Socio-Cultural Factors of Gender Roles in Women’s Healthcare Utilization in Southwest Nigeria

Abstract

Socio-cultural factors are threat to women's health and well-being. A culture reinforces the gender role and life style of husbands and wives. No matter how equipped a health facility is, it is the patronage that makes the difference to good health. People's socio-cultural background plays vital role in seeking and acceptance of health care. The consequence of these factors on the use of health facility among pregnant women is a major cause of maternal morbidity and mortality and a powerful brake on the road to the achievement of MDGs as well as overall development. Maternal mortality in Nigeria is very high, with an estimated 52,900 Nigerian women dying from pregnancyrelated complications out of a global total of 529,000 maternal deaths. It is not encouraging to note that 62 percent of births in Nigeria occur at home and 96 percent of women who received no ANC services delivered at home. Several factors lead to health care facility utilization and among these the less studied is the socio-cultural dimension and hence the focus of the paper. The study was carried out in Ado-Odo/Ota local government area with 260 eligible respondents, selected randomly from the eight wards in the local government. Interview approach was employed with the aid of structured questionnaire to elicit required information from the respondents and data analyzed using SPSS. The main objective of this study is to understand the influence of socio-cultural factors influencing health care utilization among women during pregnancy and child birth. The findings show that husband perception of pregnancy complications, age at marriage, who pays antenatal bills, family type, treatment place decision are significant towards use of health care services by mothers. Paper provides recommendations for improving the use of maternal health delivery services in the study area and beyond.

Challenging State-centricity and legalism: promoting the role of social institutions in the domestic implementation of international human rights law

“…79 Given the impact of such religious norms on reproductive health, understanding and addressing a health problem's socio-cultural determinants can be as important as addressing the medical aspects. 80 The Indonesian Government did this by engaging Muslim leaders, organisations, and communities from the outset of the family planning programme. For example, the Government spent time and money engaging Muslim leaders and scholars (ulama), including taking them abroad to learn best family planning practices from other Muslim countries.…”

Barriers to formal healthcare utilisation among poor older people under the livelihood empowerment against poverty programme in the Atwima Nwabiagya District of Ghana

“…These barriers are mostly factors that hinder access to and utilisation of formal healthcare services [29]. Social, cultural, economic, institutional factors including health illiteracy and language difficulties [27,[29][30][31], geographical distance and transportation problems [10,13,28,[32][33][34], societal cultural norms [35,36] and lack of health insurance [37] impede the use of formal healthcare among older people. Despite the global growth in literature on barriers to formal healthcare use among older people, little is known from the perspective of poor older people in Ghana.…”

Knowledge of Socio-Demographic Factors Influencing Health Service Usage Among Pregnant Mothers in Nigeria

“…Studies like Azuh, Fayomi and Ajayi (2015); Bredensen (2013) and Halle-Ekane, et al (2014) have found that women's level of education has a significant effect on their health care utilization, in spite of reservation from other scholars (Ochako, Fotso, Ikamari, and Khasakhala (2011). According to Eze and Adhure (2014) education, income and other socio-cultural factors influence health care services among women.…”