Infertile Grounds: Towards a Reproductive Justice-Informed Measure of Gender Equality

What does it look like to apply a reproductive justice framework to our feminist research practices? This paper answers this question by investigating the use of fertility rate as a measure of gender equality in feminist international relations research. Through an exploration of the origin and use of fertility rate as an indicator of gender equality, I interrogate the underlying assumptions that are made when using the indicator, namely that it assumes a universalization of women’s experiences. I then ask whether these assumptions are consistent with a commitment to reproductive justice, a framework that understands reproductive freedom as more than the right to not have children but also the right to have children and raise them safely. I argue that fertility rate does not meet the empirical or normative needs of reproductive justice-informed feminist methodology. I conclude the paper by proposing an alternative indicator for gender equality that still embeds reproductive freedom while recognizing that it may manifest differently among people and across contexts.