Control of the population growth and women in Mexico: international organizations, civil society and public policies

In modern societies the population is regulated and developed in each nation state via birth control policies. In the rush to regulate population, governmental bodies have rather placed women as objects to control in order to achieve certain indicators, than as subjects with specific necessities as regards sexual and reproductive health. Women have been conceived basically as domestic beings that should carry out the functions of housewife, wife and mother before both taking on jobs that pay and/or assuming a public role. If it is true that the conception of the domesticated woman has been a constant, we can focus on the analysis of the problem established during the 1970 to 2012 period in Mexico. In the realm of working life one takes up the position of different actors, both institutional (as in civil society) and as an interrelation with feminine movements, international organizations that are involved, and government proposals. The analysis of birth control is approached from the angle of reproductive health, linked to sexual health, in light of a generic perspective without losing sight of the participation of the involved actors. The government policy of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries assumes, without regard to the nuances, the position of "women treated as objects". The first part of the 20th Century until 1970 was characterized by a pro-birth governmental policy with slogans such as that of the government of Lazaro Cardenas: "To govern is to populate". Beginning with the changes of the decade of the 1960s, government policy became oriented toward a reduction of the birth rate: "fewer children in order to provide more" and "the small family lives better". Both the pro-birth position and birth control stemmed from a conception that women were merely "beings to serve others", objects and not subjects of the public demographic policies. For their part, the international organizations considered them, at first, as the key factor in birth control, but also as a beginning of development. Later, women were identified in public discourse according to feminist demands: as subjects with rights and with positions with a generic perspective.