Dadzie, Louis Kobina, Yengnone, Hilda, Frimpong, James Boadu, Agbaglo, Ebenezer, Seidu, Abdul-Aziz, and Ahinkorah, Bright Opoku (2024) Association between women's empowerment and fertility preferences in Ghana. International Health, 16. pp. 512-522.

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Abstract

As Ghana has embraced the concept of women’s empowerment as a vital tool for sustainable development, it has become crucial to evaluate the role that women’s empowerment plays in the fertility preferences of married and cohabiting women in the country. The study's objective was to examine the association between women's empowerment, the ideal number of children and women's ability to have their desired number of children. This cross-sectional study used data from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. Both Poisson and binary logistic regression analyses were carried out. Women who had justification for wife-beating (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 0.98 [95% confidence interval {CI} 0.96 to 0.99]) and those who were autonomous (IRR 0.94 [95% CI 0.93 to 0.95]) had lower rates of having the ideal number of children. Moreover, women who had justification for wife-beating (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 1.25 [95% CI 1.13 to 1.39]) and those who were involved in decision-making (aOR 1.31 [95% CI 1.19 to 1.44]) had higher odds of having the ability to have the desired number of children. However, autonomous women (aOR 0.78 [95% CI 0.71 to 0.86]) had lower odds of having the ability to have the desired number of children. Significant associations were found between women's empowerment (women's attitude towards justification for wife-beating, autonomy), an ideal number of children and the ability to have the desired number of children. These findings present target areas for policies and interventions aimed at determining Ghanaian women's fertility preferences and empowering them.

Item ID:	85477
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1876-3405
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Date Deposited:	14 May 2025 01:16
FoR Codes:	42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4206 Public health > 420606 Social determinants of health @ 100%
SEO Codes:	20 HEALTH > 2005 Specific population health (excl. Indigenous health) > 200509 Women's and maternal health @ 100%
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