Challenging Demography: Contributions from Feminist Theory

Demography as a field has made limited progress in its work on understanding the role of gender in demographic change for several reasons. This paper explores the theoretical, methodological, and political influences on this understanding. For example, demography can be seen as a field that because of its stability and resources, has not been forced into the crises that might force it to question its assumptions and methodologies; it has not developed a tradition of reflexivity, one which might address alternative approaches to this and other issues, such as the political nature of population work. In addition, partly because of a reliance on certain kinds of methodological approaches, demographers tend to use measures of gender that reflect individual characteristics rather than those that allow understanding of gender at a larger level, or provide information beyond the individual. The result is a particular approach to gender within demographic studies. Feminist theoretical approaches to gender could contribute to the field and the study of population change in general in several key ways.