A Cross-Cultural Race/Class/Gender Critique of Contemporary Population Policy: The Impact of Globalization

A Cross-Cultural Race/Class/Gender Critique of Contemporary Population Policy: The Impact of Globalization Author(s): M.
Bahati Kuumba Reviewed work(s): Source: Sociological Forum, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 447-463 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/684874 . Accessed: 10/02/2013 01:26
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Sociological Forum, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1999
A Cross-Cultural Race/Class/Gender Critique of Contemporary Population Policy: The Impact of Globalization1

M. Bahati Kuumba2
The argument that rapid population growth is the causal determinant of poverty and underdevelopment is seeing a resurgence. Contemporary population policy, as directed toward women of African descent on the African continent as well as African diaspora, continues this Malthusian Legacy (Roberts, 1997; Kuumba, 1993). This manuscript offers a race/class/gender critique of population policy using women of African descent cross-culturally as illustration. The ways in which global population policies simultaneously facilitate racial inequality, class exploitation, and gender subordination are of particular interest. It further explores the relationship between repressive reproductive polity, or "reproductive imperialism," and the current trends toward increasing international economic polarization. An approach to the understanding of population policy that highlights the reproductive and productive capacities of African women offers a particular vantage point from which to examine this relationship between population control and global capitalist interests.
KEY WORDS: population control; contemporary population policy; coercive birth control; malthusianism; African women.
THE PROBLEM:
POPULATION
OR POPULATION
POLICY?
At the close of the 20th century, population policy on an international level continues to be grounded in the assumption that population growth
'An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting, Los Angeles, California, August 1994. 2Sociology Department, 1300 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, New York 14222. 447
0884-8971/99/0900-0447$16.00/0 ? 1999 Plenum Publishing Corporation
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Kuumba
is the causal determinant of poverty and underdevelopment (Eberstadt, 1994; Kuumba, 1993, 1996; Mass, 1976). On the basis of this Malthusian logic, global efforts to curb population growth and lower fertility levels are disproportionately steered toward impoverished and ethnically subjugated women of both the Southern and the Northern hemispheres of the world (Alexander, 1990; Bandarage, 1997; Bondestram, 1980; Kuumba, 1996, 1993). Annually, billions of dollars are funneled into policies and programs geared toward selectively reducing population growth in the world that are administered through an interlocking network of both public and private agencies, the "population establishment." International activists in the human rights, social justice, and feminist movements have asserted that population dynamics are not causal, but symptomatic, of global socioeconomic disparities and inequities. Critics of current population policy contend that population trends and responses to them cannot be abstracted from the larger socioeconomic context (Bondestram, 1980; Hartmann, 1995, 1992; Michealson, 1981). More specifically, many charge that the contemporary population philosophy and approach to population growth is linked to the global system of racialized and patriarchal capitalist relations (Bandarage, 1994,1997; Hartmann, 1992; Kuumba, 1996; Mass, 1976; Mies, 1986). The myopic focus on reducing population growth, to the neglect of other related health and well-being issues, is viewed as increasingly tied to the access to the world's cheap labor pools and accumulation of profit in the era of globalization. Placing population control strategies within this broader social, economic, and political context assists in identifying the real interests that such policies serve. This article offers a race/class/gender critique of population policy using women of African descent, in two locations, as cross-cultural illustration. The racialized, gendered, and class nature of population policy is clearly evident in the experience of women of African descent in South Africa and the United States (Brown, 1987; Davis, 1990; Klugman, 1990; Kuumba, 1993). The ways in which global population policies simultaneously facilitate racial inequality, class exploitation, and gender subordination are of particular interest. The paper further explores the relationship between repressive reproductive polity, or "reproductive imperialism," and the current trends toward increasing international economic polarization. An approach to the understanding of population policy that highlights the reproductive and productive capacities of African women offers a particular vantage point from which to examine this relationship between population control and global capitalist, interests. There is ample evidence to support the claim that, in addition to serving the dominant economic interests, contemporary population policy perpetuates the underdevelopment and exploitation of "third world" women and communities.
Cross-Cultural Critique
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THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF POPULATION CONTROL The form of population control with which this research is primarily concerned is the "large-scale social policy of limiting births throughout a whole society or in certain groups for the purpose of changing economic, political and/or ecological conditions" (cited in Punnett, 1990:105). It is markedly different from and not to be confused with the concepts of family planning, access to birth control, or reproductive rights. These latter concepts presuppose gender equality and the ability to make informed decisions in the midst of multiple options. The population control approach to fertility is, in many ways, rooted in inequality, patriarchy, and exploitative colonial relationships (Kuumba, 1992). The dominant population policy is reminiscent of Thomas Malthus' asserted contradiction between the growth of the population and the availability of the world's resources. In the Malthusian scheme, the geometric growth of population is countered by, and outstrips, the arithmetic increase in food supply (Malthus, 1926, 1970; Meek, 1971). Balance is achieved through preventive "checks" (i.e., avoiding childbirth and family rearing) and positive "checks" (i.e., high mortality among certain groups) on population growth. Malthus' theorizing on population coincided with an increase in the impoverishment of the European peasantry as a result of the "enclosure movement" and land displacement (Meek, 1971). In contradistinction to the Malthusian claim, the political economy analysis of population processes argues against a universal law of population, but contends that population processes are relative and contingent on socioeconomic forces (Bondestram, 1980; Michealson, 1981). This analysis identifies the most salient population contradiction as existing between the people, the market-driven "means of employment," and the distribution of resources (Bondestram, 1980; Hartmann, 1990; Kasun, 1988; Meek, 1971). The limited availability of resources to particular groups is attributed more to the historically developed mechanisms of production and accumulation in the context of a world's racist, capitalist economy than to "overpopulation." Overpopulation is seen as both a problematic and relative concept that could just as easily be considered a symptom, as opposed to cause, of an increasingly skewed distribution of global power and wealth. From this perspective, the Malthusian position on population is essentially an apology for labor exploitation and inequality (Bandarage, 1997; Bondestram, 1980; Meek, 1971; Mass, 1976). A political economy of population policies highlights the interests served by the foreign domination of Third World wombs in pursuit of profit and power-in a word, "reproductive imperialism." The concept
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"reproductive imperialism" can be considered a type of "foreign domination" that manipulates population processes coercively in the interests of maintaining racial domination, capitalist labor interests, and male dominance (Kuumba, 1996). There is a long history of manipulating specific world populations in accordance with productive and reproductive needs, either through migration, breeding, or genocide (Ward, 1985a, 1985b; Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1982; Mass, 1976; Kuumba, 1996; Mies, 1986). During some periods, new labor pools are accessed and created during the process of capital accumulation (Ward, 1985b; Bondestram, 1980; Mies, 1986). At other times, the reduction of prospective oversupplies of laborers, i.e., redundant or superfluous labor pools, has been attempted. The targeting of "Underdeveloped World" women for coercive population control programs both in the "Third World" and "First World" is well documented (Mass, 1976; Davis, 1990; Alexander, 1990; Kuumba, 1992).
There is a marked difference in the family planning approaches towards the people of color in the world. Generally, the fertility of First World populations are encouraged while Third World populations are discouraged from reproducing. (Kuumba 1992:73)
Population control programs have been criticized for being vehicles of racist genocide and patriarchal control from the nationalist and feminist theoretical camps (Letsema, 1982; Mies, 1986; Roberts, 1997; West, 1994). African women's wombs are a key site of control in this tension between production and reproduction, and have become the territory to be dominated. While gendered and racialized critiques of contemporary population abound, relatively few link these policies to the larger global economy (Bandarage, 1997; Michaelson, 1981). Greater attention should be paid to the implications for these reproduction reduction strategies in light of contemporary movements of international capital, globalization of production, and economic polarization. Evidence points to a connection between the escalation of population control rhetoric and action and the "global political-economic crisis" (Bandarage, 1997). The alarming rate at which these trends are sweeping the globe, coupled with the retrenchment of social amelioration, increases the imperative of coming to grips with this linkage. THE COLONIZED WOMB: POPULATION AND "PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION" According to the demographic transition theory, population growth in precolonial societies remained stable despite high fertility rates because they were offset by high mortality resultant of disease, disasters, wars, and
451
nutritional deficiencies (Bondestram, 1980; Caldwell and Caldwell, 1986; Davis, 1970). The argument continues to claim that the infusion of modern medical technology into indigenous or Third World societies, as a "positive" consequence of colonialism, lowered death rates resulting in extremely rapid population growth. From this perspective, population pressures were deemed responsible for the postcolonial poverty and destabilization. The solution, from a modernization perspective, was the transference and superimposition of fertility planning expertise and technology from the "Over-" to the "Underdeveloped Worlds" (Davis, 1970; Caldwell and Caldwell, 1986). The application of demographic transition theory to non-Western societies has been problematic. Critics argue that generalizing from the perspective of European history and deemphasizing the destructive legacy of colonial exploitation obscures an accurate understanding of population dynamics in the world (Bandarage, 1994, 1997; Hartmann, 1992). Asoka Bandarage (1997) uses the !Kung of Southern Africa as an example of a precolonial society in which a balance existed between the population size and available resources. She argues further that this control of population size was not just "by chance" or due to external factors. Indigenous African societies culturally and consciously affected the population-resource ratio through their societal practices: "included abortion, infanticide, warfare, prolonged breastfeeding and childspacing" (Bandarage, 1997:117). The era of colonialism has been conceptualized as a period of "primitive capital accumulation" during which the emerging European capitalist class appropriated land, resources, and labor power from various regions of the world. Women's productive and reproductive labor provided the foundation for the global accumulation of capital (Mies, 1986; O'Brien, 1983). Maria Mies (1986) contends that
general production of life, or subsistence production mainly performed through the non-wage labour of women and other non-wage labourers as slaves, contract workers and peasants in the colonies-constitutes the perennial basis upon which capitalist productive labour can be built up and exploited. (Mies, 1986:48)
Thus, surplus development in society has been contingent on the exploitation of women's unpaid labor and their ability to produce the next generation of workers (Mies, 1986; Roberts, 1997). In South Africa, the labor associated with social reproductive labor of the labor force performed by African women in the homelands was used to subsidize and buttress colonial labor structure by facilitating the full exploitation of the migrant laborers (Brown, 1987; Edmunds, 1981; Klugman, 1990). The location of colonized women in the global economy also hinged around their use as cheap domestic and factory laborers, as well as their ability to reproduce cheap labor (Berger and Robertson, 1986).
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African women who were exported to the United States were also exploited in both their productive and reproductive capacities. As Mies relates with respect to slave systems generally, "Female slaves were preferred, and fetched a higher price, because they were productive in two ways: they were agricultural workers and they could produce more slaves" (Mies, 1986:65). After the abolition of the slave trade in the United States in 1807, a pronatalist approach to African reproduction dominated as many African women were used as "breeders" (Roberts, 1997). This practice corresponded to the need of the agricultural elite for a renewable labor force to exploit. Roberts (1997) clearly articulates the economic incentive of population manipulation on the part of slaveowners:
White masters therefore could increase their wealth by controlling their slaves' reproductive capacity. With owners expecting natural multiplication to generate as much as 5 to 6 percent of their profit, they had a strong incentive to maximize their slaves' fertility. . . because female slaves served as both producers and reproducers, their masters tried to maximize both capacities as much as possible. (Roberts, 1997:25)
In this period of early capitalist development, African women's reproductive and productive capacities were manipulated, cross-culturally, in response to the emerging world market. In accordance with the "law of relative surplus population" (Michaelson, 1981), though, exploited and congealed African labor is manifest in its own redundancy in the postcolonial/global production era. As we have seen, these later phases of economic growth in the global capitalist system have more than their share of cheap labor pools, thus heightening the contradiction between the population and means of employment (Bandarage, 1997; Michaelson, 1981; Mies, 1986). This is especially the case with respect to African descendants, particularly women, in both the United States and South Africa, who suffer disproportionately from the effects of economic polarization and pauperization. This transition is greatly responsible for the reassertion of Malthusian population policy. Targeting women of African descent in South Africa and the United States for population control measures is illustrative of the complex dynamic between production and reproduction in the globalization process (Bandarage, 1997; Davis, 1990; Roberts, 1997). Strategies on a global scale have been directed toward women of African descent, specifically, and Underdeveloped World women, more generally, on the basis of their historical and relative positioning in the global economy. Both pronatalist and antinatalist strategies have been employed at particular historical junctures in accordance with the political and economic circumstances (Chimere-Dan, 1993; West, 1994; Kuumba, 1996). These shifts are reflective of the internationalized systems of race/nation, class, and gender power dynamics.
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POPULATION POLICY AND THE MODERN GLOBAL ECONOMY Global restructuring consists of the process of realigning and consolidating global capital flows and production, and the development of the global assembly line in which research and management are controlled by developed countries while assembly line work is relegated to poorer periphery nations (Mies, 1986; Ward, 1990).
Corporate restructuring constitutes a set of political-economic responses to the crisis in capital accumulation, competition, and workers' struggles implemented by the transnational corporations in conjunction with the Group of seven (G7) countries. (Bandarage, 1997:15)
This process of restructuring has been characterized by increasing economic concentration, monopolies, and mergers; reversed gains of organized labor through layoffs, and "outsourcing" production to low-wage areas in the Southern Hemisphere. This realignment of global capitalist interests has been characterized simultaneously by the proletarianization of workers in some parts of the globe and a reduced need for low-wage labor in others (Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1980; Tiano, 1984; Ward, 1990). Women of African descent are particularly targeted for manipulated reproduction or "Reproductive Imperialism" on the basis of their unfavorable positioning in the global capitalist economy. The globalization process, and the increased access to cheap labor worldwide, has stimulated neo-Malthusian approaches to population control. This era is characterized simultaneously by increased economic polarization and deepening world poverty in, and at the same time the dismantling of, "safety nets" and social services through welfare reform and structural adjustment programs (Bandarage, 1997; Roberts, 1997; Hartmann, 1995). Changes in the population policies directed at African women in both South Africa and the United States have paralleled these economic shifts (Bandarage, 1997; Edmunds, 1981; Klugman, 1990). The intensification of population control efforts directed toward African women is linked to global economic trends toward the displacement of low-wage labor force sectors and growing class inequality and polarization. Structural change in the economies, technological advancements, and worldwide economic recession have resulted in large surplus labor pools of disproportionate African composition in both countries. According to a South-African scholar, "to the government an ample population became 'overpopulation' when the labour reserve became too large, rather than when poverty and underemployment first developed" (Brown, 1987:262). Likewise, coercive birth control tactics have intensified among African
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Kuumba
Americans in concert with the growing unemployment and rising poverty. For instance, mandatory birth control associated with criminal convictions and transfer payment receipt emerged in 1992, a year of record high unemployment and poverty among African Americans (Roberts, 1997; Thomas, 1998). Instead of altering the underlying sources of the problems, the official position has been to alter the African population itself. Welfare reform proposals such as benefit caps that threatened to impose a one-child-perfamily cap on Aid to Families with Dependent Children and temporary sterilization of impoverished women are examples of such an approach (Thomas, 1998). The coercive nature of the strategies used to "persuade" African women to use birth control is also common to the South African and United States. Very often, these policies are connected to employment or economic transfers. In South Africa,
women at some factories report that they must accept an injection of Depo Provera contraceptive in order to keep their jobs. . . . There is some talk, by the DirectorGeneral of Department of Health and Welfare among others, using drastic measures including compulsory sterilization, unless blacks accept family planning voluntarily. (Brown, 1987:268)
REPRODUCTIVE CONTROL IN THE UNITED STATES This forced birth control is not foreign to the experience of AfricanAmerican women. Involuntary sterilization has also been part of the history of African women in the United States (National Women's Health Network, 1992; Davis, 1990; Fried, 1990). It is now known that in 1970 just under half (43%) of all women sterilized through federal funding were African American (Fried, 1990). Over ten years later, women of African descent continued to be disproportionately sterilized according to U.S. estimates. Sterilization abuse was especially prevalent in Southern states where young African-American girls were sterilized under the threat of either themselves or their families losing welfare benefits (Davis, 1990; Roberts, 1997). The controversial imposition of Norplant upon young, poor women of African descent in the United States is a contemporary example of this infringement of the basic right to reproductive choice. In 1991, a California judge started the ball rolling by sentencing an African-American woman to having Norplant inserted as punishment for child abuse (Lewin, 1991). Moreover, in early 1993 the city of Baltimore, Maryland, began encouraging the use of Norplant and providing its implantation free of charge to AfricanAmerican teenage girls (Lewin, 1992; Jacobs, 1992). While, in many cases, the implants were provided free of charge, the removal was only performed at the expense of the women, thereby discouraging discontinuance. In
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essence there was a correlation between the linking of socioeconomic assistance to population growth and rampant reproduction, whether it was to African nations under the guise of foreign aid and development assistance or African-American women in exchange for government subsidies. Population control strategies also free up the African women to be used as a source of cheap and controllable labor, and at the same time, guarantee against the generation of the "reserve labor army." Global restructuring has resulted in the downsizing of low-wage jobs typically filled by people of African descent in South Africa and the United States (O'Brien, 1983; Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1982; Ward, 1990). Increasingly high unemployment rates among these sectors indicates a reduced need for their labor power. African female labor, unencumbered by the expenses of children, becomes preferable under these conditions. The creation of subminimum wage employment through workfare and other welfare-towork programs facilitates this exploitative process.
THE INTERESTS AND IMPACT OF TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS Class and economic relations are also implicated in contemporary population reduction efforts directed toward women of African descent. Transnational corporations, specifically, continue to have a vested interest in manipulating key segments of the international labor force (Hartmann, 1992; Nash and Fernandez-Kelly, 1983; Sklair, 1991; Tiano, 1984). They also have great influence on the workings of the population establishment. The state and transnational corporative interests as facilitated through the operation of population control policies and programs have both shortand long-term components. The short-term aspects include the immediate extraction of low-cost labor from young women; the creation of a consumer market and dumping ground for population control products as well as the inexpensive research, testing, and development of contraceptives and reproductive products (Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1982; Tiano, 1984). In the long term, profits to transnational corporations are assured by the containment of a superfluous or redundant labor force, the maintenance of political stability, and the perpetuation of dependent social relations (Mass, 1976; Mies, 1987; O'Brien, 1983). By encouraging population control, nation-states are able to escape the expenses associated with the health/ welfare benefits and services needed, and often demanded, by pregnant women and women with children (Hartmann, 1992; Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1982). This population myopia also serves to disregard a host of other
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more pressing issues that confront African and other colonized women. As Indian researcher Malini Karkal states, these include
access to health care, economic resources, and social security, to say nothing of freedom from sexual abuse and discrimination, remain unaddressed, though these conditions are directly related to women's lack of reproductive self-determination. (Karkal, 1993:305)
Profits through population control are also generated in the area of research and testing (Braithwaite, 1984). New and controversial contraceptives can be tested on women in the underdeveloped world more cheaply that in the western countries and without financial risk. African women in Puerto Rico, Haiti, the United States, Brazil, and South Africa have served as guinea pigs in the testing of contraceptive drugs and devices (Braithwaite, 1984; Mass, 1976; Mies, 1987). Thus, corporate interests fueled the institutionalization of neo-Malthusian logic against the Third World people, generally, and Africans, specifically. Enhanced population control policies have accompanied the increasing superfluity of African labor in both the United States and South Africa.
FEMINIST CRITIQUES ON POPULATION CONTROL Highlighting the gender implications, feminist scholars have charged that the population controlist approach is a form of patriarchalmanipulation of women (Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1982; Mies, 1980; Hartmann, 1992). The tactics used by various agencies and nation-states to lower the fertility rates of women are said to disregard the input and cultural context of their female "subjects" (West, 1994). Feminists critique population control policies as yet another form of the sexual power dynamics that subordinate and objectify women (Dixon-Mueller, 1993; Gordon, 1976; Mies, 1987; Hartmann, 1992). Mies notes,
It is the ideology of man's dominance over nature and woman, combined with the scientific method of analysis and synthesis that has led to the destruction of the woman as a human person and to her vivisection into a mass of reproductive matter. The expropriation of woman's reproductive competence and capacity goes, ironically, hand in hand with the extension of property categories into the female body. (Mies 1987:332-333)
Sexism combines with the racist nature of the population establishment's approach, as evidenced by the fact that "Women of Color" around the world have been have been particularly targeted for population control (Mass, 1976; Hartmann, 1992; Fried, 1990; Kuumba, 1992). They often experience compounded patriarchal control under the auspices of the indigenous culture, nation-state, and population establishment (Akhter, 1992;
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Alexander, 1990; Ward, 1990; Mies, 1987). The fertility programs to which women in Africa and of African descent are subjected are often formulated and implemented without either their input or participation. They are intricately linked to other forms of material and ideological domination that inform women's status. This status is most often characterized by restrictive legal rights, depressed economic conditions, and lack of access to needed resources (Mies, 1986; Vickers, 1991). These various patriarchies are not always in agreement. Klugman (1990) describes the "double-bind" that South African women experienced under the Nationalist government's regime:
government provision of contraception has as its main objective the limitation of the African population's growth rate. The government's attempt to control women's reproductive capacity is not, however, the only source of control over and oppression of women. This is so because contraceptive usage is largely frowned upon by African men because it is perceived as a threat both to their control over women and to their right to have children as the product of their sexual relationships. Thus, women find themselves trapped between two sources of oppression. (Klugman, 1990:262)
The intensification of population control strategies among African women in the United States and South African has coincided with the threat of social protest for greater racial equality among the African populations during this era. In the case of the United States, population programs emerged in response to the "rising militancy" of the 1960s (Perlo, 1993). Similarly, in South Africa during the 1970s, a time of "renewed black revolt," massive funding was poured into birth control programs (Brown, 1987). The number of programs increased 13-fold during the decade to follow. Researcher Bonnie Mass (1976) describes the general principal as such:
Population control programs in underdeveloped countries of the third world, whether administered bilaterally or multilaterally, are racing to outflank social turmoil, working class movements and revolutionary currents. (69)
THE DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICAN WOMEN'S WOMBS: THE MOVEMENT TOWARD POLICY ALTERNATIVES In both the South African and United States cases, Malthusian logic argues that irresponsible and rampant population growth among African people is responsible for their depressed socioeconomic conditions. According to Madi Gray (1980), family planning among the African populations is seen as "a cure for the high rate of illegitimacy, the misery in the urban and rural ghettos, the mounting crime and vagrancy rates" (Gray, 1980:148). African women are depicted as sexually promiscuous and igno-
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rant, thereby rendering them incapable of utilizing birth control methods that require high user compliance (National Black Women's Health Project, 1992). These assumptions combine to justify reproductive intervention and external control. A substantial amount of research in the area of population policy has pointed to the operation of selective reproductive policies (Roberts, 1997; Alexander, 1990; Brown, 1987; Mies, 1986). For women of African descent, population policy is the equivalent of control over both reproductive and productive capabilities. It is linked to historical processes of the racist eugenics movement, the subordination of women and devaluation of motherhood, and the capitalist drive for profit and cheap labor. As opposed to enhancing the reproductive freedom of women, very often population programs have been developed in the absence of input from the targeted groups and in ways that reinforce various systems of inequality (Roberts, 1997; Davis, 1990). There have been numerous efforts of resistance against, and trends toward the change of, coercive and narrow population policy (Alexander, 1990; Correa, 1994; Fuentes and Ehrenreich, 1982; Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights-WNGRR 1997,1998). As opposed to being passive victims, reproductive rights activists have pursued policy transformation on local, national, and global levels, utilizing a variety of methods and strategies. International women's and population conferences have been key sites for African and other Third World, women to wage struggle around these issues. Criticisms of international population policy were documented and made public at international conferences held in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. At the 1975 International Women's Year Conference in Mexico, coercive practices in contraceptive research and services were denounced as human rights abuses (Correa, 1994:57). Actions against population control took more organized proportions in 1984 with the emergence of the International Reproductive Health and Rights Movements, presently referred to as the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights. This coalition of individuals and organizations has lobbied and educated around a broadened conception of fertility and reproduction (Correa, 1994; Sen and Grown, 1987). The International Women's Health Movement, an umbrella of individual activists and organizations coordinated to pursue improvements in women's health and well-being worldwide, has called for population policy to be placed within a broader "quality of life" and healthcare context. The World Program of Action (WPOA) that was adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, Egypt, also reflected the work of reproductive rights activities on the part of women's organizations worldwide. This document embodied a paradigm
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shift that placed emphasis "not on controlling numbers but on providing broadly defined reproductive health services and on acknowledging women's reproductive rights and their need for empowerment" (Sen, 1995:1). Although the WPOA does not obligate countries in any way, it is considered an "enabling" document that provides ideological support for linking population issues to broader concerns like socioeconomic development, migration, technology, education, and international human rights (Correa, 1994; Sen, 1995). The WPOA additionally squarely places women's overall interests, as opposed to reduced fertility alone, in the center of the debate. Taking it a step further, in 1997, African women at the eight International Women and Health meeting in Rio de Janeiro pressed the organizers to look beyond the linkage between population policy and health care to the impact of globalisation of markets and structural adjustment policies (Rosenberg, 1998; WGNRR, 1997). Their proposed solution to reproductive imperialism specifically called for the unconditional cancellation of the debt of African countries; a stronger focus on primary health, reproductive, and sexual rights issues (e.g., clean water, nutritious food, adequate shelter, access to health care services and medicines); research and development of traditional medicines and alternative forms of healing; and an end to conflicts and wars on the African continent (WGNRR, 1997). The last demand is made under the assumption that "peace and stability are prerequisites for women's health and the exercise of reproductive and sexual rights" (WGNRR, 1977:5). There are increasing efforts being directed against the international financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that are holding underdeveloped countries in the grip of debt and dependency. The structural adjustment programs that countries adopt in the interest of debt servicing "give the [World] Bank even greater leverage to promote population control in countries starved for foreign exchange" (Hartmann, 1990:21). The Platform for Action that was drafted by the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, calls for these institutions to assess the "friendliness" of their investment policies toward women. "Women's Eyes on the World Bank," which emerged from the Beijing Conference, continues to monitor the activities of the World Bank and the IMF and hold them accountable for the effects of their economic policies on women. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS The efforts to counter the narrowness of dominant population policy, in conjunction with other social movements, has had an impact on women of African descent in South Africa and the United States. On February 1,
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1997, the democratically elected South African government led by the African National Congress enacted the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act (Haroz, 1997; Reproductive Rights Alliance, 1997). This legislation allowed for any woman to have an abortion on demand in the first trimester of pregnancy. "This heralded the beginning of a new era in the lives of women in South Africa-for the first time all women had the choice to access a safe, legal abortion" (Reproductive Rights Alliance, 1997:1). Prior to the political transition in South Africa, the right for women to have an abortion was denied under the Abortion and Sterilization Act of 1975 (Haroz, 1997). This limited access to legal abortions on the part of South African women encouraged fertility among European-descendent women, on the one hand, and was accompanied by population control directed toward indigenous African women as the government's attempts to undermine the racial demographic imbalance (Brown, 1987; Klugman, 1990; Letsema, 1982). For the bulk of African women, while this legislation could potentially lead to expanded reproductive options, access to abortion and general health care is still mediated by economic and cultural factors (Haroz, 1997). There are additional restrictions imposed by traditional patriarchalnorms that characterize many cultural practices and prescriptions (Sen, 1995). Reproductive liberation for African-American women continues to be directly linked to their economic well-being, as well. Today, as abortion rights in the United States are increasingly under attack by right-wing extremists and social services are rolled back, the range of reproductive choices for women of African descent is increasingly restrained despite their legal rights. Coercive elements still surround the reproductive "choices" for African-American women. For example, while the 1977 Hyde Amendment discontinued government-funded abortions, "sterilizations continue to be federally funded and free, to poor women, on demand" (Davis, 1990:24). Reproductive liberation and freedom of choice "must be situated within this broader arena if it is to be a truly transformative movements" (Alexander, 1990:50). Oppressive population control policies emerge from and are integral to global accumulation processes that have skewed global socioeconomic development. Ultimately, a more equitable distribution of political, social, and economic resources is a necessary condition for the achievement of reproductive liberation for African and other women in the underdeveloped world. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers and special issue editor for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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A Cross-Cultural Race/Class/Gender Critique of Contemporary Population Policy: The Impact of Globalization Author(s): M.

Sociological Forum, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1999

A Cross-Cultural Race/Class/Gender Critique of Contemporary Population Policy: The Impact of Globalization1

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