Effect of Household Autonomy and Communication on Unmet Needs of Contraceptives among Married Women in West Africa.

Ridwan Shittu, Federal University Oye-Ekiti,Ekiti State
Sarafa Shittu, Federal University Oye-Ekiti,Ekiti State
Sunday Abatan, Federal University Oye

This study examined effect of household autonomy and communication on the unmet need for contraceptives among married women in West Africa. The cross-sectional datasets were from Demographic and Health Surveys for twelve West African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. The respondents selected for this study were 68823 married women who are currently or recently sexually active. The findings reported that overall prevalence of unmet needs for spacing and limiting children in West Africa was 24.7% and 11.2%, respectively. The multivariate analysis using binary logistics regression showed that women's autonomy in decision-making is associated with lower unmet needs for limiting children when the husband alone decided on how to spend respondents' earnings (AOR= 1.27, CI=1.07-1.51), respondent’s health (AOR=0.64, CI=0.53-0.77), large household purchases(AOR=0.81, CI=0.67-0.99) and visits to family or relatives (AOR=0.84, CI=0.71-0.99) and when joint decision was made for not using contraception participants were less likely to had unmet needs for spacing children (AOR=0.86, CI=0.79-0.95). The study concluded that unmet needs of contraceptives vary significantly across countries in West Africa. The study ascertained the need to empower women within households to make decisions about their health, finances, and family planning.

Keywords: Family Planning and Contraception, Families, Unions and Households, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Computational social science methods

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