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30. While the rate of growth of world population is on the decline, world population is at an all-time high in absolute numbers, with current increments approaching 86 million persons annually. Two other major demographic trends have had profound repercussions on the dependency ratio within families. In many developing countries, 45 to 50 per cent of the population is less than 15 years old, while in industrialized nations both the number and proportion of elderly people are increasing. According to United Nations projections, 72 per cent of the population over 60 years of age will be living in developing countries by the year 2025, and more than half of that population will be women. Care of children, the sick and the elderly is a responsibility that falls disproportionately on women, owing to lack of equality and the unbalanced distribution of remunerated and unremunerated work between women and men.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
With the continued decline in the world’s population rate, we can note the still-increasing number of human beings born and dead; where, with the rate of population growth as actual growth meaning more born and, eventually, more dead, the decline also links to the decline in the level of increase in the rate of consumption of the international population.
However, as the world’s population continues to increase and the desire for middle-class lifestyles – in accordance with, for example, North American and Western European standards of the “middle-class” – marches forward too, the increased efficiency of the energy consumption of technological systems in the world and improved alternative energy source production & delivery will be heavily relied upon in this period, along with reliance on the continued decline in the world’s population – seen markedly in East Asian and European countries with some replication in North America.
They note the very young population of the world at the time of writing the paragraph for much of the world’s developing countries’ populations. There are, certainly, indications of higher raw numbers of people being born leading to a greater representation of the very young in the global demographics, especially present in the nations with the highest birth rates as a mathematical truism in these demographic analyses.
This does impact the need to educate those young while, at the same time, other regions of the world have the burden of an increasingly elderly population. One in which the issue is not the education of the young, as much, but in the treatment, care, and visitation of the old during life & burial, burning, or freezing of the elderly after death. These are important problems brought about by the disjunction in the world’s differential rates of population growth.
Indeed, the paragraph firmly states, circa 1995 projections from extrapolated data, “According to United Nations projections, 72 percent of the population over 60 years of age will be living in developing countries by the year 2025, and more than half of that population will be women.” This is an issue for everyone involved, in some way, with the elderly, whether family, friend, or patient.
Once more, the disproportionate impacts will go to the women of the world and in developing countries. That is to say, women of color and in the contexts of developing nations will be some of the worst affected. This is not to sideline the issues of men. Of course, these are extant. However, this in no way diminishes the impacts on women from these forms of projections, which are only 7 or fewer years away from us.
The preparation in the planning and documentation from yester-decades should be pursued now, and with vigor. Much of the responsibility, or burden rather, will fall on the laps of women. As this is The Good Men Project, something intelligent and rational, and wholly ethical, for men to do: help reduce the automatically assumed obligations of women in order for a more flourishing and equitable world, as opposed to open and bitter resentment, hatred, and complaining because, literally, we’re all in this together.
One where, if – or since – women take on far more of the burden, there should be open acknowledgment of the massive contributions of women to some of the most crucial moments of the lifecycle – gestation, birth, and early development, and late life and death – and, even based on this being actual work and often arduous and self-sacrificial labour, getting paid or remunerated in some reasonable manner for the assiduous work more often, than not, done for free.
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- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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Photo by Adrien King on Unsplash