"Empowering women is the key to control population growth." Discuss.

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Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Empowering women through education, paid work and reproductive choice is the most effective route to lower fertility, though men's participation and quality health services are also needed. NFHS-5 shows a TFR of about 1.8 for women with 12 or more years of schooling against about 2.8 for those with none.

**Introduction**

India's total fertility rate fell to 2.0 in NFHS-5 (2019-21), below replacement, with fertility lowest where women are most educated. Since the Cairo conference of 1994, empowerment has replaced targets as the main route to a stable population.

**How Empowerment Lowers Fertility**

SKETCH: flow | Empowerment to Lower Fertility
- Girls' schooling
- Later marriage
- Paid work and voice
- Contraceptive choice
- Fewer, healthier births

1. **Education**: Women with 12 or more years of schooling have a TFR of about 1.8 against about 2.8 for women with none (NFHS-5), as schooling delays marriage.
2. **Agency**: Amartya Sen showed that female literacy and paid work cut fertility more than coercion; Kerala's TFR is 1.8 while Bihar's is near 3.0 (NFHS-5).
3. **Child survival**: Empowered mothers seek antenatal care and immunisation, and when fewer children die, families stop having extra births as insurance.
4. **Reproductive rights**: Contraceptive knowledge is near universal, yet one in three married women uses no method (NFHS-5), a gap that bargaining power can close.

**Limits of the Empowerment Route**

1. **Men's responsibility**: Female sterilisation dominates while male sterilisation is negligible, so women carry the burden unless men share it.
2. **Son preference**: Educated families have fewer children but may still ensure a son through sex selection, so smaller families do not mean gender justice.
3. **Services and coercion**: The Bilaspur sterilisation deaths of 2014 show that quality health services matter as much as choice.

**Conclusion**

Empowering women is the key but not the whole lock: men's participation, good health services and freedom from coercion complete it. A population stabilised through women's choices also advances SDG 5 on gender equality.

"Empowering women is the key to control population growth." Discuss.

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