• Topic: Advocacy
• Article on Advocacy

KEY POINTS Family planning and family planning programs can help women have more choices.
1	Women who have access to good-quality family planning can make reproductive choices. For some women, control over their own fertility opens the door to other important choices and opportunities.
2	Family planning helps women delay motherhood in order to complete school. Unless sexually active young women use contraception, they face a risk that young men do not face: that they will become pregnant and have to leave or forego school.
3	Families with fewer children are more likely to educate their daughters as well as their sons. When families are smaller, their resources tend to be distributed more equally among sons and daughters.

In virtually every society women derive status from their role as mothers. Much needs to be done, however, to ensure that girls and women get an equal share of other life choices and opportunities (140). Family planning can help (147). For example, with effective contraception women can choose to be employed without the interruption of unintended childbearing. Uncertainty over the timing of childbearing inhibits women's educational and occupational decisions. Other things being equal, women facing such uncertainty tend to invest less in education and to have lower-paying jobs than women who can control their own fertility (22).

Obviously, contraceptive choice itself seldom is enough to change a woman's situation in life. Nevertheless, it is a powerful influence. Women who can choose contraception gain more control over their own bodies. Moreover, women who use contraception report that they make more decisions for themselves and that their quality of life has improved (16, 49, 54).

Women surveyed reported that the benefits of contraceptive use included less stress, fewer worries over family matters, more time with children and husbands, and more time for work and community activities (16). On average, women in countries where contraceptive use is widespread spend less time raising children than women elsewhere (148) (see Figure, below).

For family planning programs, encouraging clients to make informed choices about reproductive health is a cornerstone of good quality (122). By treating women with respect, programs help build women's self-esteem and confidence and thus strengthen their autonomy and ability to make a variety of decisions themselves and to share decision-making with their husbands (49). Female family planning workers provide a new role model for young women (209).

Also, through counseling and other communication, programs can strengthen women's assertiveness and skills in communication and decision-making, which may help women to obtain fairer treatment and to seek new opportunities (117, 251). At the same time, by showing respect for women as clients, family planning programs set a good example for the community (147).

Contributing to development. Women who can plan their childbearing also contribute more to development and community activities (49). For a woman, making reproductive decisions is a first step toward playing a role in social and economic development (196). In many countries later marriage, lower fertility, and more education of women have increased women's labor force participation, thus speeding economic growth. Many observers attribute Asia's economic success in part to increases in women's participation in the work force (253).

Women are an integral part of many development strategies, and experience has shown that development goals often can be better reached when women are involved. For example, as borrowers, women have had much success with micro-enterprise projects and have had an impressive repayment record, at over 95% (257).

As more women use contraception, the average number of years spent caring for young children drops substantially, as does the average time between a woman's first and last births. Thus women have more time to play other roles as well as motherhood.

While more women are delaying marriage, many continue to marry young and begin childbearing soon after marriage. In many developing countries most women marry before age 20 (148), and many young women between ages 15 and 19 give birth (226).

The two most common reasons that young women do not complete secondary education are marriage and pregnancy (8). In some countries pregnancy is the main reason that the school dropout rate is higher for girls than for boys (73). Although school policies are changing in some places, in others female students who become pregnant are routinely expelled from school, while such action is rarely taken against male students who cause pregnancy.

Most young women do not return to school after they become mothers (130). Women who do not finish school have fewer job opportunities and less income than others and are more likely to live in poverty (226).

Helping women remain in school by avoiding unintended pregnancies could substantially improve child survival and health (39, 159). Mothers' level of education has "a very powerful and pervasive" relationship to child survival and health, according to a UN report based on Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data from 25 countries (226).

Fill in national data from Table			For a woman, making reproductive decisions "is the first step to making contributions to the real development of her society." Nafis Sadik, UNFPA (196)
Measuring Women's Opportunities
	Country Data	Developing Country Average
% Girls Enrolled in Secondary School		45
% Boys Enrolled in Secondary School		54
Women's Median Marriage Age		21

For girls, coming from a large family typically means even less schooling than their brothers receive (119, 134). When there are many children in a family, girls may compete with boys for the chance to attend and remain in school (133, 135). When parents must make a choice, they often think that it is better to educate their sons rather than their daughters (119, 131). While girls' school enrollment has been rising, it still lags behind that of boys (12). A disproportionate two-thirds of the 300 million children in the world who do not attend school are girls (236).