these include the rising age of marriage greater social and legal recognition of a diversity of partnership forms declines in birth rates as women are better able to choose whether and when to have children and how many and womens increased economic autonomy these transformations are both causes and consequences of largescale demographic changes dramatic shifts in women and girls access to education and employment ideational and normative changes and legal reform often driven and inspired by womens activism concerted efforts to roll back the achievements of many decades of work for gender equality by those who deny women the right to make their own decisions have recently been cloaked in the rhetoric of family values