Fertility ideals are shifting across sub-Saharan Africa, but not in the same way for all young women. In their recent article "Evolving Gender Attitudes and Fertility Preferences: A Study of Young Women in Five Sub-Saharan African Countries" published in Studies in Family Planning, Juliette De Vestel and Sylvie Gadeyne explore how gender attitudes are linked to desired fertility among young women aged 15–24 in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, and Zambia.
Using Demographic and Health Survey data from four survey rounds spanning roughly 15 years, the authors examine whether attitudes towards wife beating are associated with women’s ideal number of children, and how this relationship has evolved over time.
The findings show that, in all five countries, young women who tolerate wife beating tend to desire more children than those who do not, at one or more points in time. As more egalitarian gender attitudes spread, women who reject wife beating appear to move away from high-fertility norms, while those with more traditional views remain more pronatalist, creating a widening gap in fertility preferences between the two groups.
This pattern is especially visible in countries where women’s average educational level is relatively high, adding to growing evidence that education plays an important role in shaping both gender attitudes and fertility ideals.
Full text of the article (early view, subscription required) is available here.
Citation: De Vestel, J. and Gadeyne, S. (2026), Evolving Gender Attitudes and Fertility Preferences: A Study of Young Women in Five Sub-Saharan African Countries. Studies in Family Planning. https://doi.org/10.1111/sifp.70047
