In Their Own Words

More is a historical study and contemporary rumination on the desire of women to determine for themselves the timing of childbearing. It considers how women have effected this going back to prehistory, and the importance of women's strategic reproduction in the survival of the species. Finally and most importantly, it considers the importance of women's reproductive autonomy for the development of human population and its interaction with the natural environment, concluding that where women have been able to control their own childbearing, human population has tended to be environmentally sustainable. Where males and male-dominated institutions have exerted reproductive control, populations have tended to be unsustainable. Encourage reproductive autonomy for women, the book concludes, and positive demographic and environmental outcomes will result.