A Coercive Consensus: Gender, Power, and the Global Population Control

This research examines the global population control movement of the late 20th century, identifying a rare historical moment when the material and immaterial interests of hegemonic and subjugated states aligned. I argue that this alignment was achieved through the strategic instrumentalization of gender. While framed in the language of women's empowerment and development, aggressive family planning programs often served the material interests of core states who sought geopolitical stability and new markets for pharmaceuticals and the immaterial interests of peripheral elites who attempted to adopt a modernist, technocratic vision of development. Through a historical-sociological lens drawing on Bourdieusian Global Field Theory, this research elaborates on how the rhetoric of female liberation was co-opted to legitimize interventions that prioritized demographic targets over individual choice. Through archives of International Organizations and pharmaceutical companies as well as case studies of internationally funded programs, the research reveals how the provision of contraceptive measures, while potentially beneficial at an individual level, was systematically organized through coercive mechanisms that subordinated women's holistic health and rights to state and transnational objectives. The thesis concludes that this historical episode is not merely one of coercive practice but of a potent political alignment, where the goal of managing population growth created a cross-national coalition that temporarily harmonized disparate interests by making women's wombs the terrain for achieving its ends.