Fertility Behaviour and Women's Empowerment in Oyo State

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between women’s empowerment and fertility behaviour in Ibadan Metropolis.  Data for this paper was collected using systematic random sampling technique; the respondents were women aged 15-49years.  The data included descriptive information on the characteristics of husbands and wives.  Ordinal and Logistic regression were used as statistical tools.  The paper found that women’s empowerment affects their fertility. Fifty-one per cent of the respondents are not using any family planning method, while majority of them have formal education of at least primary school education.  It was also found that the discussion of the number of children to have significantly affects women’s fertility.  From the findings, encouraging both sexes to have more education will be important and necessary to increase the chances of women’s empowerment.  Furthermore, encouraging women to make use of family planning methods will be important and necessary to reduce women’s fertility.

Keywords: Fertility, Empowerment, Family Planning, Reproductive rights, Autonomy