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This paper applies the astronomers’ concept of the “Goldilocks Zone” (planets at a distance “just right” from their star to keep water liquid) to issues of fertility, as well as gender and development. It takes a cross-historical and global approach: The paper first summarizes the gender division of labor in foraging, horticulture and both rain-fed (dry) and irrigated rice (wet) agriculture. Only rain-fed agriculture involved men almost exclusively in production, so women lacked the precondition for subsequent economic power – the key variable in my theories of gender stratification and gender and development. Today, countries with that heritage, in the Middle East-North Africa [MENA]/South Asia, have the lowest female labor force participation rates and remain the most gender-unequal, hurting their development. Women were important producers in the two irrigated rice regions, East and Southeast Asia, but controlled income only in in Southeast Asia. Today, East Asia and Southeast Asia have done better at development. But East Asia faces a fertility crash while gender-egalitarian Southeast Asia surges ahead. Meanwhile, sub-Saharan Africa remains a largely shifting-horticulture, female-farming region where women’s fertility is the world’s highest: Land is male-owned and women can’t get new plots every several years; proliferating weeds intensify their labor burden and require child labor, exacerbating the region’s gender gap in primary education. The region’s too-high fertility threatens global population stabilization by 2050. East Asia’s fertility is the world’s lowest, with problems of aging populations that soon will extend almost world-wide. Theory, followed by policy suggestions are presented.