Population, pleasure and sexuality : a content analysis of norms and assumptions in Cairo's Programme of Action

Sammanfattning: This essay aims to discuss the feminist vision that is said to be embedded in mod-ern population politics. The starting point for this work is the Programme of Ac-tion, created at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. This document has been praised for its women-centred approach and focus on sexual and reproductive health and rights, but is it truly feminist? Internationally recognised human rights were also said to be the ideological basis for the conference, but whose sexuality is described as most “real”? By analysing the document using theoretical concepts like “the pleasure deficit” this essay will attempt to shed light on to how women’s sexuality and their right to sexual pleasure is seen as a lower priority than men’s – even in norm-creating, international documents like the Programme of Action. Ruth Dixon-Mueller’s “the sexuality connection” will be used to examine what assumptions regarding sexuality, family constellations and relationships are embedded within the field of population and development – and what consequences these notions have when it comes to including or excluding groups that fall outside the hetero norm. This essay will argue that the Programme of Action fails to live up to the feminist praise it has been given when it describes women in a way that suggests they are victims of men’s sexuality, rather than sexual agents themselves. It will also argue that the docu-ment fails to reflect upon contemporary forms of family, sexual identities and the ways in which categories of gender, sexualities and relationships can entail different things depending on the context.