Gender Analysis of Decision Making on Maternal Health Care among Rural Farmers in Southwestern Nigeria: Implications for Food Security

Abstract

Safe childbirth is crucial to farmers’ productivity and food security as farm labour plays a pivotal role for farming inmost rural communities. Analysing gender roles on maternal health care (MHC) decision is of major concern in ensuringsafe motherhood and poverty reduction in rural homes. Therefore, this study analysed gender concerns of MHC amongrural farmers. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 124 respondents for the study; data were collected usingstructured interview schedule, Focus Group Discussion, descriptive and inferential statistics. Respondents (χ = 29 years)were in their youthful and procreating stage with average family size of 4 members. Husbands (64.5%) mainly decided theMHC utilised for childbirth. More females (54.8%) belonged to cooperative society. About (56.5%) of males and females(53.2%), respectively were crop producers having average monthly earning of #19,000. Most predicating factors to MHCdecision were family tradition ( χ= 2.21) and social capital (χ = 2.18). Males (61.3%) had high level of MHC decisionunlike the females (54.8%) with low contribution to MHC decision. Monthly income (r=0.521), responsibility for decisionmaking (r=0.668) were significantly related to respondents decision on MHC. There was a significant difference in thelevel of decision making between males and females (t=5.28, df =31). Hence, it is recommended that non-governmentalorganisation should collaborate with the government to aggressively sensitise rural communities on safe motherhood andmen should sufficiently empower women to contribute and participate actively in decisions on maternal health care in ruralfamilies for sustainable food production and supply.