“Saving Muslim women” : how language justifies intervention through USAID family planning programs in Pakistan between 1965-1979 and 2001-2018.
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"“It is problematic to construct the Muslim woman as someone in need of saving. When you save someone, you imply that you are saving her from something. You are also saving her to something” (Abu-Lughod, 2013, pg 46). The ‘saving women’ trope placed all Muslim women into the category of oppressed, and into a binary relationship with the Western, liberated, implicitly non-Muslim, woman. It focused on Western voices speaking for the Muslim women, rather than their own perspectives, which were often ignored or disregarded. Abu-Lughod continues, ”Projects of saving other women depend on and reinforce a sense of superiority, and are a form of arrogance that deserves to be challenged” (Abu-Lughod, 2013, pg 47). While the post-9/11 “War on Terror” is often cited as the moment ‘saving Muslim women’ became central to US foreign policy, the legitimization of intervention as a means of ‘saving’ has deep roots. The US has consistently tried to ‘save’ foreign nations for decades, and the centrality of women in this agenda is nothing new. To what extent had this ‘saving women’ mission contributed to the US neoimperial agenda since WWII and how had it evolved? In this paper I will argue that programs pertaining to “population control” and “family planning” in the 1960-70s also exemplify the discursive logic of the “saving Muslim women” rhetoric. For non-US women, these programs were not just about health or empowerment, but a means of exerting political and social control, with their reproductive bodies as the battleground. Constructed narratives of need and overpopulation positioned non-US women as requiring the salvation of the West, often through relationships with the Western woman. These narratives targeted Muslim-majority countries, which were also seen as ‘less developed.’ The Agency that employed this Western salvation and development rhetoric more than any other was the United States Agency of International Development (USAID). The United States State Department began formally managing foreign assistance programs in 1955 with the establishment of the International Cooperation Administration. This predecessor to USAID was dissolved in 1961, by the Foreign Assistance Act which established USAID for the first time. Where, how, and to whom the economic and developmental assistance was given reflects US foreign relations and agendas. The Food for Peace Act of 1966 was the first official declaration of a US War on Hunger by Lyndon B. Johnson.¹ Emerging from a period of decolonization, the fear from the “developed” countries was that there would not be enough food to feed the population, and the burden would fall on their nations to support the “less developed” countries’ hungry population. As newly independent nations, the US and the Soviet Union fought to establish their alliances in the midst of the Cold War. Increases in aid and military support were motivated by this. Intervention in these forms also served as a way for the US to retain some social control lost in the decades prior². The increase in interventions for the purpose of fighting the War on Hunger effectively furthered the divide between “the West” and the “rest” (Hall, 2018, pg 209). Some agencies worked towards increasing production of genetically modified crops overseas and expanding the world food supply and access to it. Other programs sought to minimize the population itself, lessening the projected burden of care. The Population Council was established in the US in 1952, and the Family Planning Association of Pakistan in 1953, both of which have closely partnered with the USAID since its founding. An exemplary case of this kind of USAID intervention can be evidenced in the Muslim-majority country of Pakistan. Pakistan gained independence from the British Crown in 1947 through the Indian Independence Act which created India and Pakistan as separate, independent nations. The Act separated the land into dominions, which were separated based on religion, resulting in a massive, forced migration of Muslim, Hindi, and Sikh peoples³. The two nations have gone to war in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999. Each time, the allegedly allied American response was deemed less than adequate by Pakistan, and a relationship of abandonment and distrust perpetuated. As Daniel Markey describes, “the US has been the more fickle partner, its approach to Pakistan shifting dramatically across the decades. Pakistan, however, has been guilty of greater misrepresentation, claiming support for American purposes while turning US partnership to other ends. Consequently, both sides failed repeatedly to build a relationship to serve beyond the immediate needs of the day.” (Markey, 2013). This complicated relationship can be seen in the varying levels of economic assistance as shown below: Neither Pakistan nor the US are completely aligned or opposed to the other, yet even a cooperative relationship has at times seemed impossible. Since its independence in 1947, Pakistan has relied on US military and economic assistance, the US on Pakistan’s geographical location for its counter terrorism efforts, but the diplomatic relationship lacks trust or transparency. The American perception of Pakistan changes under each administration swinging like a pendulum between “extremes of ungrounded exuberance and overstated fear” (Markey, 2013). While the reason for involvement may have changed over time, it remains that Pakistan has been a US development site for decades. Pakistan has been a consistent recipient of US foreign assistance since the creation of the USAID in 1961 and continued to receive aid until January 2025. USAID serves as a particularly revealing case study for examining how the “saving Muslim women” rhetoric has operated and evolved as a means of control as it links development assistance to US strategic interests. With one of the highest birth and poverty rates in the 1960s, Pakistan was a target for those concerned with overpopulation. Again, in the early 2000s, as a Muslim majority country, and neighbor to Afghanistan, Pakistan was an important agent in the War on Terror. The financial assistance Pakistan received through USAID during these two eras- the Cold War (1965-1979) and the War on Terror (2001-2018) reveals how Muslim women’s bodies became the justification for intervention framed as humanitarian necessity. Their experience demonstrates that the language of empowerment, health, and education that justified invasive family planning programs functioned as a tool of control and established rhetorical patterns that would emerge into the explicit “saving Muslim women” discourse decades later. For these reasons, I argue that Pakistan serves as a telling example of the programs and aid missions led by USAID. Neither an ally or enemy, in conflict or in communion, it allows us to see the ways in which these programs targeted predominantly Muslim women as a means to continuing the US neo-imperial agenda. USAID’s involvement in Pakistan reveals how Muslim women became the center of justification for intervention through humanitarian aid. The rhetoric used in USAID’s family planning programs of the 1950-60s in Pakistan positioned women as in need of saving from themselves, by other women. When the same programs were reinvented in the early 2000s, women remained in need of saving, but this time from the patriarchy, by their husbands. This analysis reveals that the ‘saving women’ narrative had justified foreign aid intervention through family planning since 1965." -- Introduction