There is no perfect population number.

But you would not guess that from recent headlines. Some proclaim that we are on the verge of a baby bust linked to the fears and hesitations around COVID-19. Others fret that a baby boom is imminent, at least in some parts of the world, driving ever-escalating pressures on scarce resources.

The real cause for alarm, though, is not the prospect of a baby boom or baby bust. It is the risk that we treat “population” as more important than people. Many parts of the world have learned the lesson that assigning an ideal number to a population is not the answer to a variety of concerns, from flailing economies to the climate crisis. Instead, it often leads to the erosion of human rights and choices, particularly where people, women, namely, are coerced or pressured to have children – or prevented from doing so. Where population growth is slowing, that might mean new restrictions on abortion or contraception. Where rates are rising, it can result in forced family planning or sterilization. All of these concerns can be especially acute for poor and socially marginalized communities.

There is no question that population intersects with economics and social well-being. Conventionally, a country with more people working may achieve greater economic dynamism. It may be able to better fund and sustain public services and pension systems. These are issues that concern us all.

But what of the assumptions that often go along with these relationships? One is that population should be managed to keep up the pace of progress, with an implicit notion that women’s bodies are in service to economic and social policy. Often a tone of blame arises in speaking about women’s choices, whether those lead to having children or pursuing work or other goals – or all of the above.

First, any individual woman has the right to make choices about her body, and to be spared censorious headlines suggesting she is the cause of one demographic calamity or another. Second, what is typically overlooked in the handwringing about the “correct” population size are the many factors that influence women’s choices. Putting individual women at fault becomes an easy way to avoid grappling with complex issues that in fact are a collective responsibility.

How readily can women make real choices without decent work and income, for example? Or where sexual and reproductive health care is poor quality or non-existent? Or if childcare is a constant struggle?

And then there are the gender norms that, frankly, still make many men less desirable partners and fathers. Rooted in male entitlement, such norms leave women doing much more unpaid household work, and in the worst cases, subject to domestic abuse. Research shows that nearly half of women are not empowered to make basic decisions about their health, contraception and sex lives. Is it surprising that many women who have the option to say no do so? With gender equality yet to be fully realized in any part of the world, these concerns know no borders. They are at work in poor and rich countries, in shrinking and growing populations.

Considering that the history of population management is full of misfires and unintended negative consequences, and that the world agreed on the centrality of reproductive rights and choices in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, it is past time to move away from talking about managing populations by telling women the choices they should make. The real conversation should be around how we can uphold everyone’s right to make their own choices, with all the evidence pointing to how this leads to happier and healthier societies with stabler populations.

What if we put people and rights first, instead of a technocratic notion of population rooted in inequality? Doing so would hinge on recognizing women’s rights in all spheres of life. It would mean every woman has the information and services to make her own sexual and reproductive health choices. Such services would be essential to health-care systems and not readily discarded, as has happened in many places during COVID-19. To fully support choices, we would accelerate the elimination of gender disparities in income, assets, leadership and the law, with many of these gaps not set to expire even in the coming century at current rates of change. And we would work to ease the burdens of parenthood for those who want children, for example by subsidizing childcare and instituting mandatory parental leave for both parents.

Putting rights and choices first would also call for thinking about people as more than an input churning through economies or as a threat to planetary resources. With productivity increasingly centred on technology, for example, instead of aiming for a steady infusion of new workers from a growing population, more relevant questions may be around how to distribute wealth and resources if not through labour. Interesting possibilities might arise from the freer passage of people across borders to ease labour shortages, and new notions of citizenship and nationality.

Young people in particular feel anxiety about the climate crisis, but even here a simple consideration of the sheer number of people alive today is not the whole story. As we look towards a worsening climate crisis, it is worth remembering that the billion people in Africa contribute less than half a percent of greenhouse gas emissions, even as the continent has the world’s highest population growth rates. Their rights and choices are limited not just by poverty and a lack of services, but by overconsumption in other regions that is rapidly exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet. A simple answer of “fewer people” would not address these issues, but opening opportunities for women to plan their families, pursue education and income, gain affordable clean energy and use resources sustainably would do so.

Women have always been denied rights and choices. And yet for many of us, wherever choice emerges, we take it and make it our own. And we will keep doing so. Over time, no amount of handwringing or structural impediment will stop the momentum of choice. Nor should it. We will have more harmonious societies and economies and a better balance with nature when people realize the right to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive life, and enjoy every opportunity to do so, on terms that they alone define.