Community Gender Inequality and Extramarital Sex among Zambian Men: A Multilevel Analysis

• In Event: 2266 - Family Section Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 11. Gender, Ethnicity, and Family in the African Context

Abstract

Extramarital sexual interactions are recognized as important determinants of the STD and HIV/AIDS epidemics that afflict many sub-Saharan African countries. Scholars have therefore become very interested identifying the determinants motivating individuals to engage in such activity. Most of the research has looked at how the individual and domestic characteristics of individuals affect engagement in extramarital sexual interactions. This study contributed to the research on the determinants of extramarital sex by examining if and how community characteristics affected individual risk of extramarital sexual interaction. It focused on the roles played by community gender inequality. The study pooled the men’s data from the 2001-2002 and 2007 Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) data, along with additional data on district level characteristics from other sources. Multilevel logistic and poisson regression analyses of the data revealed that gender inequality in districts influenced Zambian men’s risk of engaging in extramarital sexuality, independently of the men’s own individual and domestic characteristics. The study also found that community modernization levels impacted individual men’s risk of extramarital sexual activity. The study’s results highlight the importance of community-level characteristics for understanding extramarital sexual behavior within the sub-Saharan African region.

Author

• Kofi D. Benefo, CUNY-Lehman College