Abstract
This study explores the role of wealth and religion in sex negotiation among married women in the Southwest, Nigeria. Binary logit regression analyses were conducted on the data from the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) to examine the likelihood of successful sex negotiation among 5,776 married women. The results suggest that wealth is a significant positive determinant of married women’s ability to negotiate sex. Compared to the poorest quintile, women in the richest quintile had significantly higher odds of negotiating sex. In addition, religion has a small but significant effect on the ability of married women to negotiate sex with their husbands. Christian women generally have higher odds of negotiating sex with their husbands than their Muslim counterparts. Tertiary education was found to have a strong positive effect on wives’ negotiating sex with their husbands. This is consistent with earlier findings that greater awareness of sexual and reproductive rights and the ability to demand their use are associated with higher levels of education. The study recommends that future research and policy should include protecting the sexual rights of Muslim women and women in the poorest wealth quintile against sexual coercion. There is also a need to encourage girls’ education, particularly those from poorer backgrounds, through government-sponsored scholarship programs to increase their ability to negotiate sex with their partners in the future.
Keywords: Logit Regression, Married Women, Nigeria, Religion, Sex Negotiation, Wealth.