Gender Relationship and Unmet Need for Family Planning among Married Women in Cameroon

Willy Adrien Yakam Yemtchoua, Institut de Formation et de Recherche Démographiques (IFORD) and CARE-IFA

In the Cameroonian society, where the decision’s power on the family is especially the man’s duty, socio-cultural factors such as gender relationship are problems encountered during the promotion of family planning. This paper aims to examine the influence of gender relationship on the unmet need for family planning. Our study hypothesis is that decision-making process, spousal discussion and husband’s opinion concerning family planning influence the risk for a woman to have an unmet need for family planning services. We used data from the DHS-MICS 2011, a national survey with 9805 married women aged between 15-49 years. Multivariate logistic regression was used to highlight the effect of the gender relationship on the unmet need for family planning. The relationship remained significant even when taking into account the influence of other factors such as woman’s education and his occupation. Consequently, male involvement in family planning program should be encouraged in Cameroon.