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Lunar | Framing anorexia fight as birth rate solution is harmful to women
- Making the prevention of anorexia a matter of ensuring healthy babies is simplistic and reduces women to their ability to bear children
- The focus should be on tackling what is prompting many women to become obsessed with their weight, including media images that valorise thinness
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This month, Japan announced it would set up a research group next year to look into the weight and dietary habits of young women. On the surface, this is a welcome move.
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A 2019 survey showed one in five Japanese women in their 20s were underweight – a higher proportion than those of other developed countries. A 2021 survey showed the number of girls under 20 newly diagnosed with anorexia was up 60 per cent. While these are recent figures, the issue has been of concern in Japan for a while, prompting the government to launch a long-term initiative to tackle the phenomenon in 2013.
In explaining the need for the new survey, Japan’s health ministry said that, apart from the risk to women’s health, an underweight body mass index could endanger newborn babies. Underweight women have a higher risk of having a baby that also weighs less than average, which makes it more likely for them to develop diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes later in life.
Ensuring that babies are born without these risks is all the more important given Japan is dealing with a severe population crisis. The number of births fell to a record low of 811,604 last year, a 3.5 per cent fall from 2020.
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Japan’s population drops by 644,000 in a single year
Japan’s population drops by 644,000 in a single year
However, automatically associating women’s health with child birth is problematic. This simplistic thinking reduces women to their ability to bear children instead of perceiving them as individual human beings.
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