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Women's lives must
improve. With a narrow focus
on fertility alone, it is possible to achieve a fertility transition without improving
women’s lives at all. Improvements in women’s status, however, will create
favorable conditions for fertility decline and better reproductive health. These essential
strategies, endorsed at Cairo and at the subsequent Beijing women’s conference, will
contribute to gender equality while creating conditions favorable for smaller families:
| Invest
in women and provide them with economic prospects and social identities apart from
motherhood. |
- Increase educational attainment, especially among girls: The availability of mass
education changes the value placed on large families and encourages parents to invest in
fewer but "higher-quality" children, capable of entering the emerging labor
markets.
- Improve child health and survival: No developing country has had a sustained fertility
decline without first having experienced a substantial decline in child mortality.
- Invest in women and provide them with economic prospects and social identities apart
from motherhood: Improvements in the economic, social, and legal status of girls and women
are likely to increase their bargaining power, giving them a stronger voice in family
reproductive and productive decisions.
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