35 - The future: waking up

Summary

Siladitya Bhattacharya: Thanks for two excellent presentations. So, what we are getting clearly is that the message needs to go out to people that there is a finite time over which women are able to reproduce. But how can that message be transmitted to the population without government support?

Zoe Williams: It would have to be with government support because you need some kind of neutrality. The way the media presents it is very overheated. A lot of people in the left-wing press present this (and I have been guilty myself) as a conspiracy against women, to pressurise them into early childbearing. It is not a conspiracy against women, but that is what if feels like when being constantly badgered. It has to come from a neutral body. What do you think?

Kate Brian: I think that is true, but at the moment people are really not aware of it. There are a lot of people who still think that it is vaguely ‘made up’. People are not really aware of the realities, partly because there is still this idea that ‘if I leave it too late I can still go and have fertility treatment’. People do still think that is a kind of safety net.

Stephen Hillier: I wonder to what extent government policy on population development takes into account or relies upon the wave of new manpower or womanpower from the European Union accession states?