Population policies and family planning programmes are at crossroads now. Population policies continue to be driven by demographic goals sometimes even neglecting women’s basic sexual and reproductive health needs. It is important to make comprehensive reproductive health services available affordable and acceptable to women in developing societies. Realizing women’s rights and achieving the Millennium Development Goals mainly depends on strengthening accountability for commitments to women and gender equality. The delivery of public services is the most direct measure of governmental accountability to women. The linkages between population policies gender equality and provision of reproductive health services are so complex and interrelated.

It is against this backdrop that this volume is being brought out. This volume contains 21 research papers dealing with issues of population gender and reproductive health from seven Asian countries viz. India Bangladesh Indonesia Thailand Iran Nepal and Sri Lanka. It brings together a rare combination of social scientists demographers health specialists women activists policy makers and NGOs to share their experiences and concerns on these wide ranging issues.