“They Should Be Open to Setting Their Partners Free”: a Qualitative Analysis of Gender and Sexual and Reproductive Decision-Making and Contraceptive Use in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria

Joe Strong, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Ernestina Coast, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
Jamaica Corker, Independent Researcher
Funmilola OlaOlorun, University of Ibadan
Amos Nsabwe, AFIDEP
Naa Dodua Dodoo, African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP)
Nurudeen Alhassan, African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP)

Critical work has highlighted the impact of gender within interpersonal decisions of contraceptive use among couples; less work has considered the manifestations of these practices and their linkages to the interpersonal, community, and structural environments. We use framework analysis to analyse rich qualitative data from women and men in urban and rural sites in four African countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. We interrogate how gender manifests and is contested within discussions of sex, reproduction, and contraceptive decision-making. Data emphasise how gendered practices were critical in shaping freedoms to make sexual and reproductive choices and how these influenced contraceptive use/non-use. Gendered practices were reinforced through privileged access to certain institutions; economic systems strengthened patriarchal notions of partnered men as head of households who could claim decision making. This creates gendered conditions that women navigate through decisions around (covert) contraceptive non-/use. Gendered configurations of sexuality were implicated in the types of contraceptives that particularly women felt able to use. We argue that examining gendered configurations of practice provides necessary and novel insights into capacity to exercise rights to use/not use contraception, as well as the conditions of injustice that curtail sexual and reproductive health, wellbeing, and rights.

Keywords: Gender Dynamics, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Family Planning and Contraception, Qualitative data/methods/approaches

See extended abstract.