Constructing reproductive agency in an environmentally focused world: An anthropological analysis of how population control is portrayed by anglo-saxon news media

Abstract: This dissertation examines the change that has occurred in the discourse around population growth in Anglo-Saxon mainstream media. The research focuses on the representation of the “Third World woman” in the context of population control and environmental threats. Drawing on postcolonial feminism and post-development theory, this dissertation highlights how women and their fertility are constructed in an environmentally focused world that favors the economy. An analysis was done on two different samples of news articles coming from five different Anglo-Saxon news outlets. Each sample substracted twenty articles from a specific time period, one from 2010 and the other from 2020. In order to analyze the samples, a method of discourse analysis was applied. The research finds that the way Third World women were constructed in the discourse greatly depended on what was considered to be under threat at each time. The research also found that fertility was constructed as something disposable and negative in the context of underdeveloped countries, while it was constructed as something valuable and necessary in relation to developed countries and economic growth.