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The Means of Reproduction |
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Sex, Power, and the Future of the World
Michelle Goldberg - Author
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| Book: Hardcover | 6.14 x 9.25in | 272 pages | ISBN 9781594202087 | 02 Apr 2009 | The Penguin Press | 18 - AND UP |
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In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism by the author of the New York Times bestseller Kingdom Coming, Michelle Goldberg exposes the global war on women’s reproductive rights and its disastrous and unreported consequences for the future of global development
Women’s rights are often treated as mere appendages to great questions of war, peace, poverty, and economic development. But as networks of religious fundamentalists, feminists, and bureaucrats struggle to remake sexual and childbearing norms worldwide, the battle to control women’s bodies has become a high-stakes enterprise, with the United States often supporting the most reactionary forces.
In a work of incisive cultural analysis and deep reporting, Michelle Goldberg shows how the emancipation of women has become the key human rights struggle of the twenty-first century. The Means of Reproduction travels through four continents, examining issues such as abortion, female circumcision, and Asia’s missing girls to show how the battle over women’s bodies has been globalized and how, too often, the United States has joined sworn enemies such as Iran and Sudan in an axis of repression. Reporting with unique insight from both the rarefied realm of international policy and from individual women’s lives, Goldberg elucidates the economic, demographic, and health consequences of women’s oppression, which affect more than half the world’s population.
As The Means of Reproduction reveals, the conflict between self-determination and patriarchal tradition has come to define pressing questions of global development. Empowering women is the key to retarding the progress of AIDS, curbing overpopulation, and helping the third world climb out of poverty, but attempts to improve women’s status elicit fierce opposition from conservatives who see women’s submission as key to their own national or religious identity.
From the anticommunist genesis of America’s attempts to stem population growth in poor countries to the current worldwide attack on women’s rights as a decadent Western imposition, Goldberg explores the interplay between the great issues of our time and the politics of sex and childbearing. Finally, The Means of Reproduction shows how women, strengthened by a solidarity that transcends borders, are fighting for freedom.
The Means Of Reproduction
Introduction: The Global Battle for Reproductive Rights
Chapter 1: Sandinista Family Values
Chapter 2: The Great Population Panic, or Fighting Communism with Contraception
Chapter 3: Sisterhood Is International
Chapter 4: Cairo and Beijing
Chapter 5: Rights Versus Rites
Chapter 6: The Globalization of the Culture Wars
Chapter 7: Missing Girls
Chapter 8: The Birth Strike
Conclusion: Sex and Chaos
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
“We know how to radically improve women's lives around the world: give them education, power, and the liberty to control of their own bodies. We also know something even more important: that improving women's lives in this way makes the whole world better place—healthier, more prosperous, and more secure. Michelle Goldberg's sweeping saga about how this consensus came about, and the tragic impediments to putting it into practice, may be the most important book you'll ever read about the future of the human race.”—Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland
“Michelle Goldberg's book should be at the top of President Barack Obama's reading list as he confronts the damage inflicted on women, and on U.S. international aid programs, by the right-wing faith-based policies of the previous administration. Goldberg's book is more than a scrupulously researched chronicle of the brutalities inflicted on women throughout the underdeveloped world by the determination of antedeluvian religious institutions, and governments that protect them, to control female bodies. It is more than an indictment of the Bush administration for contributing to the spread of AIDS by discouraging the distribution of condoms. What this book demonstrates convincingly is that there can be no economic progress in any country that denies women basic human rights, and that women cannot exercise their human rights if they cannot determine when to have sex, whether or when to marry, and how many children they have. Ms. Goldberg's message is that the repression of women lies at the heart of all oppressive societies.”—Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason
“The Means of Reproduction is a bold and vital book, a story about life and those who twist that word to front for agendas of sexual control around the world. We're lucky that we have Michelle Goldberg, a brilliant and clear-eyed journalist, to bring us news of how the struggle over reproductive rights has gone global, as the American Right teams up with reactionary forces abroad. Goldberg calls it one of the most important fights of our time; after you read The Means of Reproduction, you will, too. A landmark book.”—Jeff Sharlet, author of The New York Times bestseller The Family
“If you want to understand why women leaders the world over have challenged church, state and aid bureaucracies so that ordinary women can decide on when, whether and how to bring new life into the world, this book is a must read. Goldberg brings to life the controversies that have shaped international public policy on population, reproduction and gender. Along the way she introduces us to the key actors, north and south, who put their lives on the line to give women the means to control their destiny.”—Frances Kissling, former president, Catholics for Choice
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