We drew on research papers and books that tackle discourse, concepts, and questions of terminology related to sexual and reproductive health and rights at the international level from the post-World War II period until Cairo 1994. We believe that to fully understand the local impact of the Cairo conference, four axes must be investigated historically. The first of these is understanding the nature and forms of the family from a local perspective, taking into account the various factors that impacted the structure of the family and women’s positions within it. This leads to the second axis, which is an exploration of how population policies of the post-independence Egyptian state dealt with the family as the first site of intervention to create model citizens. As we are concerned with conceptualizing the feminist movement as a political one, the third axis concerns the methods employed by the feminist movement to engage with the state’s population policies in the twentieth century and how it addressed the family and women’s bodies. Finally, we explore women’s positionality in the various structures of power, as well as examining the impact of these discourses on limiting women’s lives to their reproductive roles and at the same time excluding them from contributing to the formulation of these policies and discourses.