Participation in the webinar “Pronatalism and Overpopulation, challenging the social pressures to procreate”

Jul 19, 2021 | Environment, Overpopulation & Climate Breakdown, Past Projects

Participation in the webinar “Pronatalism and Overpopulation, challenging the social pressures to procreate”

On the 7th of July this year, Nandita Bajaj, the new executive director of the organization “World Population Balance” hosted a very interesting webinar with subject “Pronatalism and Overpopulation, challenging the social pressures to procreate”.

Quoting what was written on the event page:

In a lead up to World Population Day on July 11th, join us for this expert panel and Q&A event on Wed, July 7th to discuss and challenge the root cause of overpopulation – pronatalism: the social pressures to procreate that keep us from achieving true reproductive autonomy.
The decision to have children or not is arguably one of the most important decisions we make in our lives. It is largely regarded as a personal isolated decision and a natural right of passage into adulthood. But how personal really is our decision to have a child? On this panel and Q&A, we will explore the concept and roots of pronatalism, its intimate connection with overpopulation, and its impacts on our identity, on other humans, animals, and the environment.
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Panelists
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Dr. Amrita Nandy (Scholar, India)
Elisabeth Dimitras (Researcher, Greece)
Laura Carroll (Author, U.S.)
Orna Donath (Scholar, Israel)
Moderator
Nandita Bajaj (Executive Director, World Population Balance)
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It was such an honor to participate in that webinar with these great women from all over the world and it went very well as it had around 90 people who attended and many others interested who couldn’t attend at that time but they wanted to watch it later so we are grateful that it has been recorded. My participation came as a result of my appearance at the 1st episode of the Guardian mini documentary series “Europe’s baby bust” which you can watch (and read more about it) here.
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You can watch the whole webinar here:

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The most important question I have been asked to answer was about the way Homo Sapiens is affecting other animals, you can listen to my answer here:

The other two questions were related to pronatalism in Greece (what is driving it) and to comment on why I find problematic programs such as the one Hope Genesis is running (Greek NGO that helps Greek women who live in remote areas to have kids, the founder participates as well at the Guardian documentary).

Here are these topics:

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I am grateful to Nandita and WPB for having invited me and for everyone’s patience with my technical difficulties that made it a bit hard for the audience to follow. That was a result of trying to keep alive a very old laptop due to my consistency to my values (or stubbornness) but I got the lesson and I now allowed myself at last to buy a new one. 🙂