Until the 1970s, The United Nations member states rarely recognized that gender mattered in their engagement with the world’s political conflicts. They did not recognize that women and women’s issues mattered. Men headed the UN Population Division, and conservative forces led by the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church tried to limit discussion of family planning and abortion at the Conference (Mathiason 2006). This limited women’s participation and the consideration of feminist perspectives in global population policy making. Women’s international NGOs, however, challenged the UN to include women participants and to consider women’s concerns in population policy debates and sought recognition that women’s real world situations must be considered in family planning initiatives. The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), as it developed proposals, acknowledged the right of women of all races to decide the number and spacing of their children which presupposes access to family planning resources and is the key which could unlock the population puzzle. (Mathiason
Until the 1970s, The United Nations member states rarely recognized that gender mattered in their engagement with the world’s political conflicts. They did not recognize that women and women’s issues mattered. Men headed the UN Population Division, and conservative forces led by the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church tried to limit discussion of family planning and abortion at the Conference (Mathiason 2006). This limited women’s participation and the consideration of feminist perspectives in global population policy making. Women’s international NGOs, however, challenged the UN to include women participants and to consider women’s concerns in population policy debates and sought recognition that women’s real world situations must be considered in family planning initiatives. The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), as it developed proposals, acknowledged the right of women of all races to decide the number and spacing of their children which presupposes access to family planning resources and is the key which could unlock the population puzzle. (Mathiason