Sex Composition of Children and Marital Rape: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Background/Purpose

Three factors make marital rape a pressing health and social problem: marital rape is prevalent in both the rich and developing parts of the world; it is thought to have severe consequences on the reproductive, mental, and physical health of victims; and its causes are not understood which hinders efforts to mount effective prevention campaigns.

The objective of our study is to shed light on contextual factors that contribute to marital rape by estimating the effect of child sex composition on marital rape, in a cultural context where there is a preference for sons over daughters. We examined whether mothers with only daughters are at an elevated risk for sexual violence compared to mothers of sons in 22 Sub-Saharan African countries.

Methods

We used data from the nationally-representative Demographic and Health Surveys conducted between 2009 and 2014 across the following countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Côte d'Ivoire, DR Congo, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The study sample included 105,860 ever-married mothers of whom 18,313 had daughters only and 19,276 had sons only.

Recent experience of marital rape was measured using an item from a modified Conflict Tactics Scale that asked whether the respondent had been physically forced by her spouse to have sexual intercourse when she did not want to in the previous 12 months.

We estimated odds ratios (OR) using logistic regression with standard errors clustered on primarily sampling units to account for the multistage survey design. Regression models controlled for age, marital status, educational attainment, urban residence, and household wealth, and were fit separately for mothers with less than four children and those with four or more children.

Results

8.3% of respondents had been physically forced to have sexual intercourse by their spouse in the previous 12 months. Country-level prevalence ranged from 1.0% in Gambia to 19.1% in Uganda. Among women with 1-3 children, the sex composition of children was not associated with marital rape. Among women with 4+ children, women with only daughters had 52% (OR=1.52; p < .05) greater odds of marital rape than women with only sons, corresponding to a 4 percentage point increase in risk. Women with mixed-sex children were not at an increased risk of marital rape.

Conclusions and Implications

The findings suggest that lack of sons either motivates some men to rape their spouses or reduces women’s ability to avoid marital rape. While further research is required to explicate the relationship between child sex composition and marital rape, the tremendous consequences for mothers who do not bear sons challenge the notion that son preference is a minor issue in Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, the findings indicate that the response to cases of marital rape in the region needs to consider couple’s unmet child sex composition goals.