Shifting Norms, Shifting Desires? The Role of Context in the Association between Gender Attitudes and Fertility Ideals among Young Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Juliette De Vestel , Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Sylvie Gadeyne, VUB

High fertility ideals, reinforced by sociocultural norms around gender and family, slow fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). While egalitarian gender attitudes have been linked to lower fertility desires, evidence remains mixed in this region. This study examines how the association between gender attitudes and fertility preferences is moderated by local norms and national context among girls and women aged 15–24. Using individual- and community-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys in 37 SSA countries, we estimate pooled multilevel Poisson models relating attitudes towards wife beating to the ideal number of children, including cross-level interactions to assess moderation. We find that women who tolerate wife beating prefer more children than those who do not (IRR=1.05, p<0.001), and this difference is larger in communities where these beliefs are more common. This moderation is amplified in more developed countries (higher Human Development Index (HDI)) and in countries with greater gender inequality (higher Gender Inequality Index (GII)). As human development rises, women who do not tolerate wife beating express markedly lower ideals, particularly in clusters where patriarchal norms remain salient, whereas tolerant women remain closer to pronatalist norms, widening the gap in desired fertility. By contrast, as gender inequality declines (lower GII), fertility preferences of both groups converge towards lower ideals, resulting in a more modest gap, even in communities with a high tolerance of wife beating. The findings highlight substantial contextual heterogeneity in the association between gender attitudes and fertility ideals among young women in SSA.

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 Presented in Session P3. Families, Fertility, and the Life Course 3