Women's status and contraceptive use in Cameroon

Using the 2004 Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey, we examine the association between various women's status variables and contraception use. We find that certain dimensions of female autonomy are indeed important for contraception use in the Cameroonian context, while there is no clear relationship for other dimensions. We find that the decision-making index is the most important dimension of female autonomy in predicting a woman’s use of modern contraception. The mobility index and the gender role index are respectively the second and third most important dimensions of women’s autonomy that predict a woman’s modern contraception use. Surprisingly, none of the financial autonomy variables are significant. We conclude that although certain women’s autonomy variables predict a woman’s modern contraception use, a place of residence and regional level of development is a much stronger predictor.