A study performed in Bobo-Dioulasso a small commerical town in southwest Burkina Faso showed that reproduction dominates womens existence. The sample of women surveyed mostly Moslem with some Christians and animists was drawn from a group sampled in an infant mortality study. Uneducated women showed an almost proud fatalism regarding their own fertility and an ignorance of reproductive physiology. Fewer than 30% of young women have the benefit of any education whatsoever and education is the most negative affector of fertility. Economic roles for women have been essential but never incompatible with raising of children. Rural women farm urban women farm and engage in market activities and even salaried labor thanks to liberal maternity leaves and breastfeeding breaks. Children are introduced to household and other duties early. Fairly universal mothers incomes buy clothing and special foods and medicines for children. Fathers are as autonomous and pay for housing food and schooling. Wives enter a husbands household in subservience and acquire status through children a phenomenon which might counterbalance the long-term physical and nutritional drain of childbearing. Husbands home role is minimal; they have little to contribute that is not economic. The husband is the ultimate household head polygyny is common and relationships between spouses are distant a factor which seems to positively affect fertility. The effect of religion and culture is a situation in which a womans only source of status is through childbearing. For development to have any hope of affecting fertility this situation must be changed. Development in BObo-Dioulasso and similar places will need to be highly female-oriented.
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Walle et al. (1985) studied this question.