Family, Gender, and Population in the Middle East
Authors: Benton Catherine 
Published: December 2020

Obermeyer has edited a volume of essays originally delivered at an internationalsymposium, “Family, Gender, and Population Policy: InternationalDebates and Middle Eastern Realities,” held in Cairo in early 1994. Organizedby the Population Council, the symposium invited scholars to evaluate contemporaryissues of population planning in light of current economic, political, cultural,and demographic forces influencing the region. Hoping to assist theInternational Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), thePopulation Council asked scholars from various disciplines to bring togetherempirical research and theoretical analysis in order to facilitate and inform thediscussion that would follow at the ICPD.The results of this research and discussion proved to be of great value to theparticipants at the ICPD and subsequently the contributors framed their findingsin the essays that form the chapters of this volume. Of the seventeen contributors,thirteen work in Middle Eastern countries; three reside in NorthAmerica and one in Europe, but they have close ties to the Middle East by virtueof family background or extensive study. Their disciplines include economics,demography, and sociology, as well as epidemiology, biostatistics, obstetrics,and gynecology. An associate professor of anthropology and population in theDepartment of Population and International Health at Harvard University, CarlaMakhlouf Obermeyer, as editor, brings these varied disciplines together withinan integrated framework provided by her own interdisciplinary work.In the Foreword by Carolyn Makinson, program officer of the AndrewMellon Foundation, the significant contribution made by these researchers isunderscored as she places these essays within the larger context of the ICPDThe papers in this book go to press in a climate very different from the one prevailingwhen they were solicited and presented [i.e. before the ICPD]. Now, theInternational Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) is behind us. ItsProgramme of Action-which calls for population policies to address social developmentbeyond family planning, and for family planning to be placed in a broaderreproductive health framework-met with approval from widely differing constituenciesin the population and development fields, and was adopted by the officialdelegations of 179 states. . . . Two years ago, such a consensus seemed improbable... (p. xi)As well as contributing substantive data to inform policy-making discussions,the writers offer current research that challenges the more superficial discussionsof population planning issues which are based on stereotypic understandingsof the diverse cultural and religious differences among the various countriesand regions of the Middle East. Several major themes emerge: the need tounderstand family planning within the larger context of women’s health services,“the need to better define and measure widely used but little understoodconcepts such as women’s status and autonomy” (p. xii), and the need to examine“women’s rights” within the context of traditional Islam as it is practiced inspecific cultural and geographic areas.Organized under three broad categories: “The Family, the State, and the Law:Politics and Population”; “Women in Families: Cultural Constraints and ...