Re: new paradigm in pop policy (fwd)

Mary, i totally agree with what you say. For example, following your
analysis, when Turkey became an ally of NATO during the 50s and
afterwards, it automatically joined the struggle to set off communism and
promote with the US a "non-Soviet model of development". I should add
however, that fear of communism started even much earlier, during the
20s and 30s, with the rise of fascism in Europe and proliferation of 
racist eugenic population discourses. Think about the rise of positivist
anthropology journals linking brain size differences to racial inferiority
and hereditary differences. Around those times, many regimes saw
population control as a means of reproducing  "superior races", or at
least reorganizing population along racial lines. This is, for example,
what was in the mind of Turkish nationalists when they were writing the
official history thesis about the origins of Turkish people under the
guidance of western governments. The thesis was a Turkish carricature of
German idealism combined with modernization theory.

One thing worth mentioning here: Not every women's organization in the
third world uniformly agrees with the population policies advocated by
United states (after the 1990s). Feminists are divided on many issues
because there are different feminisms. One thing is obvious that
transnational capital wants to maintain control over those societies
(freee market model) by taking the support of bourgeois feminists (largely
employed in state bureucracies), or sometimes promoting NGO type radical
feminist organizations. These people suddenly become advocates of
reproductive freedoms, and women as symbols of sustainable development! I
have been saying that socialist feminists, unlike others, are all aware of
these problems. They are critical of American strategy of divide and rule,
and America's pragmatic use of women's issues to its own benefits. 
Capitalists do not only want to disempower those societies; they ALSO want
to control their women by exporting sexism. The issue is to decide which
feminism we want, and to be exteremely conscious about struggling against
both capitalism and sexism. These two struggles are inseperable.. 

thanks,

Mine

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 00:22:18
-0400 From: Mary Shepherd <mshepher@jhsph.edu> To: "wsn@csf.colorado.edu"
<wsn@csf.colorado.edu> Subject: Re: new paradigm in pop policy (fwd) 

Mine,
The context of the family planning promotion policies of the 1950s-1970's
was the Cold War, the desire to promote a non-Soviet model of
development, fear that population increases due to declining mortality
would lead to poverty, political instability, breeding grounds for
communism (as others have pointed out in recent posts). A large infusion
of funds for pop control came in the early 1950's from the Ford
Foundation and JD Rockefeller 3rd who founded the Population Council.
The U.S. govt didn't begin funding fertility control programs until the
mid-1960s.  The funding environment changed in the 1970s-1980s with
cutbacks for pop programs, the rise of the New Right in the U.S., refocus
on promotion of  "free markets" as the route to development rather than
pop control.

The current policy paradigm for population activities came out of the 1994
Cairo Conf which was spearheaded by NGOs, women's groups and is
focused on the status of women and reproductive rights.  Why has this focus
been embraced so heartily by Ford, Rockefeller Fndtns, World Bank, etc
so that it is now THE population policy?  It fits well in general with the
shift in US foreign policy to "democracy promotion" in peripheral and semi-
peripheral areas as a strategy to maintain domination and thwart popular
democratic movements through "consensual" mechanisms.  Robinson
talks a little about women as one of several "sectors" (the others
being youth, and peasant organizations) that have been identified by
US specialists as having a potential for broad popular mobilization and
therefore need tailored interventions .  The "low-intensity democracy
promotion" is intended not to thwart the women's movement in the
targeted country, but to channel it in certain directions so that it will
not threaten transnational capital, indeed it may promote it...
Sorry, I can't be any more specific than that!
Mary


md7148@cnsvax.albany.edu wrote:

> Mary, I have not read William Robinson's _Promoting Polyarchy_ yet. Can
> you expand on this? One thing is clear that the US is not really concerned
> with promoting the reproductive health or freedom of women over there. My
> mother spent her high school education years taking _home economics_
> courses in American-Turkish school according to the cirriculum designed by
> westerners in the 50s. According to these cirriculums, women's place
> was kitchen and men's place was work. Women were taught how to become
> ideal/modern mothers as to make Turkey more acceptable to the west
> and American family style. Women were domesticated as they became
> westernized, but they were not liberated from patriarchal practices.
> Patriachy was Americanized. That was all. The same story is still
> continuing even in the West in different forms. Think about the gender
> segregation in men's and women's occupational attainments and wages in the
> US.
>
> Regarding population issues, non-state feminist organizations in the
> developing world, some of which are socialist, radical feminists (like the
> leftish one I was a member before coming to US) are sceptical of *both*
> the neo-liberal state policy of discouraging reproduction and the
> conservative (largely islamist in the Middle East) policy of restricting
> reproductive freedoms. Both are sexist as long as it is men who design
> policies, though feminists, in principle, beleive that women must have
> free access to birth control. So the issue is not choosing between the
> liberal state and conservatism, but being critical of both, or
> strategically supporting bourgeois democratic freedoms _when_ necessary
> (in the case of equal education, divorce rights, domestic violence etc..
> that have always been in the agenda of social democrats in Turkey).
>
> Implementation of population policies depend on which period we are
> talking about and who is charge of the capitalist state. For example in
> the 1930s, in Turkey, just as everywhere around world at the height of
> extereme nationalism, the state promoted a policy of over-reproduction as
> to make women reproduce healthy Turkish sons.  Family planning was part of
> the agenda of nation state building. State was the prime organizer of
> sexual relations and nuclear family. Women were targeted to "modernize"
> and purify the nation. Now, we have shifted towards neo-liberal economic
> policies, minimal state, and the ruling classes are once again targeting
> women to reproduce less in accordance with the requirements set by the US
> and world technocratic apparatuses. New policies are targeting certain
> segments of the population. They are both gender and class biased. The
> realities facing working class women and other lower classes are much
> worse because they are ones who are always blamed for _overpopulating the
> nation_ with their so called _traditional life styles_.
>
> Mine Doyran
> SUNY/Albany
>
> >The new paradigm for pop policy adopted by such organizations as the
> >World >Bank is focused on "gender equity, human rights, and reproductive
> health"  >following on the heals of the 1994 Cairo Intl Conf on Pop and
> >Development. >Does anyone have any interpretations of this new strategy?
> It fits >nicely >with the policy of "Promoting Polyarchy"  described by
> William Robinson.
>
> >Mary Shepherd