You can't talk about the birth rate without the F word: Feminism

The latest population data published this past week puts Australia’s fertility rate at about 1.43 children per woman – far below the ‘replacement rate’ of 2.1, and a continuation of years of decline. Naturally, the media set about trying to answer why Australian women are not having as many babies as they used to. It’s a fair question.

This time around, journalists and commentators seemed most eager to focus on the economic factors – housing affordability in particular. It’s a genuinely huge factor for those of us who, as I wrote in 2024, “haven’t inherited wealth, and [probably won’t] create a fortune to pass down.” 

But money is not the only reason. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age attempted to map the birth rate by suburb, apparently ignorant of the Great Replacement Theory conspiracies this data will feed. Over on the ABC, respected economist Alan Kohler thinks it’s because of smartphones (sadly, I’m not joking). 

Somehow, in all the articles I’ve read about Australia’s falling birth rate not a single one has mentioned what is surely the biggest factor of all: feminist progress.

Economic independence and reproductive autonomy are intertwined

Women — and also men — get to choose if they have children, when they have children and how many children they have because of the achievements of the feminist movement to date. In the early 1970s, Australian women could not open a bank account at most banks without the signature (and therefore, permission) of her husband or a male guarantor. Until the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984, it was legal to discriminate against a woman based on her gender or marital status. The fight for women’s economic independence doesn’t just run alongside the fight for reproductive autonomy, but are deeply connected and intertwined. Neither fight is over.

Further proof of the impact of feminism is the fact that declining birth rates are a global trend. In The Conversation, demographer Liz Allen maps shows which other countries around the world are currently below the replacement birth rate. It’s most countries. Brazil, France, China, India, New Zealand, Canada, Tunisia, Russia, Indonesia, Norway, the U.S., Peru. Allen writes that the global fertility rate has halved since 1950, and the average rate for OECD countries is 1.46.

The economic conditions in these countries are very different. The housing, education and childcare systems are different. Parenting culture is different. 

What is universal is that the political standing of women in these countries has progressed in the past 50 years. Not all at the same rates, by any means, but in aggregate. 

Full credit to Allen, as she is so far the only person in Australian mainstream media who has even mentioned choice, telling The Nightly: “People are taking action by way of their reproductive organs … It’s not a problem if fertility declines because of choice. But if that choice is constrained, then we have a problem.”

So why has the rest of the media failed to mention feminism and choice?

The fertility rate is primarily an economic concept, and the economic problem that a below-replacement rate poses is a legitimate concern for governments. Put most simply, an ageing population (itself a good thing!) with a low birth rate means there will be too few taxpaying workers to generate the funds to support older people.

But women and babies are not just economic markers to be shuffled around. They are people. And it’s much more difficult to make the case that “declining fertility rate = bad” if you also make it clear that this is a reproductive choice being exercised by women.

And the polling by Resolve, published in the Sydney Morning Herald, shows the falling rate truly is a choice being consciously made by couples. Comparing people aged 46+ (families are mostly complete) and people aged 18-45 (may still have more children), two data points jumped out:

• The amount of people who have/expect to have no children is steady, at 22% of 18-45s and 25% of 46+
• The real gap is in those with families of three or more children. Only 19% of people 18-45 expect to have that many kids, while 27% of 46+ do 

The decline in the fertility rate is mostly due to people choosing to have smaller families. They are making that choice for a myriad of reasons – not just economic but also social and cultural. Yes, we should try to improve material conditions in Australia so people can have a bigger family if they want to.

But overall it is a good thing that women who don’t feel they are in the right circumstance to have more children can choose not to, just as it’s a good thing that women who don’t want any children can choose to remain child-free. 

It wasn’t so long ago that you would be having the third or fourth child anyway, even if you didn’t really want to. We do not want to return to the lack of autonomy, for anyone. 

The forced birth movement is back

It is also impossible to talk about Australian fertility rates, parenthood, feminism and choice in 2026 without mentioning the renewed attacks on reproductive rights. Emboldened by the campaign against abortion in Trump’s America, far-right politicians in the Katter Party, One Nation, the Liberal Party and others are trying the same tactics here. 

Robbie Katter, son of Bob, keeps trying to revisit his so-far failed attempts to reset Queensland abortion laws to what they were in the 1800s. And although he hasn’t had any success, the rise of One Nation’s popularity and media-domination is changing the landscape, put women’s autonomy at real risk.

The South Australian parliament is facing the third attempt to change the state’s abortion laws in just two years. Former One Nation, no independent, upper house member Sarah Game has introduced a bill to ban late term abortions. This is the second time she’s tried to get the bill up – she previously put the changes forward in November 2025, but was voted down 8-11. After the most recent state election, the SA upper house has three new One Nation members who are likely to support the bill. Fortunately, the lower house is still dominated by Labor and unlikely to make this bill law. But it’s a marker of how quickly things can change in six months. 

Elsewhere, One Nation’s ‘star’ recruit Barnaby Joyce spoke at an anti-abortion rally in Sydney on Tuesday night. The event was organised by Joanna Howe, a forced-birth campaigner who has been accused of threatening and intimidating politicians to the point that she is banned from some parts of the South Australian parliament building. The Sydney is based on the disinformation that there has been a rise in sex-selective abortions in Australia (i.e.: the termination of female fetuses). The NSW data show 3 suspected cases of sex-selective abortions out of 15,973 total abortions in 2020 – a rate of 0.018%.

Howe, One Nation and their supporters want to introduce laws that on the surface would “outlawing” sex-selective abortions. How would that even be possible? Anti-abortion campaigners point to prenatal testing for chromosomal abnormalities (in Australia the NIPT test), which also reveals the gender of the fetus. 

Joyce at least acknowledged one truth at the rally: the anti-abortion movement is very unpopular in Australia. “Politically, does this make you popular? No, you'd probably lose half your votes every time you do it.” A 2026 poll found that 87% of people support abortion access, including the majority of One Nation voters. That won’t stop Joyce, Pauline Hanson and the rest from trying to make abortion illegal again if given the chance. 

As much as some would like to keep the fertility rate as a purely economic metric, it’s so much more than that. It’s political, social and cultural too. It’s human. We can’t “fix” the fertility rate without a discussion that considers the entirety of the issue.