In the last decade, most of the organizations involved in this sector have begun to focus increasingly on the status of women; but the language of "population" remains. From population reports to population bureaus, the infrastructure is named to solve a symptom of the problem, rather than the problem itself. 

All this means that in the 200,000 years since Homo Sapiens took her first steps across the African plains, just 57 billion people have ever lived. Astonishingly that means over 12% of all the people ever born are walking the planet at this very moment. Or to put it another way: one in eight people who have ever been born are alive today.