Subjugation of women increases population growth (Thom Hartmann)

[SavageDem]

Thom had a very interesting commentary on yesterday's program concerning the relationship of the subjugation of women and population growth. Evidently he had a speaker on earlier (with whom he debated) espousing the opinion that population growth is good for the world. I'll have to check out the download of the show to catch that.

Anyway...Thom asserted that when the equality of women is established in a society, it leads to the stabilization of population growth - a neutral growth rate. Theocratic governments and male-dominated societies lead to higher population growth. I thought this was a very intriguing postulate, and one that I had never considered. It made perfect sense to me, however; it felt right.

What do y'all think about that?

[Cleita]

1. That's been a known conclusion for the last thirty or forty

years that in societies where women receive some basic education and are in charge of their fertility, populations stabilize. Now maybe it's time to start taking it to the world and pressuring the patriarchal systems (religions) who stifle this freedom into changing their dogma. It can be done. I'm amazed how easily religious leaders can change their etched in stone principles, even in stubborn religions like Catholicism, when it suits them.

[SavageDem]

5. It *is* amazing how fast they can change their priniciples

I was just discussing this with a friend. Even the Catholic church - led by the "infallible" Pope - has changed its stance on abortions multiple times over the years. Maybe the Pope will have a "revelation" that it's OK for women to serve as pastors and use birth control...right, and maybe George Bush will announce at his press conference next week that he really did start the Iraq invasion under false pretenses, that he's sorry, and that troop withdrawals will commence immediately...

[Cleita]

13. Sarcasm noted, but when

they see the money spigot turned off, they change readily enough. It's up to the parishioners to ratchet up the ante. They actually did change their stance on birth control when it became obvious no one was listening. Although officially not sanctioned, you can get forgiveness for getting a vasectomy and hysterectomies are commonly given for "health" reasons. There are a number of contraceptive techniques that can be sanctioned for "health" reasons. My Catholic friends took birth control pills for years for "female hormonal adjustment" not birth control, wink, wink.

[Nikki Stone1]

2. It means that most women don't really want 12 or 13 kids

And when they wrest control of their own bodies away from male power structures, they don't have them.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

20. No woman could survive 12 or 13 major abdominal surgeries, probably.

Which is what a C-section is. I'm talking about the 10 or 15% of women who can't deliver vaginally, or who have health problems such as diabetes or high blood pressure, where having many children is life-threatening.


Ron Paul has been an OB-GYN for decades and says he has never seen a life threatening pregnancy. I do not believe him. I can't believe he has never had a patient with an ectopic pregnancy? That will kill a woman when the Fallopian tube bursts.

[Fridays Child]

3. I'm hoping he didn't just figure that out.

When women are subjugated, it's for the purpose of controlling access to sexual resources, no matter what religious or political ideology is offered as justification for that control.

[SavageDem]

6. No, Thom didn't just figure it out

*I* was the one who hadn't really considered the correlation before. Mea culpa.

[Fridays Child]

8. The Goddess forgives you.

:P

[SavageDem]

9. Wow! I guess she *is* a kind and loving Goddess! (NT)

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Every instance I can think of that involves subjugated women, they are forced to have many children.

Speaking as a somewhat 'liberated' woman, I cannot conceive -no pun intended- of having the dozen or so kids that seems to make the fundies - of EVERY ilk- so happy.
Anyone who has any consciousness of the world at large, and the problems of maintaining an ever growing population would eschew having more than one's own replacements.
Having huge families was useful when we were agrarian and needed help with the farming..but today it is only used as a way to gain political power thru numbers. - IMHO

[NewJeffCT]

18. how about China with their one-child policy?

just curious.

[BrklynLiberal]

21. If I remember correctly, the women there were in government and in the professions as equal to the

men.

With the establishment of the People's Republic of China, the status of women in China changed dramatically. The Chinese Communist Party and the people's government recognized that the liberation of women, who constituted half the population of China, was necessary for the country to realize complete emancipation.

The new government promulgated a series of laws, policies, and regulations that protected women. The Chinese Constitution of the early 1950s stated clearly that Chinese women enjoyed equal rights with men in political, economic, social, cultural, and family life. The state protected women's rights and interests, practiced equal pay for equal work, and provided equal opportunity for women's training and promotion. China's Marriage Law eliminated arranged marriages, stipulating that both women and men were free to choose their marriage partners, and widows were allowed to remarry. The Inheritance Law recognized the equal right of women to inherit family property. The Labor Insurance Regulations Law of 1951 guaranteed women 56 days of maternity leave with full pay. The Land Reform Law of the early 1950s provided rural women with an equal share of land under their own name, thereby protecting their economic independence.
<snip>
IV. Women's Role and Status in China Since the Reform

The role and status of women in China today is characterized by increased opportunities along with intense competition and major challenges

http://www.1990institute.org/publications/pubs/ISUPAP8.html

I am sure there are a lot more sources of info...

[NewJeffCT]

23. that part is true

there are a ton of professional women in China - engineers, scientists, doctors, etc.

[The2ndWheel]

7. We do need more people

We need more tax payers, more consumers, more workers, more everything. We can't sustain the unsustainable without more people.

At the same time, if we have fewer people, we can't even sustain what we have.

That's why we're in the position of not being able to stop, but not being able to keep going either. At least we decorated the corner we painted ourselves into. Has a nice bed and everything. Not that we could rest for any amount of time, since we can't stop.

[SavageDem]

10. I abstain

from your stain of unsustainability. And I think the jury of time will sustain me on that.

Call me a commie, but if each individual wasn't so worried about having so dang much, and instead was satisfied with everyone having enough, we'd be in a much better place (metaphorically speaking). And then we wouldn't all have to keep spinning the hamster wheel to obtain the mythical prize of "having it all." One needs merely look at the latest entertainment news to find out that wealth does not buy happiness. Maybe if we'd just outlaw commercials on television we'd all be happier. Then we wouldn't be so caught up in consumerism, me-too-ism, you-don't-have-enough-ism, and all the other -isms.

And we'd be happier organisms.

[The2ndWheel]

11. But then the definition of enough keeps increasing

How would we even know what the standard of enough is without some individuals having more than enough?

I'm not advocating this ever quickening race that is making everyone crazy. I'm just looking at the momentum of history for the last few thousand years.

Without more people, how do you pay for retirement? At some point, an aging population won't be able to. What can you do? Reduce benefits, but who gets to define what enough is? Mass legal immigration, but then what happens to the developing countries where you're taking the best and brightest from to sustain our system? They might stay at the developing stage, and just become breeding factories. Raise the retirement age, since we're living longer. Something will have to give, to keep getting more, or to just have enough. We don't have any prior example to go by either, since aging populations in Europe, Japan, and the US are completely modern problems. If China and India ever get to that point, where is the stuff going to come from? It's not like this is just an American problems, we have 6.5 billion people on this planet, with more coming before it even begins to level off. All those billions of people who aren't connected to it will be integrated into the global socio-economic system, to at least keep the system itself going, if not to increase the material well-being of those billions of people.

Obviously if women have more choice the population will go down, but our current reality requires growth. If you don't have more and more people, where would the innovation for progress come from? Will we stop progress? If you get to a certain number, you no longer need to use resources more efficiently, because there won't be any more people added. Efficiency isn't an end. If we just increase efficiency all the time, all we'll end up doing is ripping the planet apart, whether we have 5 million people, 6 billion, or 12 billion.

So there has to be an end point to it. What will be enough? Will there ever be a time when we can say, "You know, I think we've done it. That's as far as we can go"? Who is going to get to decide that? What if someone wants more? Can someone say "no more?"

"but if each individual wasn't so worried about having so dang much, and instead was satisfied with everyone having enough"

Then you'd have to figure out how to build the infrastructure to enforce that. Would you do it physically? Could you do it mentally? Virtually?

We've gotten to the point where we see the world and the people on it in universal terms. Mass society. What happens to diversity(both human and non-human) if we continue down that road? Does everyone have to live the same way, with the same rules, with the same everything, for everyone to be content? Or is it just physically, emotionally, and mentally impossible to do that? Will one small glitch cause a chain reaction in a massively complex system that breaks it down onto a more human scale? Can the future be left up to people? Our bodies are squishy(which leaves too much to chance), we're inefficient(name the various distractions that occupy our time), and we waste time(see inefficiency). Can we trust ourselves?

[SavageDem]

12. You ask fine questions

...but your vision of the future is too bleak for me. I consider myself a realist...wait, no, strike that...maybe idealist would be more apropro. I don't bury my head in the sand regarding our problems and challenges, but I also continue to have hope that someday humanity will "grow up." Sort of like the Star Trek episodes where Kirk, et al encounter advanced alien races that view us as infants. Which we are. And the U.S. is about the most infantile country of the babes on this planet.

I don't have answers for your thoughtful questions. I'm a believer (although not always a practicer) of the philosophy that you have to start moving down the road and have faith that you're going to find a place to hole up. Don't wait until you've thought of the perfect solution, because that day will never come. To Action! Even though we can't envision how we're going to solve this problem, we know there are concrete steps we can take to start. Curtail population growth. Preserve our natural resources. Stop polluting. Feed the poor. Educate the masses (key!). Stop enslaving women and children.

No, I don't think that diversity need cease, or that everyone must lead the same life. I think (naïvely, I'm sure many think) that the more we can do to lift everyone out of ignorance and poverty, the more light bulbs (compact fluorescent) will go on over the collective heads of the world's folk, and that we can find a way to share the wealth in a sustainable, peaceful, eco-smart way.

In short, I have faith that we're moving (albeit slowly) towards some sort of collective self-actualization. And I hope we get there before we exterminate our species!

[Thor_MN]

24. More organisms that don't lead to more children is a good thing.

I was channel flipping and stopped on the train wreck that is Glenn Beck. The instructor of a driving class I took told us that when you see an accident, he really needed us to not the fact and then look away from the flashing lights to avoid becoming part of a bigger accident. Haven't really incorporated that fully yet, but I digress.

Anyway, he was spouting off, as usual. His view was that the US and Europe were having too few children and were in danger of becoming extinct/overrun (I assumed by "non-white, Xtian" people). He thinks that we need to have more children to sustain our proper position in the world. At that point I was able to look away from that particular train wreck, flip off the TV screen and move on to another channel. I know he can't see me giving him the bird, but it helps my state of mind.

I think that if the conservatives could just have a few more organisms without feeling guilty about it and without it causing population growth, the world would be a better place.

[L. Coyote]

14. WOMEN can save the world. One child per woman and watch what happens

Approximately:

2010 6 billion
2035 3 billion
2060 1.5 billion
2085 less than 1 billion
2110 400 million

If you have only one child you can give them everything,
If everyone has only one child, you give them the world.

[SavageDem]

15. Fascinating!

What's the stasis rate? That is, what birth rate would keep the Earth's population roughly the same? Do you have some sources for studies on this?

[L. Coyote]

17. Simple. On average, 2 children per female, given 50% females.

Females may decide 5% males are enough some day!

[Thor_MN]

25. I think it would have to be slightly higher than 2.

Even with the better health care that would be available with fewer people, there will always be some accidential deaths of females before they had their two children. I'd assume that not every female would be able to bear children as well. So, the correct number would be something slightly over an average of 2 children per woman, but probably much less than three.

[Clark2008]

19. Except that some of us already had two - and both were

birth control babies. :hi:

After the second one, hubby got fixed. ;)

[Bozita]

16. Thom has discussed this 3 or 4 times in recent weeks.

[pitohui]

22. it hasn't worked in practice for various reasons

educated women who have the ability to make their own choices have fewer children, this is just an indisputable statistical fact, however, the reason population continues to skyrocket in the usa is because of immigration -- without immigration we would have actually been successful at achieving ZPG instead of the hellish nightmare of overpopulation and urban sprawl that we currently "enjoy"

we can't stablize our population if we're unwilling to control immigration, and we're not willing to control immigration because it suits the ruling class to have the working class bidding each other down in price so that people are earning less in real $$$ than they did in the 70s -- and at the end of the day it's hard to educate your daughter if you have no ability to pay the skyrocketing costs of today's education

another problem is that religious hysterics and fundy fuckwits continue to breed, while thoughtful intelligent people have one or no children because they can do the math (having a child and providing her with a DECENT life and education costs a lot of money)

so we're in a situation where, the people who have the least amount of ability to make thoughtful plans for the future, are the ones having most of the children -- "the marching morons" was once a science fiction story but it seems that if there is any heritable portion to intelligence, prudent planning, good judgement at all then over time our population will have less and less of these

so while educating and freeing women is a start, it's only a start, and if we have to wait for several more generations for women to be educated worldwide to change the world's attitude toward popping out babies -- in reality it will be too late

[Lydia Leftcoast]

26. Yes, birth rates are highest in the countries where female illiteracy is highest

and lowest in countries where males and females have equal access to education and jobs.

I remember once reading about an anthropologist who studied fertility patterns worldwide. She said that women invariably wanted to control the number of children that they had and did so if they could.