quickly than those of their male counterparts. Among the relevant evidence, are the, escalations in births out of wedlock, the increasing numbers of women and their children living separately from the fathers of the children and the growing numbers
of female-headed households. , ** - •
. * ■ . "i '.i ""'.'■ i
4. Unequal spouses - Women in general have less schooling, fewer material.assets and fewer opportunities for well-paid jobs than men. In addition, given their physiological burdens as wives and their much greater burdens of domestic work, they are at a distinct disadvantage vis~&-vis their husbands and frequently unable to establish intimate egalitarian relationships within which planning and goal sharing in the most intimate areas of conjugal life are possible.
They are thus at a serious disadvantage in negotiating sexual relations and' reproductive and health outcomes.
5. Dependence upon children - In contexts of kin dispersal, ecological pressures, environmental stress and economic disasters and growing burdens of labour-intensive work, increasing numbers of women depend upon their children for current survival, and future security. Failure to adopt and disseminate appropriate technologies to decrease the burdens of household drudgery and the escalating environmental stresses, mean that domestic activities are taking up more time and energy of mothers and their ' children, at the expense of other activities. This has serious policy implications, both
economic and demographic. ...
Concluding comment
As was recently clearly enunciated at the UN Expert Group Meeting on Population and Women, held in Gaborone, official discourse on population issues is largely de-gendered and detached from actual relations between living women and men, and continues to be dominated by demographic projections rather than a commitment to women's interests (Postel, 1992). Similarly, discussions on family planning are rarely embedded in consideration of family systems and how these are changing, as a result of macro-political, economic and demographic forces.
The. aim of this paper is to help to put "gender issues" and family systems squarely in the centre of such future discourse on population and development in sub-Saharan Africa.
POP/PAC.3/92/Inf.5 Page 30
Notes:
1. e.g. Ahmed (1992:ix) on the Gambia, where recently an ILO study has shown that the proportion reaches almost 64 per cent with 70 per cent of urban households food deficient. Large and polygynous households and public sector wage earners are the worst hit.
2. A.recent UNECA (1990) study has indicated that in many countries in the region the statutory law affecting women is often overridden by the customary law, especially with respect to marriage and family spheres, where women are still treated as minors and subordinate to men.
"The evidence reveals considerable discrimination against women in many societies, particularly in the granting or losing of citizenship, in access to public work and in inheritance and property rights of married women. Given these discriminatory practices women cannot enjoy their rights as equal citizens, despite the existence of several international conventions and national laws."
Women's legal status is recognized as a major stumbling block to their achievement of equality (UNECA, 1987).
3. in the region Botswana is an exception to the regional patterns of extensive socially embedded employment of women.
Greenhalgh (1991) has attested from her literature review that there are few studies which contain detailed discussions of women's economic status and the organization of both family and
firm.
4. Bas (1989) has recently described forms of on-the-job training which are very widespread, noting advantages, defects and new trends. The proposal to grant subsidies to master craftsmen training apprentices could be very cost effective and efficient, in comparison with current internationally subsidized formal training costs.
5. "Progress towards equal opportunities for women is slow, constrained by socio cultural factors, stereotypes of women's work and aspirations on the part of policymakers and planners -almost all of them men - and by the multiple roles played by many women, particularly the poor"
(ibid. p. 20). Women are viewed as having born the brunt of structural adjustment policies in the eighties (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1989).
6. Turshen (1991:5) ... "the first condition for women's health is peace for without personal security no one can preserve the material gains of their labour. The second condition is food security. Without it the need to assure subsistence becomes a full-time preoccupation especially for women, who supply most or all of the food eaten in the household. A third condition is gainful employment."
7. ■ Ga traders have been singled out as among the most independent of women with access to female run rotating credit associations which foster a wide range of business dealings for capital accumulation to information exchange, network building and partner recruitment (Greenhalgh, 1991, citing Robertson, 1984). The women's money went on children's education. Half of their children were financed mainly by their mothers. Loans to kin were prevalent, - 70 per cent had loaned money to mainly family kin. Husbands were increasingly refusing to honour their traditional obligations.
Page 31 8. Intensive anthropological micro-level, research is required to see how such small businesses operate. Few such studies are accounted to have been done to date {Greenhalgh, 1991). The close interconnectedness of the family and business organization is, however, relatively, well-established. There are few economic studies in the development literature which focus on the family/firm connection. Greenhalgh (1991) cites Lipton (1984) as a lone example. Lipton, however, omits family power and gender concerns (see Lynch, 1984). Participation in informal sector enterprises does not necessarily empower women in some larger way, but it may be the main means to ensuring child survival and development. .,,.,..
9. See, for example, Oppong (1973) regarding the reluctance of parents in the muslimized kingdom of Dagbon in Northern,Ghana to send all their children to school, especially.girls whom
they feared,would be spoilt. ', . . i. - -n~
10. See Population Reference Bureau (1992). In Botswana,.Ghana, Kenya, Liberia and Togo more than half of the teenagers with sexual experience were not married. In contrast in Burundi and Mali sexual activity takes place mainly within marriage.
11. Data from the DHS indicate that contraceptive use among 'currently, married teenage girls ranges from 25 per cent in Zimbabwe to 1 per cent in Nigeria. For the unmarried teenagers, however, the indications are that contraceptive use ranges from 25 per cent to less than 5 per cent in Kenya. See Piripiri L. et al (1989) regarding needs for contraception.iv _ . , ,
12. 15 to 20 per cent of all births occur to teenagers. This proportion is far higher than any other region of the world. In a Kenyan study (1988) poverty and the existence of "sugar daddies"
were seen as major influences. . , . , ,. :
13. Data from 13 African countries have shown that adolescents in the teenage years represent between 39 to 72 per cent of all women presenting with abortion related complications in a number of major hospitals in the region. Recent evidence has indicated that adolescents are more likely to seek abortions from a non-medical person, to seek abortions later in their pregnancies and slower to seek medical help if abortion complications develop. These delays lead to greater complications, more expensive medical treatment and longer stays in hospital and greater morbidity and mortality (IPPF, 1992). See Feyisetan and Pebley (1989) on Nigeria. ,
14. DHS data have given comparative evidence of the extent to which infant mortality is higher among children born to adolescent mothers. Medical evidence has shown the consequences for the bodies of the young girls concerned.
15. In Kenya in 1988 alone about 8,000 teenagers.were forced to drop out of school because of pregnancy in Tanzania in 1984 18,766 primary and secondary school students were expelled
from school due to pregnancy (IPPF, 1,992)!- ' *
16. Makinwa-Adebusoye (1992) and others have reported that many young people, especially males in Nigeria and elsewhere, have multiple sexual partners with little practice of contraception, and little knowledge of human physiology. The implications for sexual disease transmission in
addition to unintended,pregnancy are profound. . »
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17. See, for example, Ajayi et a!. (1991) on Kenya where in a large survey of youth who had received information on reproductive health fewer than 8 per cent could correctly identify the female fertile period. Moreover, an earlier study (Kenya Ministry of Education, 1988) showed that only 15 per cent of schools included methods of contraception in the teaching of reproductive .biology, while some 60 per cent actually approved of including contraception in the curriculum.
18. The important factors to be remembered when designing Family Life Education curricula have been spelt out elsewhere (e.g. Sykes et al., 1992).
19. Meekers (1991) reviewing some of the evidence cites Agounke et al. (1990) on adolescents in Togo among whom 25 per cent of those currently married are in a consensual union and Gohy (1990) on Benin who found consensual unions accounted for only 3.6 per cent of married adolescents. In both of these surveys incidence decreased with age. In the Ivory Coast 20 per
cent of women were found to be in free unions. ■
20. Meekers (1991) cites examples in which consensual unions exhibit lower fertility (Congo and Rwanda) and other cases in which there is no difference (Cameroon). In Botswana women in consensual unions have fewer children but after contrblting for age this difference disappears. It appears that for some women consensual unions are meant to prove their fertility to their future husband, for others child bearing without legal marriage is a means to enforce claims on a man's resources and for still others consensual unions are the result of a change in family values (Meekers, 1991). The Botswana data do not support the idea that women in consensual unions are a modern group of women with more nuclearized family values.
21. See Standing and Kisekka (1989). For example, the sexual expectations and practices of Ekiti Yoruba society have recently been examined over time, in particular the apparent effects of long-term wifely sexual abstinence after birth. Only a modest marginal difference in extra marital sexual episodes was reported for monogamously married men, whether their wives were sexually available to them or not (Caldwell et al., 1992). Moreover extra marital sexual relations were reported by women as well as men and in rural areas especially, as many as a third of these were
with in-laws. ; " '
22. Mainly missing too is the evidence to link disease incidence and transmission with gender and occupations. Although socially and spatially mobile jobs have been implicated in a number of studies and male dominance and power in workplaces linked to rape (the military) and sexual harassment (e.g. border guards). See ILO 1992 Digest on Sexual Protection in the Workplace.
23. Carael (1992) writes "Standard survey procedures often fail to capture the complexity and diversity of unions particulary in urban settings: a man who has a customary marriage in a rural setting cohabits in the city with a regular partner and sometimes stays with more casual partners may be classified simply as married. The "legal" union masks semi-regular or occasional sexual relations which are crucial for the epidemiology of STD and HIV."
24. The case of Lesotho demonstrates an extreme labour migration situation where the massive out-migration of males leads to the absence of a large proportion of adult males. The result of long-term sex imbalance is late marriage, decline of polygyny, increase in marital dissolution and frequent extra marital sexual relations associated' with high levels of prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (Timeaeus and Graham, 1989).
POP/APC:3/92/irif.5 Page 33 25. Caldwell. (1983).indicated that in Ibadan long duration of traditional post-partum sexual abstinence of wives might be a contributing factor. - • . > ! . r
, ■ i . . ■ '■•. •
26. A recent study by Reynolds (1991) in Zimbabwe is an exception.
27. In 1989 the African Regional Tripartite workshop on measures to combat child labour, which ,was held in Cairo, pointed out the need for action aimed at raising public awareness and preventing the worst aspects of child labour. The ILO is currently launching a campaign against child labour in Africa and in February 1992 a sub-regional seminar on child labour in Francophone Africa was held in Dakar (ILO, 1992a).
28. Ratification of the relevant ILO Conventions - and other international instruments - formally commits the countries concerned to take action against child labour though their legislation and practice and international supervision helps them to fulfil this commitment. Obviously, child labour-has its roots in economic and social conditions and above all, in poverty. The elimination of child labour demands action on many fronts: legislation .- ILO standards and laws derived from them;
set the principles and objectives and also provide a conducive environment in which other action including international technical cooperation can be developed and assist in the elimination of the fundamental social problem. : .■ , i
.,>.■■ *
29. Improved understanding of the reasons for the widely varying differences between communities and individuals, and of the factors that control lactational infertility will facilitate development of guidelines for use by health planners and health care administrators in maximizing breast-feeding's contraceptive effect, as well as-promotion of child survival, 'health and development. Practical guidance about when mothers should adopt other contraceptive methods and how to prevent the adverse effect of some hormonal contraceptives on lactation is particularly important (WHO, 1990a).
Where breast-feeding is both frequent and prolonged the length of birth intervals is increased by an estimated 15 to 32 per cent and full orexclusive breast-feeding is more closely associated with longer periods .of lactational amenorrhoea and infertility than is partial or supplemented breast-feeding IWJhJO, 1990a).,!,. . •■ ■■. .<'<:.,
30. -. See, for example, Adegbola's 11987) examination of WFS data which showed that in five;
African countries Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Benin and.Ghana illegitimate children suffer higher mortality, rates, a pattern which increases with age. ■ ■ ■ ' 31. Studies in Sierra Leone have shown that in some southern Mende chiefdoms over 50 per cent of children. If teenage mothers, mostly children under 2 were away from their biological' mothers {Bledsoe, 1991). This is a high proportion in comparison with other findings.
32. , Bledsoe (1991) has also shown among the Mende that there can exist tendencies of some parents to allocate resources to children of most valued conjugal unions, with children of extant unions faring better than those of broken ones (a phenomenon with global supportive evidence).
Bledsoe on the Mende, for example, has documented the ways in which children in Sierra Leone can be at the heart of adult power struggles and how their statuses and relationships to various adults in the household are crucial determinants of allocations of food, clothing, school fees, etc., which they receive. This point is especially relevant to foster children.
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33. Bledsoe (1990:567) points to evidence of higher levels of spoiled pregnancies resulting from out of wedlock births in Sierra Leone and shorter lengthsof breast-feeding. "Genitors are also less likely to support children of women to whom they are not married. Only one in five of children stayed with their mothers when she was not married to their father. The rest were sent to relatives in fostering arrangements. Maternal grandmothers are often the ones who look after illegitimate children.
34. e.g. Blanc and Lloyd (1991) on southern Ghana, regarding kin support in a situation of
escalating divorce and marital dissolution. . - ' . , r
35. See a detailed analysis of Ghanaian data by Lloyd and Brandon (1991).
36. W'thin the context of changing conjugal and kin relations a number of studies have noted the, necessity of distinguishing between formal sector employment and informal sector employment in attempting to assess the relationship between work, contraceptive use. and fertility behaviour
of.women,(e.g. Shapiro and Tambeshe, 1991). ■;.. . v •
37. A number of detailed micro-Ghanaian studies using different socio-economic sectors of the population have demonstrated at the level of domestic power and resource allocation the kinds of changes that can take place as a result of migration, education and salaried employment (Oppong,
1987a; 1987b). '- _ ■ .. ■ • .
38.. The large number of well spaced births, found in earlier studies conducted by Caldwell and
associates in Ibadan. . - . <■ . .■ .
.-39. , Studies of married women of reproductive age per family planning service unit (110) have shown Botswana tobethe most well endowed. < Per capita spending on.family planning has been comparatively high in Zimbabwe (53.11 cents in 1985) and active community based.delivery of:
services has been common in all three countries (Ross et al., -1988). ' ■ "
40. . However, of 704.women's groups on which a Kenya community survey collected data, only-two listed family planning among their activities, which appears a missed opportunity to have such.
groups make family planning programmes more successful, which is a goal of the Kenyan government (ibid.).
41. See the literature review in Watkins (1991). -. :- • :
There is likely to be a more rapid decline than where women's networks are more local and socially homogeneous. A slight lowering of fertility noted in Senegal among the young urban educated and as a result of higher age at marriage, and the lowering of family size desires is likely to lead to increasing use of family planning (Sarr, 1991). .