What is women's ‘bodily autonomy’ and why does it matter for everyone?

A relatively recent study traced the success and failure of European regions between the 16^th and 19^th centuries, and identified something that may have already been obvious to at least one in about every two people.

Places that afforded women more autonomy by enabling them to put off marriage until comfortably into adulthood, like the United Kingdom on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, thrived economically, the study found. Those that did not fell behind.

The takeaway? If half of humanity is not unfairly burdened everyone will benefit.

That may be particularly true in terms of bodily autonomy, or the power of women to make choices about their own bodies without facing coercion or violence.

However, a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) report has suggested that roughly half of all women are denied bodily autonomy. In the 57 countries surveyed, the proportion of women aged between 15 and 49 able to make autonomous decisions when it comes to sex with partners or husbands, contraception, and seeking health care ranged from 87% to as low as 7%.

Meanwhile laws that are compelling women to continue non-viable pregnancies, or forcing them to leave a country to terminate those pregnancies, violate recognized human rights, according to the report.

The global imbalance when it comes to basic bodily rights may be worsening in some places. In the United States, Poland, and Nicaragua, for example, abortion has become increasingly restricted or totally illegal.

These reversals are worth considering as we mark the passing of another International Women's Day, in the midst of what’s commemorated as Women's History Month.

Research has demonstrated that denying women access to abortion triggers outcomes that reverberate throughout their lives, impacting everything from the school years they complete to how much they earn.

One study conducted over a decade with about 1,000 women who’d either had or been denied abortions found that those denied suffered from higher levels of anxiety, and lower self-esteem.

Margaret Atwood, author of the landmark novel about dystopian patriarchy “The Handmaid’s Tale,” recently wrote that for every headline about gains in reproductive rights, there seem to be others underscoring “how fragile these rights are, wherever you live.”

Still, in the past several decades nearly 50 countries have liberalized their abortion laws, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Meanwhile, the use of modern contraception has more than doubled since 1994, according to the UNFPA – which also estimates that as of last year, 217 million women still had unmet related needs.

More good news from the UNFPA coupled with bad: female genital mutilation has declined in countries where the practice is common, but as many as four million girls were still subjected to it in 2020.

That same year, an estimated 12 million girls were married before turning 18.

Thankfully, the authors of the study on women’s historical autonomy in Europe, which keyed on rates of early marriage, also pointed to more contemporary, upbeat data points.

Botswana’s GDP growth has been paired with a relatively high rate of gender equality, they noted, and shifts in South Korea and China from “extreme” gender inequality in the early 20^th century to relatively high equality by the 1970s helped position both countries for dramatic economic advances.

For more context, here are links to further reading from the World Economic Forum's Strategic Intelligence platform:

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