Awareness and Utilization of Birth Control Measures as a Means of Increasing Production Output Among Rural Women in Fishing Communities of Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

In spite of women huge labour investment, rural women often get low agricultural production, less accruing returns, limited roles in decision making on the farms and lack of access to productive resources as a result of their multiple roles in the home. Nevertheless, to enhance the level of production of these women, their reproductive health needs to be taken seriously and one way to do that is through promotion of birth control practices that help to minimize manday losses during pregnancy period and burden of raising many children. Hence this study was carried out to look at Awareness and Utilization of Birth Control Measures (BCM) as a Means of increasing production output among Rural Women in Fishing Communities of Lagos State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was used to select three hundred and thirty-one respondents in the coastal areas.  Data were collected with interview guide and analysed using descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC) and linear regression analysis. Results of the study showed that the mean age of respondents was 40.1 years; 88.8% were married; 79.5% had formal education; 78.5% realized more than ₦31,000/month; 59.8% practiced nuclear family; and 63.4% had less than 4 children in their households. Also, 83.4% and 91.5% of the respondents were aware of traditional and modern methods of birth control measures respectively. But, 49.8% always used Combined Oral Contraceptives and 44.4% always used injectable contraceptives of modern birth control measures. Health Care Providers (85.5%), radio (66.5%) and television (81.3%) were the predominant sources of information on BCM in the coastal areas. Most of respondents strongly agreed that the use of BCM allows women’ notable participation in more fish processing activities thereby contributing significantly to women’ earning power (82.2%), and it reduces poverty by contributing to economy of the family, community and national level (75.5%). Similarly, production output was high after use of BCM (more than 10kg/day) than before use of BCM (less than 4kg/day). However, sexual displeasure from contraceptive use (92.4%), fear of side effect (83.7%), and fear of infidelity among women (25.1%) have been identified as most serious constraints to the use of BCM. Results of correlation revealed a significant relationship between socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and use of BCM in the study area at p < 0.05 level of significance. Linear regression indicated that utilization of BCM has significant influence on the production output of the respondents (t = 2.05, p = 0.04) at p < 0.05 level of significance. The study concluded that use of BCM increase production output in the coastal areas. It is hereby recommended that Health Care Providers should keep on emphasizing the advantages of birth control measures to the fish processors to encourage them to adopt and use it.

Keywords: Awareness, Utilization, Birth Control Measures (BCM), production output, Rural Women