Markets and Malthus: Population, Gender and Health in Neo-liberal Times - Hardcover

The volume is comprehensive in terms of coverage, discourse, theoretical and empirical findings and makes the reader workout some population issues having linkages with larger developmental agenda.

(The Tribune)

Markets and Malthus has an engaging collection of papers on population, gender and health. (The Financial Express)

This book is a must read for all those who are concerned about the lives of poor women. This remarkable collection of essays shows us, through case studies from across the world, how the Cairo Conference`s call for reproductive rights have been subverted by neo-liberal economic policies to promote fertility control at the cost of women`s health. (Brinda Karat)

In the current climate when overpopulation arguments are again prominent, this book is essential reading for health and women`s rights activists and indeed policy-makers. It explores how the promises of reproductive health and rights at the ICPD in Cairo in 1994 were hollowed out by neo-liberalism. Both market fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism took their toll.

 

(Shabana Azmi)

A key contribution to the literature on the nature and direction of population and reproductive health policies, and extremely relevant to the current Indian context where skewed sex ratios and persistently high maternal mortality rates are the preoccupation of policy makers.

(ASCI Journal of Management)

Markets and Malthus: Population, Gender, and Health in Neo-liberal Times explores the ideas and institutions that were framed at the 1994 United Nations population conference in Cairo and traces their trajectories sixteen years down the line. Why were Third World feminists profoundly critical of the Cairo consensus and process? How has the health of people around the world been affected by neo-liberal economic policies? What have these meant for women’s rights, including reproductive rights? The book presents detailed case studies from various countries ranging from India and China, to Egypt, Tanzania, Uganda, and across Africa to Argentina, Peru, and throughout Latin America, as well as overarching themed essays. From the politics of abortion and immigration to rising levels of fundamentalist violence and sex selective abortions, the volume explores a range of issues from several vantage points. It offers startling new insights into these issues by linking them to neo-liberal economic policies that have profoundly shaped health policies globally. This book is essential reading for students of gender studies, public health, and demography, as well as policy-makers and activists.