Forum (Spotlight Weekly)

Family Planning, Women & Development

By Bishan B. Wagle

The essence of national development is contingent on the comprehensive development of Nepalese women and the Nepali society as a whole. The national development involves all dimensions and aspects of life, including the size of the population, the quality of the population and families. A huge population, which is not in harmony, proportion and balance with what the environment can support and accommodate, may affect all aspects of development and social life. Thus, families should have options to limit their family size, the quality of the population and families should be developed, and population mobility should be guided through family planning so that they will become valuable human resources for national development.

Through family planning we can regulate the development of happy and prosperous families. The effort of limiting the size of the population, the development of the quality of the population, the quality of families and the life of women is regarded as necessary conditions for all-round development of a country.

Family planning is almost universal. Development is the other universal theme and a necessity. For a nation to be happy and proud altogether, every family inside its boundary has to be happy. When people are happy development will automatically flourish. Thus, family planning can bring a glowing curve in the cheeks of the people and the smiling faces in turn can contribute better for their motherland. As such, family planning and social/national development go side by side.

The availability of family planning does more than enable women and men to limit family size. It safeguards individual health and rights, preserves our planet's resources, and improves the quality of life for individual women, their partners, and their children.

Above all, women have a greater role in both family planning as well as development of a society. Family planning simply indicates planning a family. It enables couples to decide when to have children plus how many children to have i.e. limiting and spacing the number of children born.

Family planning plays a crucial role in reducing poverty and improving living conditions. Individuals, families and communities benefit, as well as a nation are strengthened through this.

Family planning provides with the broad ranging "enabling conditions" like employment, family, education, healthcare and opportunities towards development that women must have in order to act on their own, meeting needs regarding contraception, abortion, childbearing and childbirth. When given real possibilities of better livelihoods, empowerment in their communities, literacy and education, and decent treatment by both the health professionals and the community, most women do have fewer children. But the objective is empowerment and better lives, more than mere fertility reduction for its own sake; and we certainly know that just having access to clinics for family planning alone won't make a difference, when the other enabling conditions are absent.

Even the Program of Action of the ICPD (International Conference on Population and Development), as well as the Beijing Platform for Action, Section on Health, understands and integrates quite well this holistic perspective- i.e. the need to integrate family planning into a much broader program for women's empowerment and development which includes decent housing, sanitation, clean water, skills training and jobs, education, and involvement in community-based and women's groups.

Family planning is a program whose benefits touch all levels: individual, family, community, national, and global. Family planning enhances the quality of life by reducing infant mortality, maternal mortality and improving maternal and child health. In addition, access to family planning can be seen as a human right and as a means to enlarge women's life options. The pace of development could be moderated by commitment to two broad family planning policies namely, focus on unmet need for family planning and enhanced program effectiveness.

In the context of a woman as an individual, apart from being a mother she also has a social life and the society ahead of her to which she may be willing to contribute in one way or the other. Apart from being a daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, mother or a wife at home, an individual women should be let free to be a member of the bigger arena of society in every way seemed desirable. So the decision about pregnancy, birth spacing, starting a family and the number of children should be left to her (which is always in consultation with a good husband). Since women are the indispensable half of the world, they must be allowed and indeed welcomed to join the remaining half hand-in-hand in society.

Nepalese women today when compared to few years back seem more to be outgoing and out-of-the houses rather than just being kitchen-bound. Intellectually, psychologically and socially, both men and women are equal and so are their obligations towards building a better society. We know we cannot clap with one hand, and run a carriage on a wheel; so let us hold the other hand and together move ahead. Family planning paves the way for a woman to accomplish the role she needs to play in society.

At a time when government resources are stretched thin even to provide minimum levels of education, health care, housing, water, and sanitation; family planning plays a crucial role in reducing poverty and improving living conditions.

Thus, family planning is an investment for the future and a fundamental aspect of all human resource development programs. Development specialists at all levels can play a major role in strengthening family planning programs by giving them priority, increasing funding levels, and adopting supportive policies.

(Wagle is a health expert)