For instance, due to the growing population, problems related to maternal health and family planning are becoming more apparent, especially if we take into account the fact that almost half of all pregnancies in the world are unintended, according to UNFPA’s State of World Population report for 2022. Thus this makes it more important now than ever before to ensure that women have access to family planning, gender equality, and maternal health services not only in developed parts of the world but also in developing ones where gender inequality and human rights crimes are more pervasive.
Therefore, one of the primary ways which can be used or employed to combat this serious problem that is highly intertwined with gender, is to increase girls' education and awareness about reproductive health overall. To be more specific, this is highly important because improvements in reproductive health and female education can work together to lower the desired family size and make it easier to get access to efficient contraception, leading to lower fertility and thus also not put women in the positions to have unwanted pregnancies in the first place.
According to the EU commission, “The payoff is high for policies focusing on education, because it both reduces fertility and increases skills and economic productivity. This could create a virtuous circle of women’s empowerment, better health, lower fertility and economic growth.”
On the other hand, this cannot solely be viewed as merely a question of girls access to this education as cultural attitudes must also shift in the first place since families must be willing to prioritize education for girls.
"When girls are educated and when they stay in schools, they get married later in their lives, then they have less children and that helps us to reduce the impacts of climate change that the population increase brings.”
- Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (born 1997)