Lopa Banerjee’s Opening Remarks — Outsummit Panel Discussion: “We are pro-family. We are pro-children.”

"Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much to Outright International — our longstanding partner and ally — for including UN Women in this important dialogue. It’s a privilege to join you all at Outsummit and to be part of this conversation that speaks to what it truly means to be “pro-family” and “pro-children”.

Across history, the idea of family has never been neutral. From the time it was recognized as a social construct, it has been a site of politics —informed, influenced and tied to the project of the state itself. In that sense it has been a site of both resistance and compliance. It has also been a site of creativity and solidarity.

The “modern” idea of the family — as binary, heteronormative, and reproductive — was codified through the legal frameworks of European colonial powers. The “genes” of colonial law trace back to Roman law and English customary law, filtered through Enlightenment rationalism, mercantile capitalism, and imperial expansion. Therefore, these legal codes were not only about who could marry whom. They were about population control, about defining civilization against “barbarism,” about deciding who belonged in the national body and who could be excluded from it. The idea of “protecting the family,” harks back to this history — where the hegemonic state and the normative family are entwined as instruments of control.

The family is not and has never been a private institution; it is a site of public authority and a way of signalling who counts as a “good citizen,” whose children are valued, and whose lives are expendable. This link between family and state control has resurfaced in powerful ways. We see it in policies that restrict trans and intersex children’s access to affirming care; in the policing of education and sexuality; and in the glorification of a single, rigid vision of what families should be. This is linked to the idea of an “orderly” state — one whose “security” depends on suppressing pluralism and dissent. In this worldview, diversity, dialogue, and debate are seen not as strengths of a democratic society, but as threats to state stability. Security itself becomes militarized, defined through control rather than through social cohesion and tolerance.

Fundamentalism, fascism, and the dominance of capital markets — with their strict adherence to fiscal capital over social capital — further reinforce these narrow prescriptions of family. They combine to produce a system where care is devalued, social solidarity is weakened, and the feminist relationship with the state becomes distorted. In this state, feminist politics are increasingly de-politicized and feminist activism is criminalized — pushing women’s rights organizations away from advocacy and movement building toward service provision. This shift, in turn, is legitimized and resourced, reinforcing the state’s role as a controller rather than an enabler of equality.

Historically, regimes have used the idea of “protecting the family” to legitimize authoritarian power, define racial or ethnic purity and control reproduction. Today, similar narratives re-emerge around “demographics” — fears of aging populations, fertility decline, or “cultural replacement” — all tied to anxieties about sovereignty and national identity. These demographic anxieties are also tied to notions of “capital security,” border control, and migration — where mobility, labour, and belonging are managed within a hyper-capitalist,
profit-driven economy that prizes market stability over shared democratic governance.

What we see is the convergence of demographic politics, capital control, and authoritarianism — all converging at the site of the family, where social order is policed and difference is disciplined. And that is why non-normative, queer, and chosen families are so threatening to these narratives: because they embody plurality, collectivization, and care beyond control. They remind us that belonging is not given by the state; it is built through love and community.

At UN Women, our work on families has shown that how we define the family is not only about culture; it determines who receives state support, who counts in policy, and who is made invisible. When laws, budgets, and service delivery models are designed around a
narrow, heteronormative idea of family, they systematically exclude single parents, queer families, older persons, people with disabilities, and those living outside formal marriage structures.

This is not only a moral question; it’s a question of accountability. 

When the state focuses its resources solely on so-called “traditional” families, it reduces its accountability to the full diversity of its citizens. It privatizes care and shifts responsibility onto women, onto families, onto elders, onto young people, and away from the public sphere. That is why UN Women’s report on families emphasizes the need to see families as diverse social units embedded in broader economic and social systems.

So, when state and non-state actors position themselves as “pro-family” or “pro-children,” and we interrogate this, we see how they are not protecting children — they are instead, protecting a narrow and exclusionary model of the state that justifies limited service delivery and access for a few, instead of for all. Such actors use the family as a proxy for control —control over women’s and queer people’s bodies, over sexuality, over the right to self-determination.

But our response cannot simply be defensive. We must proactively define and reclaim these
concepts:

• To be “pro-family” is to invest in care systems that sustain all families — recognizing, as UN Women’s Progress of the World’s Women report shows, that unpaid care work powers the global economy. Women perform more than three-quarters of total unpaid care work worldwide, a contribution valued at over 9% of global GDP. Emerging cross-national research also finds that same-sex couples tend to share care work more equally than different-sex couples. Supporting diverse families therefore means valuing and redistributing care — not only within households but through public investment and policy.
• To be “pro-children” is to ensure that every child grows up affirmed, loved, and safe — with access to inclusive education, health, and social protection. The Gender Snapshot 2025 shows that without transformative investment in care, 110 million more women and girls will remain in poverty by 2030.
• And to be “pro-humanity” is to recognize that equality strengthens social cohesion, not weakens it — as UN Women’s Women’s Rights in Review report highlights, feminist movements are engines of democratic renewal and resilience.

As we commemorate Beijing+30, approach the deadline of the 2030 Agenda, and contemplate the future of multilateralism itself, these questions are not peripheral — they are at heart of how we define equality, democracy, and the social contract. Because the
family — as a site of care and love — is also a site of justice, if we ensure that policies, laws, and norms reflect plurality, not control.

UN Women continues to work alongside feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements — through our Push Forward Strategy and the Beijing+30 Action Agenda — to challenge exclusionary narratives, build solidarity across movements, and ensure that equality frameworks in law, policy, and service delivery reflect the real diversity of human lives.

So, when we say we are pro-family, we are asserting something profound: That love, care, and solidarity cannot be legislated into uniformity. That inclusion, not control, sustains societies. And that when every family can exist with dignity, the state itself becomes stronger — not weaker.

Thank you."