page_title: Women in Ghana
section_title: Family size
hierarchical_section_title: Women in Ghana / Family structure / Family size
caption_attribution_description: A Micro School in Ghana
context_page_description: The status of women in Ghana and their roles in Ghanaian society has changed over the past few decades. There has been a slow increase in the political participation of Ghanaian women throughout history. Women are given equal rights under the Constitution of Ghana, yet disparities in education, employment, and health for women remain prevalent. Additionally, women have much less access to resources than men in Ghana do. Ghanaian women in rural and urban areas face slightly different challenges. Throughout Ghana, female-headed households are increasing.
  Multiple forms of violence against women still exist in Ghana. In recent years, feminist organizations and women's rights groups have increased. Efforts to bring about gender equality continue to grow in Ghana. The government of Ghana has signed on to numerous international goals and conventions to enhance women's rights in Ghana.
context_section_description: In their Seven Roles of Women: Impact of Education, Migration, and Employment on Ghanaian Mother (International Labour Office, 1987), Christine Oppong and Katherine Abu recorded field interviews in Ghana that confirmed a traditional view of procreation. Citing figures from the Ghana fertility survey of 1983, the authors concluded that about 60 percent of women in the country preferred to have large families of five or more children. The largest number of children per woman was found in the rural areas where the traditional concept of family was strongest. Uneducated urban women also had large families.
  
  On the average, urbanized, educated, and employed women had fewer children. On the whole, all the interviewed groups saw childbirth as an essential role for women in society, either for the benefits it bestows upon the mother or for the honour it brings to her family. The security that procreation provided was greater in the case of rural and uneducated women. By contrast, the number of children per mother declined for women with post-elementary education and outside employment; with guaranteed incomes and little time at their disposal in their combined roles as mothers and employees, the desire to procreate declined.
caption: Young girls attend school in Ghana.
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