HIGHLIGHTS

• Status inconsistencies and women’s resource possession provoke intimate partner violence.

• Any move toward status equality is a risk factor for women’s experience of abuse.

• Policies that promote counseling for women working in less prestigious occupations may provide a support system.

• An increase in legislation that criminalizes domestic violence in Nigeria is needed.

This research paper aims to understand the effects of time spent in domestic work, including childcare, on women’s mental health in Ghana. The paper adopted a triangulation convergence mixed methods approach. The quantitative information was sourced from two waves (2009/ 2014) of the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (GSEPS) while qualitative information was obtained from in-depth interviews with couples and key informants from five (5) regions, representing diverse ethnic backgrounds, in Ghana.

The varying social representations of, and cultural preferences for, body size and their implications for sexual behaviour and risk are necessarily contextual. However, the representational paucity of this literature across developing countries is unfortunate, considering the graver implications of risky sexual behaviour. Thus, we examined the relationship between body size and risky sexual behaviour among sexually active women in a sub-Saharan African country, Ghana.

The tradeoff that women face between work and family depends largely on a country’s institutional settings. Provisions like stable employment, maternity benefits, and childcare services can affect women’s fertility behaviours. In Ghana, the majority of women work in vulnerable self-employment positions. Among paid female employees, the degree of job security also varies. Largely studied in the developed country context, job insecurity has been found to have important effects on women’s reproductive health outcomes. As yet, there is no consensus on the direction of effects.

Abstract