Why Birth Control Matters

Reading: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Washinton and his mother, Magaly

I have never read the Feminine Mystique. Nor did I think of myself as a feminist. Coming to age in the “otts,” my life experience has been limited to a post-60/70s first world – where equality between men and women has shifted into normality. My generation is accustomed to women in the work place, family planning, and careers before marriage. We, or at least I, saw the fervent feminism of our mothers as a thing of the past. The bra burning sexually liberated “hippies” felt as a lost age, a time that no longer applies to my present day life.

Then I came to Ecuador.

I saw a young girl, after a playground accident where she fell off a seesaw, scolded for playing with the boys. She should have been sitting attentively with the other girls. 

I had it explained to me that God (and Billy Graham) created women to serve men. 

I met single mothers, who, at age thirty-four, had six children with six different fathers, because Catholicism does not support family planning outside of abstinence. 

I lived with a host mother who gave up her chance at a college education because her family viewed her as another housewife. 

I was told that women should not play soccer simply because it was not what women did. 

I conformed to the idea that the company I kept in public mattered, that cross gender friendships were unnatural and that social gender norms where to be followed. 

I experienced the catcalls, the harassment, the preying eyes, and the taunting that becomes a daily part of living as a woman in a culture where men do not respect women. 

And I watch as Ecuadorian women passively allow this to continue. 

Spanish speakers have a noun that neatly clumps together these situations: machismo.

machismo |məˈ ch ēzmō; -ˈkēz-|
noun
strong or aggressive masculine pride 

Machismo, it even has a definition in my iDictionary. Thank you Apple. And if you ask any Ecuadorian man, he will be quick to tell you that no soy machista. (For all you language junkies out there: isn’t it ironic that this derived adjective is one of the few that is not gender sensitive?) However, it feels that the deeper you find yourself in the campo of this country, the stronger the practices of machismo present themselves. Even in Paccha, a town where people pride themselves on being above the social depravities of their costeño countrymen, machismo still lingers, a hatred that refuses to die with generations.

Talking to other female volunteers (not only in Ecuador), we joke of what life will be like when we return to a country where women are not systematically viewed as secondary citizens. Some of us suspect that we will return with a vehement loathing and skepticism of our male counterparts, while other of us joke that we will blindly marry the first guy that treats us like a normal human being. Regardless, we all agree that our gender has taken on a new perspective, where we feel we suddenly must defend ourselves as women against forces greater than ourselves.

However, as my service to Peace Corps is nearing the one-year mark, I am increasing shocked and appalled at the degradation of society in the United States. To call it an ignominy does not began to capture the rage I feel as I watch the American public, the standard that I once held the aspirations of Ecuador to, turn its back on half of its citizens. To watch women protesting against women, institutions working against the rights of their people, and the country divided over a pill is beyond disheartening.

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In December of last year, the Economist ran a special report on women in the work place, where they looked into the relationship between women and businesses in the first world. Although the report left to a lot of room for further discussion, it did bring into light the fact that women, as we make up fifty perfect of the world’s population, are a substantial economic power. Furthermore, the report drew light on the fact that this power is inherently linked to the ability for women to have control over their own reproductive rights. Even in the States where women face the some of the greatest social obstacles of the “rich world” (America is the only country without paid maternity leave), women still make up 51% of the work force, a clear indicator of a post-industrial society and economy.

Studies show that raising “women’s participation in the labour market to male levels will boost GDP by 21% in Italy, 19% in Spain, 16% in Japan, 9% in America, France and Germany, and 8% in Britain.” Those numbers are from countries already accustomed to women in the workplace. Imagine what those numbers would be like in the developing world. A country like Ecuador, would not only benefit economically, but would also reap the benefits of manageable families, which would not have to rely as heavily on government benefits. Yet, none of that would be possible without some form of birth control:

… The most important innovation has been the contraceptive pill. The spread of the pill has not only allowed women to get married later. It has also increased their incentives to invest time and effort in acquiring skills, particularly slow-burning skills that are hard to learn and take many years to pay off. The knowledge that they would not have to drop out of, say, law school to have a baby made law school more attractive. (The Economist, Female Power) 

To have a society, culture, and government supportive of contraception for women makes sense in the first and third world. It’s an economically and more so ethically rational option.

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So what exactly do machismo, economics, and my sudden burst of fem rage have to do with each other?

Everything.

Machismo in Ecuador and in the rest of the world is allowed to continue generation after generation because so often women lack agency. This lack of agency results in women finding themselves in subordinate roles, a situation that is hard to break out of without factors such as education, a progressive society, and a robust economy.

Adding women into the work force strengthens a country’s economy (it is essentially being doubled). But women cannot be a useful work force unless they receive the same level of education as their male counterparts. Educating girls is sited again and again as being one of the fundamental methods of fighting poverty and social prejudices like machismo (WuDunn and Kristoff wrote a whole book on it). But if all this effort is put into education only to have women forgo using their skills because they become burned with having child after child, the investment in their education becomes ineffectual. Society and development suffer.

All of this comes back to birth control. Having access to contraception is a key factor in elevating women and in turn improving developing economies. Even if some women willing choose respectfully to give their life to motherhood, it should be their personal choose not to be dictated by the men in their lives or constrained by the policies of their government.

And this leaves us with my newfound identification as a feminist. Reading news reports of the outrage towards Obama’s mandate that private insurance companies must cover female contraceptives cuts deep. There is nothing unreasonable being asked of insurance companies in the mandate, insurance companies, even ones associated with religious institutions, should cover birth control if a women and/or her doctor feel that it’s necessary. To deny the importance, both in terms of the freedom is has provided the women and the benefits it brings to our society, is not only ignorant but reprehensible. It is, to me, as offensive as the catcalls I receive in the street, a mark of a society lost.