When some of the smartest people in the world got together in Project Drawdown to draft the 100 most comprehensive solutions to reverse global warming, the usual things came up, like using wind and solar power, reducing food waste and increasing plant-rich diets. But guess what? Educating girls and family planning ranked 6th and 7th out of 100.
Let that sink in. Giving girls all over the world at least a secondary education and making contraception available and accessible is more important for saving the planet than another 93 essential actions.
Recent attacks on reproductive rights are pushing us further away from having a livable planet. Who could think it’s good idea, on an overpopulated, overheated planet experiencing mass extinctions to force more women to have unwanted children?
The attackers hide behind the ever-handy hot-button topic of abortion, painting a veneer of fake Christianity over their agenda. But we’re not buying it. As the brilliant Bree Newsome Bass so clearly put it, “Forcing people to have children while opposing policies that ensure access to healthcare, education, housing, [I'd add contraception] and nutrition has nothing to do with the sanctity of life and everything to do with stripping individuals of bodily autonomy as part of maintaining an oppressed underclass”.
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When I was growing up in Mexico City, it was common to see children as young as 4-years-old begging or selling chewing gum on the streets. They would weave among the cars barefoot, their faces and clothes covered in soot and grime. At some point I must have hardened my heart and learned to ignore the desperate need of the extremely poor, to stuff down the constant heartbreak.
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Consider these statistics about Mexico, the country with most childhood pregnancies in the world:
30 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 give birth every day
4 out of 10 girls under age 15 are victims of sexual violence
400,000 girls under age 17 pregnant per year
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Currently our world houses approximately 7.7 billion humans. If fertility rates keep falling slightly we'll be 9.8 billion by 2050. Although we could still feed that many people if we used sustainable small-scale farming, given the current conditions of inequality, climate instability and ecological degradation a greater population means more poverty and hunger.
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I want us to stop being surprised about attacks reproductive rights and remember that the control of women´s sexuality is a cornerstone of patriarchy.
In the last 6,000 years, humans went from a situation in which most cultures were matrilineal: children’s lineage was traced through the mother who unmistakably bore them. Establishing paternity was impossible to do with certainty and it wasn’t socially important.
With the advent of agriculture, wealth accumulation became possible. For the first time men became invested in paternity because they wanted their children to inherit their wealth. But paternity could only be established if women’s sexuality was controlled. That need gave rise to the institution of marriage and all the rules that governed it—the emphasis on women’s virginity and chastity, and the exclusion of women from economic and political power. In marriage, a woman and her children became a man’s property, and a girl would go from being owned by her father, to being owned by her husband.
These laws are still enforced in many parts of the world, and it wasn´t that long that they began to be challenged, even in First World countries. Whereas Roe v Wade made abortion legal in the U.S. in 1973 (the year I was born), it wasn´t until 1993 that all 50 U.S. states made marital rape illegal. Yeah, kind of shocking… but I just said we need to stop being surprised.
Patriarchy has always been about wealth accumulation, i.e. converting natural resources into money; and the control of women’s sexuality, i.e. woman as the means of production of children (more property). Patriarchy being inherent to industrial capitalism, is the force behind the oppression of women and sexual minorities AND the destruction of Mother Earth.
If we made a list of 100 ways to smash the patriarchy, near the top would be… you guessed it: giving girls a feminist education and the information and means to be in charge of their reproductive choices. If patriarchy is all about controlling women’s sexuality, liberation means women would need to be sexually empowered.
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You know how sometimes nonprofits place information about domestic violence or human trafficking intervention in bathroom stalls? The most radical form of bathroom-stall activism I’ve known happened in Berlin in 1996. I was in Germany for the summer with a scholarship from the Goethe Institut to get my proficiency diploma in German. Afternoons I swam at the public pool where the changing room was co-ed and nudity was no big deal. It was so liberating to walk the streets or ride the U-Bahn in a miniskirt and not be leered at, catcalled or groped. I went to the legendary queer Love Parade and soaked in some of the freshest gender-busting air of my life.
One day my roommate, who attended the university, told me someone had wallpapered every bathroom stall with instructions for female self-pleasuring, “It’s so cool. Now the women who’ve never had an orgasm, can."
That felt so awesomely transgressive. Under patriarchy, when women don’t have freedom of choice around their bodies, their pleasure is deemed irrelevant.
I’ve known women who have never had an orgasm, but have borne children. When I led a support group for Latina immigrant moms I discovered huge gaps in their sexual knowledge. I gave a series of classes on the topic. Some giggled, some blushed purple, some stared at the ceiling or the floor. They all listened with rapt attention.
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With education about sexuality, including consent and emotional intimacy as well as access to contraception and legal, safe abortion, an empowered girl has a much greater chance of turning into a woman who can choose how many children she wants to have, when and with whom, based on her ability to care for them. That is one way to save the world.
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