Childbearing and Economic Work: The Health Balance of Women in Accra, Ghana
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Childbearing and Economic Work: The Health Balance of Women in Accra, Ghana Philippa Waterhouse1 • Allan G. Hill2 • Andrew Hinde3
Published online: 4 November 2015 Ó The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Objectives This study aims to investigate (1) whether the health of working women with young children differs from that of working women without young children, and (2) which social factors mediate the relationship between economic and maternal role performance and health among mothers with young children. Methods The analyses uses panel data from 697 women present in both waves of the Women’s Health Study for Accra (WHSA-I and WHSA-II); a community based study of women aged 18 years and older in the Accra Metropolitan Area of Ghana conducted in 2003 and 2008–2009. Change in physical and mental health between the survey waves is compared between women with a biological child alive at WHSA-II and born since WHSA-I and women without a living biological child at WHSA-II born in the interval. To account for attrition between the two survey waves selection models were used with unconditional change score models being used as the outcome model. Results We found in our sample of working women that those who had a child born between WHSA-I and WHSA-II who was still alive at WHSA-II did not experience a change in mental or physical health different from other women. Among working women with young children, educational status, relationship to the household head and household demography were associated with change in
mental health at the 5 % level, whilst migration status and household demography was associated with change in physical health scores. Conclusion The results suggest there are no health penalties of combining work and childbearing among women with young children in Accra, Ghana.
& Philippa Waterhouse [email protected]
Introduction
1
Faculty of Health and Social Care, Open University, Milton Keynes, MK6 7AA, UK
2
Department of Social Statistics and Demography, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
3
Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
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Keywords Ghana Health Well-being Women’s roles Work and family
Significance What is Already Known on This Subject? Research in the West has found contradictory results concerning the impact of women’s combination of motherhood and economic activity on their own health with positive, negative and insignificant results being found. A limitation of this research is its narrow geographical focus having been conducted mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries. What This Study Adds? This paper contributes through exploring the influence of maternal multiple roles in the sub-Saharan African context. We found there were no health penalties of combining economic work with having young children among women in Accra, Ghana.
Since the 1960s there has been a substantial volume of literature investigating the interface between work and family [15], with
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