The Cairo Consensus: Demographic Surveys, Women’s Empowerment, and Regime Change in Population Policy

In the early 1990s international population policy faced a crisis-it was being attacked from the left and the right, from inside and outside, for a range of failings-of ethics, fact, method, and vision. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, provided a new policy consensus that helped to overcome this crisis. Starting from the question of how the transition from population control to women’s empowerment was formulated as an international consensus, The Cairo Consensus maps the discourses, technical practices, and institutional practices that made this transition possible and stable. Demographic surveys in particular emerge as a crucial, though often overlooked, mechanism for policy production and stability. Using detailed empirical material, including over 30 interviews, combined with cutting edge social and political theory, Saul Halfon offers a new look at population policy that will interest scholars of science and technology, international studies, women’s studies, development studies, and post-colonial theory.