Women’s empowerment in many developing countries is in its early phases, but the right policies can set women everywhere on a path toward the same prosperity and freedom enjoyed by women in today’s advanced countries.
This week, viewers will get another chance to submerge themselves in the dystopian future created by Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the novel about the government forcing women to bear children to counter a declining population, resonated with audiences across the world.
However, the reverse situation — government coercing people to have fewer or no children — has been happening around the world for decades, and it ought to generate just as much outrage.
Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb incited global panic with claims that out-of-control population growth would deplete resources, bringing about widespread starvation.
In 1975, officials sterilized 8 million men and women in India alone, and In 2012, India’s Supreme Court found that “unrealistic targets have been set for sterilization procedures with the result that non-consensual and forced sterilizations are taking place.”
Since Ehrlich began preaching about overpopulation-induced Armageddon, the number of people on the planet has more than doubled. Yet yearly, famine deaths have declined by millions. Recent famines are caused by war, not exhaustion of natural resources. As production increased, prices fell, and calorie consumption rose. Hunger is in retreat.
So while you’re watching season 2 of , keep in mind that the reverse of The Handmaid’s Tale is just as horrifying — and it has supporters trying to make it a reality.
Many years ago, thoughtful, well-intentioned, educated people in the United States all understood that socialism was the future. The average citizen might have retained a quaint belief in the American system of free enterprise, limited government, and individual rights, but among the cognoscenti — academics, artists, newspaper and radio pundits — it was widely recognized that the capitalist experiment had run its course. The overwhelming consensus was that the coming century would see economies managed by benevolent experts: the chaotic, dog-eat-dog competition of the market would give way to rational central planning.
March is Women’s History Month, and today (March 8th) is International Women’s Day. What better time to remember the role women played in launching the libertarian movement, as well as the role women with libertarian values have played in advancing women’s rights?
It’s no accident that feminism (and abolitionism) emerged out of the Industrial Revolution and the American and French revolutions. The equality and individualism that underlay the emergence of capitalism and republican government in the 18th century naturally led people to start thinking about the individual rights of women and slaves.
Many women involved in the American abolitionist movement took up the feminist banner, grounding their arguments in both cases in the idea of self-ownership, the fundamental right of property in one’s own person.
That classically liberal, individualist strain of feminist thought continued into the 20th century, as feminists fought not just for the vote but for sexual freedom, access to birth control, and the right to own property and enter into contracts.
Though, unfortunately, many contemporary feminists are far from being libertarians, a libertarian must necessarily be a feminist, in the sense of being an advocate of equality under the law for all men and women.
Happy Women’s Equality Day! On this day in 1920, women were granted the right to vote when the 19th amendment was certified by law. In honor of this occasion read Cato research on feminism and women in the libertarian movement.
“A so-called “libertarian moment” can only be helped along by expanded appeal among women, and among feminist-minded folks of all genders. Individual rights are at the heart of feminism. It’s time for libertarians to reclaim that.” — Elizabeth Nolan Brown at libertarianismdotorg
“A libertarian must necessarily be a feminist, in the sense of being an advocate of equality under the law for all men and women.” — David Boaz in huffingtonpost
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