We might begin by discarding some assumptions. The assumption, for instance, that illiterate women are also helpless or ignorant. Many well-meaning people believe that women in the developing world continue to have babies because they don't know about contraception or don't understand that unchecked population growth only aggravates poverty and accelerates environmental destruction. In fact, these women do understand. But they are up against some cruel realities.
Fertility rates are inversely proportional to women's status.
When women have no say in their own households, when they are denied basic education, property rights, access to credit and employment . And with child mortality rates still alarmingly high, women will continue to have babies simply because they cannot be sure all their children will survive to adulthood. The program of action from last year's United Nations population conference in Cairo recommends expanding comprehensive reproductive health care, thus giving women access not just to contraceptives but to the likelihood of healthier children. It also called for programs to elevate women's status by expanding their educational, employment, and credit opportunities. Not according to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, where 92 percent of the borrowers are poor women, taking out modest loans, and where the repayment rate on loans is over 98 percent.