there is nonetheless a clear trend of falling fertility rates in countries that are closer to achieving gender equality. As policymakers continue and fail to entice women to bear more children, it is becoming increasingly clear that their version of feminism is in fact an aggressive and highly conservative form of natalism. In essence, women’s bodies are seen as tools for economic growth, wherein gender equality is being used as a pretext to achieve that goal. As we look to the future and approach what seems to be a more egalitarian society, we must stop to consider the thought that we are simply recycling age-old forms of gendered discrimination to fit a new era, all supposedly in the name of the economy.
Governments Are Using Feminism as a Pretext to Increase Fertility Rates. It Isn’t Working.
As countries implement policies that seemingly drive us closer towards gender equality, it is becoming clear that some of these policies are guided by the goal of enticing women to bear more children.
June 6, 2021
IMAGE SOURCE: REUTERSEven Nordic countries like Norway, Finland, and Iceland, which have some of the most generous parental leave and childcare policies and are ranked as the most equal societies, are reporting a declining fertility rate despite their government’s best effort