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Marital Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Women’s Autonomy and Socioeconomic Situation Matter?

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Abstract

One key hypothesis that has received considerable attention in recent family discourse is the notion that improvements in women’s socioeconomic circumstances (also called female autonomy) has a positive effect on familial processes and outcomes such as marital instability. Absent from this debate are cross-cultural research that test the applicability of these findings with non-U.S. data. We use representative data from Ghana to explore whether dimensions of women’s autonomy have the hypothesized positive effect on divorce processes in Africa. Consistent with findings from the United States, results from our African data demonstrate that women’s autonomy has a positive effect on divorce. This observation is true not only with the use of conventional autonomy measures such as work and education, but also with regard to institutional measures of autonomy such as matrilineal kinship ties.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA

    Baffour K. Takyi & Christopher L. Broughton

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  1. Baffour K. Takyi
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  2. Christopher L. Broughton
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Additional information

Baffour K. Takyi, Department of Sociology, Olin 266, The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-1905; e- mail: btakyi@uakron.edu.

Christopher L. Broughton, Department of Sociology, Olin 266, The University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-1905; e-mail: Christopher.L.Broughton@cmsdnet.net.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the North Central Sociological Society, April 13–16, 2000, Pittsburgh, PA.

We are grateful to several anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Appendix

Appendix

Table A1. Characteristics of the Respondents Used in the Analyses: Ghana 1993 & 1998

Table A1 Characteristics of the Respondents Used in the Analyses: Ghana 1993 & 1998
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Takyi, B.K., Broughton, C.L. Marital Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa: Do Women’s Autonomy and Socioeconomic Situation Matter?. J Fam Econ Iss 27, 113–132 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-005-9006-3

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