In the past two decades, family planning has become synonymous with gender

empowerment. Feminist scholars and practitioners in the field of women in development

advocated that economic objectives could be best achieved through bringing equity in
developing countries (Ewig, 2006, p.635). A hallmark event for family planning and the
women in development movement was the 1994 United Nations Population Conference
in Cairo, which proclaimed womens empowerment as a key factor in the reduction of
population sizes (Hartmann, 1995, p.205). A theory of gender equity is deeply enmeshed
in much of the scholarly work on family planning, arguing that that all fertility declines
bring greater standing to the wife (Abbasi-Shavazi, McDonald, Hosseini-Chavoshi,
2000). The advocates of population control and family planning believe the reduction of
birthrates go hand in hand with improvement of womens statuses, and marshal evidence
such as the inverse correlation between female literacy rates and children born to support
such claims (Hartmann, 1992, p.213).
Two programs with official rhetoric that mimics that of family planning and
population control advocates are those of Egypt and Iran. Despite the rhetoric of family
planning as beneficial for women, the reality seems to be much different. Although the
scholarship of the Iranian family planning programs has offered greater criticism of the
shortcomings of family planning on the statuses of women, the Egyptian literature has not
been as evaluative. The Egyptian literature has accepted family planning as an ultimate
good. Scholars have inundated the reproductive health field with articles that chart the
successes and failures of Egyptian family planning, all operating under the assumption
that family planning benefits women and society. In these studies, neither have there been
developed assessments of the negative impacts of family planning on the status of women

nor have there been critiques of the general limitations of family planning in general. In
contrast, the Iranian literature has offered new insights that question both the techniques
and ultimate goals of family planning for the wellbeing and rights of women.
The goal of this paper is to problematize the Egyptian family planning programs
techniques and goals as they relate to women within the countrys legal and cultural
milieu. Although the Iranian scholarship on family planning is problematic in its own
ways, it has taken stronger steps in interrogating how family planning has affected and
interacts with womens statuses. For this reason, arguments from Iranian scholars will
serve as starting points to launch critiques of the Egyptian family planning program and
suggest future areas of primary research. This paper will critique the Egyptian family
planning program on three grounds: neglecting the womens marriage insecurity; pushing
forward the Islamically supported concept that the husband maintains and the women
obeys; and the total ignorance of womens reproductive health outside of marriage
(maybe can include unmet need here).
My critiques of the Egyptian family planning program will reveal that it supports
a representation of women that is anything but progressive. Rather the Egyptian family
planning program is built on representations of womens subservience to their husbands
and disinterest in sexual relations beyond the confines of marriage. Such representations
deleteriously affect womens reproductive rights and social statuses. The realities of the
family planning program move women away from what anthropologist Ines Smyth
defines as the feminist understanding of reproductive rights, which is the notion of selfdetermination in childbearing. In light of the areas neglected and the actual effects of

family planning, it becomes clear that the couching of family planning within the domain
of womens rights is nothing more than a policy trick.

Egyptian Family Planning Program: A Critical Assessment

In the scholarship of Egyptian family planning, the various status-related
insecurities that may interfere with a womans decision to use contraception are almost
never mentioned. Scholar Kamran Asdar Ali is the only scholar who notes the social
advantage some women feel when having more children. He argues that there is a culture
of stigmatization around infertility. Among many rural Egyptians, infertility is
pathologized as kabsa, an infliction that has a variety of etiologies and cures. The respect
and acceptance that women gain after procreation comes into direct conflict with state
family planning programs that seek to organize womens bodies by ways of contraceptive
devices (Kamran, 2002, p, 372). He finishes his discussion by looking into how women
reconciled social norms with family planning needs (p.385-387). Despite this minor
section of his analysis, in the end Ali devotes most of his discussion to womens
experience with contraception. He does not critical assess the insecurities that women
face that are compounded by family planning programs or affect their decision to use
contraception. Other scholars simply stick to researching family planning efficacy
without researching womens nuanced experience with contraception. Storey and
Kaggwa (2009) examine how changes in the state-run family planning program
campaigns from family size limitation to the spacing of births affected contraception use.
Also, Catherine Harbours (2011) study looked at whether household or community level

pressures were more salient upon womens and mens decisions to use contraception. In
all these examples, contraception use does not illuminate the insecurities.
We can have a clearer picture of the insecurities women face vis--vis family
planning programs by looking at the institution of marriage. Scholar Homa Hoodfar of
the Iranian family planning program provides a strong analysis of the interaction of
womens personal status and fertility behavior. She begins this discussion with an
analysis of womens legal status, revealing that it had declined to the revocation of Shah
Reza Mohammad Pahlavis Family Protection Act (1967) which abolished mens
unilateral right to divorce and banned polygamy without the permission of the wife or a
court (p.36). Then she shows how legal insecurity has translated into womens fertility
behavior. While many women believed in the governments family planning program and
its ideal of fewer children, many Iranian women felt that their personal situation
demanded them have more (Hoodfar, 1996, p.36). Women believed that having more
children could prevent husbands from divorcing wives or taking on new wives (and the
financial responsibilities of these new wives). Furthermore, she notes that many women
had accidental practices while using contraceptives. However, her interviews revealed
that many of these unwanted pregnancies were neither accidental nor unwanted, but
instead were quite intentional on the part of the woman (Hoodfar, 1996, p. 37).1
Hoodfars assessment looks beyond family planning programs to see how womens
insecurities informed their decisions to use contraception. Her research on accidental

In Markazi province, it was estimated that over half of all pregnancies were
unwanted and 86-89% of these had occurred while women claimed to be using
contraceptives (Hoodfar, 1996, p. 37)
1

pregnancies questions statistical information on fertility behavior and pushes back against
family planning rhetoric that argues womens statuses improve with family planning.
Similarly, in Egypt, womens personal status is legally compromised by a family
law system that favors mens unilateral rights. There has been no scholarly work on
Egypt that has attempted to connect womens marital rights with family planning.
Essential for future study on family planning is examination of Jihans Law, a law
sponsored by Jihan Sadat in 1979 that for the first time drastically expanded womens
marital rights with regards to polygamy and divorce. Specifically, the law stipulated that
the wife has the right to be informed by her husband if he marries another women, to
divorce her husband after receiving notice of his additional wife, to be informed if her
husband has divorced her, and to keep the home after a divorce (Graham-Brown, 1985 p.
10). In 1985 the Supreme Constitutional Court declared the law illegal, returning
Egyptian back to having precarious marital relations (Bernard-Maugiron & Dupret, 2008,
p.56-57).
From the Iranian example, it is clear that womens legal rights in marriage affect
their interactions with family planning. In an interview with the New York Times, Aziza
Hussein, an Egyptian family planning expert, corroborates this view when she posited
that the abrogation of Jihans Law prompted [women] to have more children, in order to
bolster their standing within the family and to make it more difficult for a husband to
support more than one wife (Miller, 1985). However, there has been no analysis in the
scholarship of Egyptian family planning that attempts to explain if the law contributed to
the sudden drop in birthrates in 1979. Furthermore, it is unclear how the abrogation of the
law interacted with the continuous declining of birthrates after 1985. Although scholar

Fargues argues that birthrates began to steadily decline after 1985 due to factors such as
the erosion of average wages in real terms, reduction in remittances, decline in
construction, and the removal of healthcare and education subsidies, it is unclear whether
womens weak marital statuses slowed this decline (Fragues, 1997, p127). Related to the
discussion of fertility behavior and marital status, scholarship on Egyptian family
planning does not critically examine unintended pregnancies. Kotb et. al considers
unintended pregnancy among Egyptian women to be due to inadequate knowledge and
indicative of unmet needs in contraception (Kotb, Bakr, Ismail, Arafa, El-Gewaily, 2010,
p. 26). The authors do not examine unintended pregnancies within the realm of personal
status to reveal trends of intentionality behind unintended pregnancies, as did Hoodfar.
Unfortunately, womens legal status has not been incorporated into analysis of fertility
behaviors in Egypt.
another women and sue for a divorce,

Birth rates fell in 1979: due to:

1985: reduction in level of births reflected an erosion of average wages in real terms, a
reduction in remittances, and a decline in construction; liberalization of the economy and
removal of consumption subsidies that included health and schooling. P.127

From this body of scholarship, Egyptian women emerge as beneficiaries of family

planning,

According to the scholarship, Egyptian family planning is seen as a positive development

for women.
Correlation with literacy levels and family planning?
Is there a desire to actually have less children? Is this good for the women?
Egyptian literature accepts family planning as a universal good. Is this true

Family planning is not good because it enacts patriarchy. We can s